Transcription
If you're brand new to pickleball, this video is for you. Make sure that you stick around till the end because we'll also clear up those tricky serve and kitchen rules once and for all.
If we haven't met, my name is Jordan Briones and I've been playing and coaching this amazing game for over a decade now. But before we dive into scoring and strategy, let's quickly go over the key areas of the court so that you know exactly where everything is.
Both of these lines near the back of the court are called the baselines. This is the line that you'll be serving from. And if the ball bounces past this line at any time, it's out of bounds.
These lines here running along the sides of the court are your sidelines. Anything landing outside of these lines will also be out of bounds. Although, if the ball does land on these lines, it is considered in.
Now, up here towards the front of the court, this rectangular area is called the non-volley zone, which is also widely referred to as the kitchen. We'll make sure to go over the most important rules of the non-volley zone later. So, make sure that you keep on watching.
Now, the line that is highlighted here is called the non-volley zone line or the kitchen line. This line separates the kitchen or non-volley zone from the rest of the court.
When serving, you'll always serve diagonally into the opposite service box on the other side of the net. One thing to remember is that your serve must actually land beyond the non-volley zone line as it cannot land on this kitchen line or it is a fault.
Lastly, the last line that you need to know about is the center line which simply divides the service box into two halves. As long as your serve lands beyond the non-volley zone line, it is a good serve even if it lands on the center line, on the baseline, or on the sideline of the correct service box.
Now, let's talk about the scoreboard and make scoring simple and easy. When playing pickle ball, there are three numbers that you'll have to remember every time you call to score. The first number is for the number of points that the serving team has. The second number is for the number of points that the returning team has, and the third number is to identify if the serving team is on their first or second serve.
Now, every team gets two serves, one for each player on their team, except for the very start of the game. The first team that serves to start the game will only get one serve to begin. After that, each team will get two serves each, one for each player on their team. This is why you hear players call 0-0-2 at the start of every game as this means zero points for the serving team, zero points for the returning team, and the last number two indicating that the server from the serving team is starting as the second server.
To more easily understand this, let's see a real example of this play out into action. For illustration purposes, this is me on the right, my partner is Sammy on the left, and our opponents are Elliott and Gray. Let's say my team is serving first. Since this is the very beginning of the game, the score will start at 0-0-2. Zero points for my team, zero points for my opponent's team, and the number two indicating that I'm starting as the second server on my team.
When you start a game, the player that is on the right side of the court or the even side will always be the first one to serve. Here you see me serve and we end up winning the rally. My team gets awarded one point on the scoreboard and now I switch sides with my partner to serve on the other side. I keep the ball here and I will serve again since we successfully won the point. Every time you win the point as the serving team, you and your partner will switch sides and the server will serve from the other side just like I will do here.
Now here you see me serving again from the left side this time or the odd side with another chance for our team to score. I call the score 1-0-2 indicating that we have one point, our opponents have zero points and the last number two is indicating that I am the second server for my team. We lose a rally here, but because we're the serving team, our opponents don't get awarded a point. Remember, each team only gets awarded a point when they are the serving team.
Now, since we lost this rally and I started the game as a second server, my opponents will now get the chance to serve and will have their chance to try to score. This is called a side out. Elliott on the top left of the screen will now serve first and he'll become the first server on his team as he is the player on his team that is currently on the right side of the court. He calls the score as the score is now 0-1-1. Zero points for Elliott's team, one point for my team and this one indicating that he is the first server for his team.
Now Elliott's team wins the point here. So he switches sides and gets set up to serve from the left side of the court. The score is now 1-1-1. One point for Elliott's team, one point for my team, and the third number one, indicating that he's still the first server for his team.
In this next rally, Elliott's team loses the point, which now means their team will go to the second server, which will be his partner, Gray. Gray will now serve from his side, and the score is now 1-1-2. One point for their team, one point for my team, and the number two, indicating that he is the second server for their team. They end up winning this rally. And now you will see him switch sides with his partner Elliott. If you are quickly catching on to this, they are now in the lead as Gray will now serve with the score being 2-1-2. Two points for their team, one point for my team, and the number two indicating that he's still the second server for his team. You see here that they lose the rally. And because he was the second server on his team, it is now a side out, which again means that the chance to serve and score will come back to my team.
Remember that directly after a side out, the player who is on the right side of the court will always serve and will become the first server. So when it comes to serving in pickle ball, it follows a very specific pattern. First server, second server, side out. Each team will continue to try to score on their serve until they reach 11 points, but you must win by two. If both teams are tied at 10, the serving team must get to 12 points in order to finally win the game.
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All right, so now that you know how scoring works, let's talk about something just as important. Positioning. Knowing where to stand on the court can completely change who's in control of the point, which can give you and your partner a huge advantage.
First, let's start with the serving team. When your team is serving, it's ideal for both players to stay back near the baseline. Why is this, you ask? It's because of pickle ball's unique double bounce rule. The double bounce rule states that the ball must bounce once on each side of the court after the serve is hit before either team can volley the ball out of the air. That means that the serve has to bounce, which is the first bounce. The return has to bounce, which is the second bounce, and then the ball can be volleyed out of the air, typically by a player on the returning team after they've hit the return.
With this basic understanding of the double bounce rule, you'll quickly learn that the returning team has a huge advantage as they are the ones that can capture the net first. So, if you're on the serving team after the serve is struck, you'll want to stay back at the baseline in order to let the ball bounce before you hit it. It is the returner's job to hit a deep return so that you and your partner are forced to hit the next ball from back behind the baseline.
Here's an example of when a player on the serving team decides to come in instead of staying back behind the baseline after their team's serve. The return here comes deep and now he's forced to hit a ball falling back, putting their team in a really defensive position. This is exactly what you want to avoid. In this example, you see that the serving team stays back and they are able to play a controlled shot from the baseline.
Now, let's take a look at the returning team. talk about their positioning and discover how you can actually capitalize on your team's advantage up at the net. First of all, you'll often see that the player who is not returning the serve will always be up at the non-volley zone line in an offensive position at the net. The player returning the serve will start back at the baseline and after they hit their return, they will immediately move forward towards the kitchen line to join their partner up at the net. This is very important to get into a good position as the returning team. You'll always want to return and come up to the net. You'll want to get both players up at the non-volley zone line as quickly as possible so that you and your partner can attack balls sooner and out of the air if possible, which makes you and your partner a huge threat at the net.
Let's see this play out in a real example. Watch as this player hits a nice deep return and then he follows it up to the non-volley zone right away. Now both players are up ready to take control of the net. Because they are both up at the non-volley zone, they can apply a lot of pressure on the team at the baseline. As the returning team, being able to get up to this kitchen line is monumental and is an essential part of the game.
In contrast, watch this example as this player hits his return and then chooses to stay back behind the baseline. their partner is already up, but they don't follow their return up to the non-volley zone. This not only creates a huge gap in the middle, but now the serving team can easily keep this player back, which puts them in a huge defensive position.
So, now that you understand these important concepts, to recap, just remember these two things. If you're serving, stay back until the return bounces and then begin to make your way up to the non-volley zone. If you're returning, hit the return as deep as you can and try to come up to the non-volley zone line right away. If you just do these two things consistently, you'll find yourself winning a lot more points.
Now that we've covered the serve and return strategy in basic positioning, I just want to quickly talk about what happens when all four players are up at the non-volley zone, which again is also known as the kitchen. At higher levels, this is where most of the points are won, which is why we see both teams fighting as hard as they can to get up to the non-volley zone line as soon as they possibly can.
With all four players at the net, here's the key kitchen strategy simplified. If you can't attack, keep the ball down and keep it away. If you can consistently hit the ball down toward your opponent's feet or hit it away from them, they'll constantly be forced to move and will have to hit the ball up. That's how you can take control of the point. This is known as the dink gang. Dinks are softer shots that are hit from the non-volley zone to your opponents when they are up at the non-volley zone. At the professional level, you'll see players hit very accurate dinks that are targeted down to their opponent's feet as they constantly try to set up the ball so that they can attack.
As simple as these pros can make this game look, there's actually a ton of little nuances to this game that can make a really big difference. From their positioning to higher level tactics and also their shot selection. Again, that's why I spent the time to create an incredible free resource to help you continue learning at your own pace. It'll help you build a strong foundation of all the fundamentals, important strategies, and essential tactics that you need to know. Just go to pickleballframework.com, scan the QR code here, or click the link in the description below.
Okay, now that you're a master of pickleball scoring and you now understand the basic player positions and strategies of the game, we'll now get into the rules of the game. But don't worry, we'll keep it really simple and we'll start with the most important thing first, the serve.
Okay, when it comes to serve rules, all you have to remember is these three things. The serve has to be hit underhand with upward motion. The contact point must be below the waist and the paddle head must be below the wrist at contact. Here in this example, you can clearly see that I'm following the three main rules of the serve. I'm hitting an underhand serve from low to high. My contact point is below my waist. And you can see that my paddle head is below my wrist.
Along with these three main serve rules, while hitting your serve, you must make sure that at least one foot is on the ground during contact and also that your feet are behind the baseline. Lastly, there are two different ways that players like to serve the ball, which are both legal, and they are referred to as the bounce serve and the volley serve. The bounce serve allows a player to drop the ball out of their hand and hit the serve after it bounces on the ground like this. And the volley serve is the more traditional way to serve, which allows you to hit your serve out of the air just like this.
Now that you know the basic rules of the serve, let's now tackle the often confused non-volley zone rules. It's definitely true the non-volley zone rules can get a little bit confusing, but don't you worry because we're going to clear everything up right now so that you can be absolutely confident when you go out on the court.
The first thing to note is that the non-volley zone, often referred to as the kitchen, is this area on the court, which includes the non-volley zone line and the sidelines shown here. The main rule to follow is that you cannot hit a volley or hit the ball in the air while you are in this zone. The most obvious example, which would lead to a fault, is stepping on or over the non-volley zone line while hitting a volley. If you are in a game and you were to do this, it would be a fault, which means you would lose a rally right away.
Now that we talked about the most common example of a non-volley zone line fault, let's now talk about the small nuances that could also lead your team to losing the rally. This next non-volley zone rule has everything to do with momentum. Even if you legally hit a volley from behind the non-volley zone, but your body momentum carries you into or past the non-vol zone line, that would also be a fault. So, to keep it simple, you have to be in full control of your body after volleying the ball.
Next, let's talk about the reestablishment rule, which is really just a fancy way of saying that you need to have both feet outside of the non-volley zone after entering the non-volley zone previously if you're going to hit another volley. Here are a couple of real life examples. This first example shown here is an example of a player hitting a dink that has bounced short into the kitchen, but he did not successfully establish both of his feet outside the non-volley zone before he hit his volley. In slow motion, you can see here that he clearly did not have both feet established on the ground outside of the non-volley zone before he hit his volley, which would lead to a fault.
In this example, you see this player hit a dink from inside the kitchen and he quickly reestablishes both feet outside the non-volley zone before volleying the ball. This would not be a fault as he made sure both feet were planted outside of the non-volley zone before striking the ball.
Another common example of a non-volley zone fault typically happens when someone gets lobbed. Here in this example, you can see this player take a step into the non-volley zone to push off the ground in order to hit the ball. Although because he didn't establish both feet on the ground outside of the non-volley zone before he hit his volley, this is a fault as well. So, when it comes to the re-establishment non-volley zone line rule, all you need to remember is that if you do go in or step into the non-vol zone for any reason, you must make sure that you plant both feet outside of the non-volley zone before you hit a volley.
Now, before we cover the next non-volley zone rule, the biggest misconception beginners make is that they believe solely being in the non-volley zone is forbidden altogether. Remember, there's absolutely nothing wrong with being in or stepping in the non-vol zone. You just can't volley inside it, and you must follow the momentum and reestablishment rules that we just talked about previously. To prove the point, here's an example of us dinking while standing in the non-volley zone, which is totally legal because we're both letting the ball bounce and we're not volleying the ball in the non-volley zone.
The very last non-volley zone rule just has to do with not dropping things. Yes, you heard that right. When volleying the ball, you cannot drop your paddle, hat, glasses, or anything else that is attached to you into the non-volley zone or it'll be a fall. So, just remember when you're volleying the ball up at the kitchen line, make sure you keep your things together.
Now that we've covered the non-volley rules in detail, let's talk about a very unique shot that sets this game apart from others. The Ernie. The Ernie is a shot that is typically utilized at higher levels, but if you see it used out on the court, I want to make sure that you know what's going on. Since the non-volley zone only refers to the actual painted areas on the court, this doesn't stop players from going through or jumping over the non-volley zone to gain an advantage legally.
The best example that we have of this is called the jumping earning. In this clip, you can see this player jumping over the non-volley zone so that he can hit the ball a lot closer to the net, which gives him a huge advantage. before, during, and after his jump. His feet do not touch the non-volley zone in any way. So, this is clearly a legal play. If you're athletic enough to do this, by all means, go for it.
Here we see the step through Ernie. In this Ernie variation, the player goes through the non-volley zone, but make sure that they establish both feet on the ground outside of the non-volley zone before they contact the ball. Here in slow motion, you can see him stepping through the non-volley zone, but right before contact, you'll see both of his feet established outside of the non-volley zone before he hits the ball. In these Ernie variations, you'll notice that they follow the same non-volley zone principles that we talked about previously.
Now that we've covered all the rules about the Ernie, I want to quickly talk to you about two rules that most players don't know about. And the first one has to do with hitting the net. In any point of the rally, if you or your partner hits the net with their paddle or any part of their body, your team will lose the rally right away. So, to be safe, make sure that you stay away from the net as much as you can.
The very last rule that you need to know about is the hindrance rule, specifically when there's a ball that rolls onto your court. To protect yourself and to protect others, it's really important that as soon as you see the ball roll on the court, you stop play immediately. This is called the hindrance rule. All you have to do is raise your paddle or your hand and call ball on. Make sure that you do your best to call it right away and then the point will be replayed.
Now that you know exactly how to keep score, the basic positions and strategies of the game, and all the important rules of the game, I think you're ready to get out there on the court. Remember, we have an amazing free resource for you if you want to dive deeper and learn more advanced strategies and tactics in this game. It's totally free. Just go to pickleballframework.com, scan the QR code here, or click the link in the description below, and I'd love to help you start building your pickle ball knowledge and understanding of the game the right way.
If you want to learn more about the game right now, I think this video here can really help you out. But before you click that, don't forget to share this video with a friend who is also learning about the game.