If you've played tennis, pickleball will feel familiar for about four minutes and then start behaving very differently. Here's what actually changes.
The court is a quarter of the size
A pickleball court is 13.41m × 6.10m. A singles tennis court is 23.77m × 8.23m. Four pickleball courts fit inside one tennis court, which is exactly why so many Australian clubs have been converting them.
Practically: you cover far less ground. That's the single biggest reason players in their fifties, sixties and beyond take it up after their knees have had enough of tennis.
The serve is underarm, and there's only one
No aces. The serve must be struck below waist height, underarm, diagonally, and it has to clear the kitchen. You get one attempt — no second serve.
This is the rule that most levels the playing field. In tennis a big serve wins you free points. In pickleball the serve just starts the rally.
The ball is plastic and it doesn't do what you expect
A pickleball is a hollow plastic ball with holes. It's slower, it doesn't bounce as high, and wind moves it around. Outdoor balls have smaller, more numerous holes than indoor balls for exactly that reason.
Tennis players usually over-hit for the first half hour. The ball simply doesn't need that much racquet head speed.
The kitchen
This is the rule with no tennis equivalent. There's a 2.13m non-volley zone either side of the net. You cannot volley the ball while standing in it.
Which means you can't just charge the net and put everything away. Instead you get “dinking” — soft, controlled shots that drop into the opponent's kitchen. It's a patience game, and it's the part most tennis players underestimate and then get addicted to.
Scoring is different, and briefly confusing
Only the serving side can score. Games go to 11, win by 2. In doubles the score is called as three numbers — your score, their score, and whether you're the first or second server.
It sounds fiddly written down. It takes about ten minutes on court.
The paddle is not a racquet
Solid face, no strings, roughly the size of a large table tennis bat. There's no string bed to generate power for you, so touch matters more than swing.
Beginner paddles are usually wood — heavier, less forgiving, and perfectly fine for learning. Composite and carbon-faced paddles are lighter and have a much bigger sweet spot, and they're worth the upgrade once you're playing regularly. The difference means very little in your first month.
So which should you play?
If you love the athleticism of tennis and your body is happy, keep playing tennis. Pickleball won't replace it.
But if you want a game you can play with people of wildly different ages and abilities, that's easy to learn, that doesn't need a booking, and that fits on your driveway — that's pickleball, and that's why the Pickleball Australia Association now lists 184 clubs across the country.
Coming from tennis, the paddle question is the one that trips people up. We wrote an honest breakdown of what it actually costs to start in Australia — including why your first paddle probably shouldn't be an expensive one.