If you know anything about racket sports like tennis, table tennis, squash and badminton, you’ll know that the objective of the game for all players is to avoid letting the ball or the object that is being hit make contact with the ground a certain number of times. For example, if a tennis player lets the ball bounce twice inbounds on their side of the court, they lose the point. If a badminton player lets the shuttlecock bounce once on their side of the court, they lose the point. If you want to be an effective player in these sports, you need to know how many times you’re allowed to let the ball bounce.
What about in Padel? This is arguably the most fundamental, important rule in the sport – so it’s important that you get it right! This is what I’ll be exploring in this post. I’ll give you the low down on how many times the ball is allowed to bounce, and I’ll also tell you how this is impacted by the presence of the walls and fences that surround a typical padel court. Lets get started!
So, how many bounces are allowed in Padel?
If the ball bounces on the ground twice on your side of the net, you lose the point. Remember, only the first bounce needs to be within the field of play, so the second bounce can occur anywhere, even outside the cage! If you cannot reach the ball before the second bounce, the point will be awarded to your opponent.
With most of these rules, the best way to explain them properly is with examples, so let’s go through a few here! Firstly, a nice simple one. Imagine your opponents are standing towards the back of their side of the court, and you see the opportunity to play a beautiful drop shot, travelling just over the top of the net with no pace on the ball. In this case, one of the opposition players will have to rush forwards to the net to reach the ball before the second bounce. If they do not get there in time and the ball bounces twice, you will win the point. If they do get there before the second bounce and return the ball to your side of the net, then the point continues.
Now for a slightly more complex example. Imagine you’re midway through a point and have just hit a lob towards the back of your opponent’s side of the court. The lob doesn’t go as far towards the back wall as you wanted, and your opponent sees the perfect opportunity to play a textbook smash shot. Your opponent plays the shot perfectly, hammering the ball into the ground on your side of the court. This is the first bounce! The ball is not done travelling yet though – it continues its flight and rebounds off the back wall at an angle before travelling outside the cage and bouncing again. In this scenario, the first bounce occurred inside the cage and the second bounce occurred outside, but you would still lose the point.
The only way to continue the rally from here would be to exit the cage while the ball was in the air and hit it back into the cage onto your opponent’s side of the net before the second bounce occurs. From the games I’ve watched in recent years, this is something that famous Padel player Paquito Navarro seems to be incredibly good at!
Lastly, imagine your opponent is about to play another smash shot, just like they did in the last example. This time, they hit the ball directly down the centre of the court. It bounces on the ground on your side of the net first, then hits your back wall and travels high above your head, bouncing for the second time back on your opponent’s side of the court. In this case, the point would still go to your opponent, because they hit the ball, it bounced on your side of the court, and you did not manage to hit it before it bounced a second time. As I said earlier, as long as the first bounce occurs inbounds on the correct side of the court, the second bounce can occur anywhere – including outside the cage or back on the original side of the court that the ball was hit from.
Are Wall Bounces Counted As A Bounce?
Unlike tennis and most other racket sports, Padel players can bounce the ball off the walls that surround the court during the course of a point. This leads many new players and spectators to wonder if these bounces off the side and back walls of the court count towards the number of bounces that will lose a team a point. For example, if I hit the ball into the ground on my opponent’s side of the court (first bounce) and it then continues to bounce off the back wall – is this the second bounce that loses the other team the point?
The answer to this is no! When we say the ball needs to bounce twice for one team to lose the point, we mean bounces off the ground, not off any of the walls. So, if I were to hit a shot into the back corner of my opponent’s court and it hits the ground first, then hits the side wall, then the back wall, and is then returned by my opponent, the point would continue. Although the ball bounced three times, two of these were off the walls! Therefore, it did not bounce twice on the ground on their side of the court.
Padel would be a much less interesting game if bounces off the walls counted towards a team losing a point. It would basically mean that any time the ball came into contact with a wall after bouncing on the ground first, the team on that side of the court would lose the point. In my opinion, one of the most challenging aspects of Padel is how teams handle the bounces off the surfaces at the sides and back of the court – so to see this taken away would be a huge shame!
Conclusion
So, to summarise – if the ball bounces once inbounds on the correct side of the court, the team receiving the shot must return the ball back into play before it bounces for a second time. If they cannot do this, they will lose the point. Bounces off the walls do not count towards this total of two bounces.
I hope this post has given you the clarity you were seeking with regards to how many times the ball is allowed to bounce in padel. It is a sport that requires a high degree of anticipation, judgement and agility to ensure we get ourselves in the right place at the right time to return the ball to the opposition before that second bounce occurs! On this site, I will aim to arm you with the skills and knowledge that will put you in the best position to succeed, so feel free to check out some of my other posts too while you’re here!