As Derby u3a Pickleball players will know, when we started playing in 2023, we all found the official scoring method too confusing! So we decided to adopt Rally Scoring, where any play could score a point on any rally and by so doing either retain the serve or gain the serve from the opposing team. This was simpler and in our limited 1 hour sessions, meant that we could complete games in around 10 minutes each.

In 2025, the time has come to embrace the official scoring method! This is to ensure that we have the option should our players enter other competitions, play at other Pickleball sessions, or we set up our own tournament for example.

YouTube is a good place to find videos of people playing Pickleball and some explanatory videos on scoring such as this one.

A brief guide to official Pickleball scoring:

1. Only the serving team can score points.
2. In doubles, each player has one chance to serve. If they lose a rally, the second player gets to serve. When on the Second Serve, they lose a rally there is a 'Side Out' and service swaps to the opposing team.
3. The exception to this is the first serve of the match where on the serving side, only one player gets to serve (designated Server number 2 - see note 5). This is so as not to disadvantage the opposing side.
4. If the serving side wins a rally and scores a point, they retain the serve and, as in Rally scoring the serving player continues to serve, swapping to the other side of the court to serve, until they lose a rally.
5. Important - to ensure scoring is correct and followed by both sides, before every serve, the server should call out the score and their server number. So, on the first serve of the match (taken from the right hand court), this would be 0-0-2. If the serving team then scores a point, the server would swap to the left court, call out 1-0-2 before serving, and so on. If the team serving first loses the first rally, then service would swap to the other team. Their designated server number one is on the right hand court and before serving calls out 0-0-1.
6. It is also important that both teams remember their server number and continue to use them throughout the game. Failure to call out the score prior to scoring may mean that the opposing team can ask for the serve to be taken again.
7. Unlike Rally scoring, the serving teams' score has no bearing on which side of the court the serve is taken from (right for even, left for odd). When a team gains the serve, Server Number One will take the first serve, whichever side of the court they are on.
8. Because the games are longer, teams can also agree that the winning margin be one point (first to 11) and not two.