Padel, tennis and pickleball court sizes

A tennis court and a padel court are far closer in size than almost anyone assumes: 261 square metres against 200. Only 30% bigger.

A pickleball court, on the other hand, is under a third of a tennis court. That difference in area explains nearly everything else: how much you run, how long the point lasts, and how many people can be playing in the same space.

Tennis

• 23.77 m long by 10.97 m wide for doubles.
• For singles it narrows to 8.23 m: the tramlines are out of play.
• The service line sits 6.40 m from the net — from the net, not the baseline. It is the most common misreading of a court plan.

Padel

• 20 m long by 10 m wide: exactly twice as long as it is wide.
• It is the only one of the three that is enclosed. The back wall is glass, as is the first stretch of the side walls; the rest is metal mesh.
• The service line sits 3 m from the back wall. That is why the padel service box is considerably larger than the tennis one, even though the court is smaller.

Pickleball

• 13.41 m by 6.10 m: by far the smallest of the three.
• Those are practically the dimensions of a doubles badminton court. Not a coincidence: pickleball was invented on one.
• It has the kitchen: 2.13 m either side of the net where you cannot hit the ball before it bounces.

The three of them, side by side

The smaller the court, the less you run and the faster the point goes.

What this means for a club

Floor area is a club’s unit of business. Three pickleball courts fit comfortably in the footprint of one tennis court; only one fits in a padel court. That is why pickleball grows so fast in facilities that already exist: it does not ask for new building, it asks for redistribution.

It also explains each sport’s rhythm. On a small court the point has no time to be built: it is settled at the net. On a large one there is room to run, and whoever runs more wins points that would not exist in pickleball.