What Is a Padel Court?

A Padel court sits somewhere between a tennis court and a squash court. The ground-markings are similar to those of tennis with two service boxes on each side of a tennis-like net, and another zone at the back of the court. This zone is, however, only three metres deep – considerably smaller than five and a half meters on a lawn tennis court – while the service boxes are just over half a metre longer in Padel than tennis. 

Padel, being a doubles game, doesn’t have tramlines, but (come with me on this) if you were to plonk a Padel court squarely on top of a tennis court, the edge of the Padel court would fall in the tennis court’s tramlines. The dimensions of the whole Padel court rectangle are twenty metres by ten metres.

Unlike lawn tennis, a Padel court is enclosed in a box, a bit like two squash courts stuck together and in fact a lot like two squash courts stuck together as the overall length isn’t too dissimilar to two squash courts stuck together as a squash court is 9.75 metres. Towards the back of the court, this box is made of glass. The ball can bounce freely off this section and it is ‘in’ when you hit the ball as a player returning a shot, just like off the back wall or a boast in the game of squash or real tennis.. It runs across the back of the court at a height of three meters which is maintained two meters into the side of each court, before it drops down to two meters high for a further two meters. 

The remainder of the box is made of a metal mesh which is ‘out’ if you hit the ball directly into it, and is a key place to aim your shot as once it has bounced one the metal mesh can lead to all kids of balls changes of direction when hit with spin. The mesh finishes at a total height of three meters off the ground – apart from where the glass is already that high, in which case the mesh adds one further meter of height on the backwall and last three and a bit metres of length. 

Still confused? Don’t worry, I was too until I saw this:

Better? Good.  Get yourself down to your local club