Padel vs Tennis – What's the Difference?

If you've ever watched padel for the first time and thought "that looks like tennis, but something's off" — you're not wrong. The two sports share DNA. Same scoring, similar strokes, roughly the same dress code. But play them back to back and you'll quickly realise they're entirely different games. One is a sport. The other is slightly chaotic, played in a glass box, and somehow even more addictive.

Here's everything you need to know about how padel and tennis actually compare.

The Basics

Tennis is played on a large open court, either on clay, grass, or hard surface. It can be played as singles or doubles. Points are won by landing the ball in the opponent's court without them returning it.

Padel is played on a smaller, enclosed court surrounded by glass and metal mesh walls. It's almost always played as doubles. Those walls? They're in play — meaning the ball can bounce off them and you can still hit it. It sounds chaotic. It is. You'll love it.

Court & Setup

Feature	Padel	Tennis
Court size	20x10 metres	23.8x10.97 metres (singles)
Enclosure	Glass + mesh walls — fully enclosed	Open court, no walls
Surface	Artificial grass or hard	Clay, grass, or hard
Players	Doubles almost exclusively	Singles or doubles
Net height	88cm at centre	91cm at centre

 

The padel court is about a third smaller than a tennis court, which means you're always in the action. There's no chasing a ball to the baseline while your partner stands there looking decorative.

The Equipment

Rackets

Tennis uses a large strung racket with an open head. Padel uses a solid, foam-filled racket (no strings) with a perforated face — shorter, chunkier, and more forgiving on off-centre hits. For a sport this technical, it's surprisingly hard to look bad holding one.

Balls

Padel uses a ball almost identical to a tennis ball, but with slightly lower pressure. It bounces a little less aggressively, which is part of what makes those long glass-wall rallies possible.

How Scoring Works

Good news: if you know tennis scoring, you already know padel scoring. Same structure — 15, 30, 40, game, set, match. Best of three sets. Tiebreaks at 6-6. The only real difference is that in padel, the serve must be underhand with a bounce, not the overhead cannonball tennis players spend years perfecting.

(Yes, you read that right. The padel serve is underhand. Your tennis serve is irrelevant here. Welcome to a level playing field.)

The Biggest Difference: The Walls

This is what makes padel padel. After the ball bounces once on the floor, it can hit the back or side glass walls and still be in play. You can play it off the wall like squash. You can lob it so it bounces over the opponent, hits the back wall, and comes back into the court. You can use the wall to set up angles your opponent never sees coming.

Tennis is about power and precision. Padel is about power, precision, and reading walls like a chess player reads a board. The wall is your friend, your enemy, and occasionally your saviour all in the same point.

Learning Curve

	Padel	Tennis
Time to first rally	Minutes	Hours to days
Serve difficulty	Low — underhand with bounce	High — overhead technique required
Physical demands	Moderate, lots of movement	High, especially singles
Strategy depth	Very high	Very high
Wall reading	Essential	Not applicable

 

Tennis takes years to play at a level that feels fun. Padel takes an afternoon. That doesn't mean padel is easier — it means the fun starts immediately and the depth reveals itself later.

Which One Is For You?

If you love long baseline rallies, serving aces, and the solitary focus of singles play — tennis is your sport.

If you want a sport you can pick up in a day, play with three friends, have full conversations between points, and still find yourself breathless and addicted after an hour — padel is your sport.

The honest answer? Most people who try padel still love tennis. They just start cancelling their tennis bookings to play more padel.

Ready to try padel? Browse our handcrafted rackets at climapadel.com — made in Spain, designed for players who take both the game and the aesthetic seriously.