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Rule changes for 2025
By Mark Peifer - USA Pickleball Certified Referee; Former Chairman, USA Pickleball Rules Committee
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It’s that time of year again for those who like to follow what is new or different with Official Pickleball Rules. A short description of a few of the USA Pickleball Official Rulebook rule changes for 2025 follows.
The 2025 Official Change Document is back after a one-year hiatus for those who are more discriminating and desire additional detail. It shows the 46 rule changes, even the minor editorial changes, with highlighted text to make ‘seeing’ the change easier. |
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It also provides a reason for the changes. What follows is perhaps sufficient to update you on seven changes you, as a player, are more likely to encounter.
Rally Scoring Those who follow rally scoring, know there is more than one way of playing rally-scoring doubles. After about two years of study, however, USA Pickleball has settled on a format for doubles rally scoring. As most know, a point is scored in each rally for all formats of rally scoring. What makes the USA Pickleball format for doubles rally scoring easy to learn is its simplicity and similarity to side-out scoring. The only differences from what we all know from side-out scoring are:
This is a provisional rule; only the second time a rule has been given provisional status. That means it will be in place for a year, and after that, it will be evaluated to either continue as provisional, change, formally adopt, or remove it from play. Post Match Penalty If a tournament player does something after a match that rises to the level of a Verbal Warning, Technical Warning, or Technical Foul, the Tournament Director can apply that penalty to the offending player’s next match at the tournament. What is the most likely behavior that could result in this occurrence? Someone throws a paddle after the match is over. The Volley The act of volleying no longer includes the swing of the paddle. Volleying now starts when the player hitting the volley makes contact with the ball. That doesn’t sound very meaningful, but it changes some Non-Volley Zone fault scenarios that were faults in the past but aren’t anymore. Please see Change Document #6 for more details. Net Plane Before 2025, the rule about a particular plane of the net fault was unclear. Recall that you can hit the |
ball, and your continuation from the shot can legally take you past the net plane. However, the rule was unclear whether your partner could cross the plane of the net on a shot you hit. The rule change clarifies that the continuation provision only applies to the player who hits the ball and is only associated with the current strike of the ball (not one or more shots previously).
Player Withdrawal If a team or player either withdraws, retires, or is forfeited during a round robin format, three things now occur:
Tie-Breakers Round-robin tie-breaker procedures return to the method used in 2023 and earlier. This means that if three or more teams are tied in head-to-head results and the tie-breaker method becomes point differential, all teams will be ranked by point differential, and the medal winners or teams advancing to the medal round will be determined according to that ranking Fault Calls Any disagreement between you and your partner about fault calls will be decided to benefit your opponents. This change aligns with the rule about line calls; as most know, any disagreement between you and your partner about a line call is decided to the benefit of your opponents, i.e., the ball is ‘in.’ The same now applies to faults. Oh, and by the way, you are now expected, by rule, to call faults on your partner if, for some reason, they don’t call it on themselves.
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