Pickleball scoring leaves many new players confused. I too was confused — partly because I learned it from my son, who quickly Googled it and only gave me partial information; partly because everyone on the court seems to have their own rules (“I heard that you should…”); and partly because, well, it is confusing.

So let’s break it down together—hopefully, this helps the next time we hit the court.

Doubles Scoring Explained

Teams only get points when they are serving. 

Pickleball doubles scoring uses three numbers. 

As an example, the score is 7-2-1. 

• 7 = Serving team’s score
• 2 = Receiving team’s score
• 1 = Server number (1 or 2)

How Serving Works

The serving player stays the server as long as their team wins points. After each point, the two teammates switch sides of the court. Switching sides continues until they receive a fault (i.e, lose the rally). 

Then, the second server steps in—serving from wherever they are standing. There’s no side switching until they win a point. Once they do, they switch sides and continue serving until they fault. After that, it’s a “side-out”—the serve goes to the other team.

The Exception

The only exception is when you start a game, the first team to serve only gets one serve. This keeps the game fair and prevents an early advantage. (I’ve read that’s the reason, but I didn’t go down that rabbit hole…yet.)

Calling the Score

Before each serve, you should call out the score. Due to the exception, the first server of the game will say 0-0-2, or 0-0-start.

When the serve switches sides (after the first team faults), the other team’s first server will state the score (e.g., 0-0-1) and will begin serving on the right side of the court. If they score a point, they will switch sides with their partner and keep serving until they fault. Then, the second server on their team will get a turn.

That Was Harder Than I Thought…

OK – that was harder to explain than I expected! But hopefully, it makes a little more sense now.

I’d love to hear what you think. What part of scoring tripped you up most when you were learning? Or do you have a tip or trick that helped you remember how it works? I’d love to include some reader hacks in a future post!