Padel and tennis share a scoring system and almost nothing else. The court is a quarter of the size and closed on every side, the racket has no strings, and the serve comes from below the waist instead of overhead. Someone arriving from one sport recognises half the rules of the other — and gets the other half wrong.
The court — padel fits inside a quarter of a tennis court, but walls it in
A padel court measures 20 metres by 10, a figure set by the International Padel Federation (FIP) with a 0.5% tolerance. The net sits at 0.88 m in the centre and 0.92 m at the posts, and the service line runs 6.95 m from the net. The whole court is enclosed — glass at the back and part of the sides, metal mesh on the rest, with back walls standing 3 to 4 metres tall.
A tennis court is far bigger and fully open. For singles, the International Tennis Federation (ITF) sets it at 23.77 m by 8.23 m; for doubles, the width grows to 10.97 m. The net stands taller than padel's — 0.914 m in the centre, 1.07 m at the posts — and the service line runs 6.4 m from the net. There are no walls — a ball that lands outside the lines is simply out.
By area, a doubles tennis court covers over 260 m² of playing surface against padel's 200 m², but the real difference shows up around the court, not on it — tennis needs several extra metres of clear run-off outside the lines, while padel, enclosed, ends exactly where its walls do.
The racket — a solid paddle in padel, strings in tennis
A padel racket has no strings. It's a rigid, perforated paddle with holes 9 to 13 mm wide that cut wind resistance, capped by FIP at 45.5 cm long, 26 cm wide and 38 mm thick, usually weighing 350 to 390 grams.
A tennis racket stays classic — a strung frame, up to 73.7 cm in overall length and 31.7 cm wide, with the hitting surface (the strung area) capped at 39.4 by 29.2 cm. The ITF sets no weight limit at all; in practice, an adult racket weighs 265 to 340 grams unstrung, with most recreational players settling around 285 to 305 grams.
The difference shows up on contact — padel's solid paddle hits flatter and more predictably, with no strings to lose tension or snap, while a tennis racket's strings add power and spin but demand finer control over grip and swing.
The ball — almost the same weight, different pressure
A padel ball weighs between 56.0 and 59.4 grams, with a diameter of 6.35 to 6.77 cm — FIP rules require an internal pressure of 4.6 to 5.2 kg per 2.54 cm² and a bounce of 135 to 145 cm when the ball is dropped from 2.54 m onto a hard surface.
A tennis ball weighs, surprisingly, in exactly the same range — 56.0 to 59.4 grams — but has a slightly larger diameter, 6.54 to 6.86 cm, and the ITF requires a bounce of 134 to 147 cm, also tested from 2.54 m, onto concrete. In practice, the two balls bounce to almost the same height — the difference sits in the padel ball's lower internal pressure, which makes it feel softer against the stringless paddle on contact.
The serve — underarm in padel, overhead in tennis
In padel, the ball must bounce once on the server's own side, then gets struck underarm, below waist height, diagonally into the opposite service box. Each player gets two attempts.
In tennis, the standard serve is overhead — the ball is tossed and struck before it touches the ground, also diagonally, also with two attempts per point. The speed gap is large — a top-level tennis serve clears 200 km/h, a pace no underarm motion can reach.
The score is identical — the match behind it isn't
Here the two sports line up exactly. Points run 15, 30, 40, game, with advantage at 40-40; a set is won at six games with a two-game margin, and a tiebreak to seven points settles a 6-6 set. A match is usually the best of three sets — the rule matches across FIP and ITF because padel borrowed tennis scoring wholesale when it was invented in 1969.
What differs is how long a rally lasts under that identical scoreline. A lower net, a slower serve, and walls that keep the ball alive mean a padel game typically runs longer in shot count than a tennis game does, even though both are scored the same way.
Who runs more
A 2025 study in Frontiers in Sports and Active Living, built on national-level players, compared the two sports directly — tennis covers longer distances at higher speeds, with more sprints and longer rest between rallies. Padel players change direction far more often but over short distances, around five metres per effort, with repeated accelerations and decelerations that load the ankles and feet especially hard.
The study's takeaway is that neither sport is simply "harder" — they load the body differently, tennis for endurance and covering ground, padel for short bursts and constant changes of direction.
Why so many tennis players switch to padel
The enclosed court explains half of it — a ball that bounces off a wall stays alive, so a rally doesn't end on the first positioning mistake the way it often does in tennis. The solid racket explains the other half — with no strings to tune and a flat hitting surface, control arrives faster than it does with a strung racket, where tension and grip take time to learn.
For someone who has never held a racket, that means a real multi-shot rally in a first padel session — something tennis usually takes months of steady practice to reach.
Sporta MD currently covers football, basketball, volleyball and tennis — it has no padel courts in the app. Tennis courts across Chișinău are listed here, padel here.