The first article I wrote in my role covering the sport for Forbes was a review of the 2023 rule changes introduced by USA Pickleball, which is the self-proclaimed National Governing Body of the sport.
The changes at that time were substantial, addressing playability issues that were significantly altering how the game was played, particularly regarding serving rules. The 2024 rules, however, had less of an impact on everyday players and non-tournament participants, although they did introduce a couple of provisional changes, such as the official recognition of rally scoring and skinny singles.
Now, the USA Pickleball FY2025 rulebook is available online, containing numerous updates. Most of these are clarifications to existing rules aimed at reducing confusion, but some involve more impactful changes that players should be aware of. This article will highlight the key updates that I believe are important for both tournament players and recreational participants.
It’s important to note that a significant portion of the 70+ page rulebook is dedicated to regulating refereed, tournament play. Some people find the length of the rulebook amusing, especially considering how quickly the game can be learned.
However, many of the rules—and the changes we see—are small adjustments to wording intended to clarify issues, close loopholes, or fix vague language that has persisted in certain rules for years (for instance, the words “should” and “shall” appear over 130 times, rather than the more precise terms like “is” or “will be”). Rarely do we see major changes to the actual gameplay mechanics, such as with drop serves or spinning the ball out of the hand. If you’re not a tournament player, much of this fine detail may not concern you.
Rule Changes You Should know about
13.G.4: You can now have warnings or faults issued based on behavior after a match is over, to be administered at your next match. Makes sense; just don’t drop-kick your opponent in the face.
12.H.1: Clarifying that any game forfeit is reported as a zero point game (11-0). There was the need for some distinction in the previous version of the rule, but I believe most of us tournament players knew that a default results in an 11-0 assigned score, as it does in most other sports.
12.B.1: Provisional Rule to allow Rally scoring in official USAP events. However, before you clutch your pearls if you’re anti-rally scoring, they immediately clarify that rally scoring cannot be used in double-elimination doubles events, nor at USAP Golden Ticket events, nor at 2025 USAP Nationals. Rally scoring can be used in games to 11, 15, or 21, or whatever the tournament director chooses. They define a “mini-freeze” in their implementation of Rally scoring; the game winning point must be done on the winning team’s serve.
There’s a whole slew of additional verbiage added to the rest of Section 4: Scoring, to augment Rally scoring details.
12.c: Round Robin Withdrawal clarifications, done in an attempt to make round robin competitions more fair in the event of a withdrawal or forfeit. There’s no perfect solution to this situation, but the rule change does attempt to clean things up. We saw a situation like this quite visibly earlier this month at the PPA Tour Finals, when Quang Duong won his first round match but then withdrew due to injury, and his group win was “given” to his injury replacement. It did not end up materially altering the results, but it could have.
12.C.4: Round Robin tie-breaking procedures were returned to their 2023 versions. This is listed as a “major” change but really is just an effort to be as fair as possible in competition.
12.H.1: Clarifying that any game forfeit is reported as a zero point game (11-0). There was the need for some distinction in the previous version of the rule, but I believe most of us tournament players knew that a default results in an 11-0 assigned score, as it does in most other sports.
12.B.1: Provisional Rule to allow Rally scoring in official USAP events. However, before you clutch your pearls if you’re anti-rally scoring, they immediately clarify that rally scoring cannot be used in double-elimination doubles events, nor at USAP Golden Ticket events, nor at 2025 USAP Nationals. Rally scoring can be used in games to 11, 15, or 21, or whatever the tournament director chooses. They define a “mini-freeze” in their implementation of Rally scoring; the game winning point must be done on the winning team’s serve.
If you’re simply a recreational player and aren’t concerned with the complexities of tournament rules, there are still a few elements that might come into play at your local club or park:
11.1: Plane of Net faults; the rule was clarified to be more specific about what happens in those cases where players attempt Ernes. I don’t see anything substantive here except clarification of the rule to account for the loophole in the previous version of the rule related to your partner’s actions.
9.B.1: The definition of the “Act of Volleying” has been updated for clarity and consistency with other rules. As is stated in the rule change document, “The primary impact of this change for 2025 is that it will no longer be a fault if a player touches the non-volley-zone (NVZ) before hitting the volley.” There’s a significant amount of explanation as to why they implemented this rule, probably over-complicating the situation. The main takeaway: the volley now begins with the striking of the ball, and not any swing mechanics prior to that act.
4.C.2: Adding Verbal Not Ready Signals: this codifies the obvious situation where a player is set to serve and his opponent says, “Wait.” This may be more about tournament play, where a ref calls the score and that then gives the server free reign to serve when ready. But in casual play, it can sometimes be difficult to recognize that a player isn’t ready. Just because the server calls the serve … doesn’t mean I’m ready to receive it.
