2025 Pickleball Rule Changes – PickleballMAX

At long last.  What began as proposed pickleball rule changes initiated by USA Pickleball members in early, March, 2024, has concluded with the implementation of approved rule changes that go into effect on January 1, 2025.  

The Process of Implementing Rule Changes

Implementing rule changes is a long and arduous (although transparent) process.  From March 1, 2024 through May 15, 2024 members of USA Pickleball were given the opportunity to propose rule changes for the 2025 rulebook. These proposed rule changes were captured by USA Pickleball in the New Rulebook Database.

USA Pickleball members were then allowed to comment on any of these proposed rule changes through May 31, 2024.  In June, 2024, the USA Pickleball Rules Committee met to review each of the proposed rule changes as well as the public comments.  The Rules Committee then voted on each proposed change.  If approving a proposed rule change, the Rules Committee could approve the proposed change as-submitted or approve the proposed change with amendments.  They, of course, could also reject the proposed change.

The USA Pickleball Rules Committee then handed over their recommendations to the USA Pickleball Board of Directors for final approval before September 30, 2024.

The “Test” for Proposed Rule Changes

According to USA Pickleball, every proposed rule change must satisfy at least one of the following three priorities: (1) preserve the integrity of the sport, (2) improve the player experience and/or (3) minimize conflict (between players and/or referees). If none of the criteria are met, the proposed rule would not be approved.

The Statistics

There were 133 rule changes proposed for 2025.  Twenty-five proposed rules were officially approved by the Board as submitted. Another twenty were approved by the Board with amendments. Eighty-six were disapproved. Finally, two were held for further study.

A Sampling of Pickleball Rule Changes Approved by USA Pickleball for 2025

While there were forty-five proposed rule changes that were either approved-as-submitted or approved-with-amendments, we wanted to highlight six of the approved rules for 2025 as shown below.

1. Definition of “Volley” Change

The act of volleying has long been considered to include three elements: “the swing, the follow-through and the momentum from the action.” In 2025, the phrase from Rule #9.B.1. – the swing, the follow-through and momentum from the action – is going to be removed and, instead, replaced with “The act of volleying begins when the ball is struck out of the air before bouncing (volleyed) and ends when the player’s movement from the follow-through action (momentum) stops.”

There is now no longer wording about what occurs prior to the strike of the ball out-of-the-air. It is now irrelevant. For example, when reaching into the non-volley zone the paddle could now touch the non-volley zone (or line) prior to striking the ball and it will no longer be considered a fault (as long as it occurred before the strike of the ball and not after).

2. Players may call faults on their partner

I am not sure it was necessary to codify this rule change. At least it shouldn’t be necessary. Evidently players could call faults on themselves, but not their partners. That will no longer be the case. Beginning in 2025, players will now be able to call faults on their partner as well.

3. Clarifying that spectator line calls are not allowed

I would think we could all agree that players need to make line calls themselves without influence from spectators. Rule #6.C.4 is now tidied up to read, “Spectators shall not be consulted on any line call.” It previously read, “Spectators should not be consulted on any line call.” The word “shall” replaced the word, “should.”

4. Prevent a Paddle from dominating the Sport

This particular rule change is made under the “Guiding Principles” section of the Appendix. Guiding Principle #8 now states, “Preserve the unique features and rules of the sport involving the Non-Volley Zone and the two-bounce rule and prevent one shot, one paddle, or type of play from dominating the sport.” The phrase, “one paddle” was the only thing added to this rule change. Everyone shouldn’t panic just quite yet. It’s simply located in the “guiding principles” section.

5. Withdrawals from round robin brackets

At PickleballMAX we run the tournament desk for many round-robin tournaments where the top-finishing teams/players from each round-robin pool battle each other in single-elimination bracket play to determine medals. Every-so-often, a player or team will have to retire, forfeit or withdraw before completing all rounds of their round-robin play.

The following rule change for 2025 will be very relevant when determining final round-robin or pool standings for players/teams in a round-robin tournament when one player/team retires, forfeits or withdraws before the completion of the event.

Rule # 12.C.4.a. now states that “Players/Teams that withdraw from a bracket or that lose a match due to forfeit or retirement will be removed completely from the bracket.

According to the person proposing this rule change, and I totally agree, “the rule change more equitably addresses determining round robin winners by having all matches “erased” for any team/player that is withdrawing, forfeiting or retiring from a round robin bracket. In other words, none of their matches played or not played would count, making it fair/equitable for everyone in the bracket that played or didn’t get to play a team withdrawing, forfeiting or retiring.”

6. Round-robin tie-breaker criteria

Three way ties in round robin or pool play happen quite frequently. It usually creates a bit of confusion as to which player/team advances to bracket play.

If you played any round-robin tournaments in 2023 or 2024 that were sanctioned by USA Pickleball and there was, for example, a three-way tie in your pool in which only two teams advanced to bracket play (with each player/team having one head-to-head victory against the other player(s)/team(s) with whom they were tied), USA Pickleball looked first at point differential to determine which player/team advanced.

After that three-way tie was broken (with the team with the highest point differential advancing), USA Pickleball looked – once again – at head-to-head victories against the other player/team with whom it was tied to determine which player/team advanced to bracket play. In this proposed (and ultimately approved) rule change, it was argued that too much emphasis was placed on head-to-head victories and not enough emphasis on how each player/team performed relative to the entire pool.

As a result, the following wording from Rule #12.C.4 has now been officially removed for 2025:

What this means is that three-way ties are broken, for example, simply by looking at the number of head-to-head victories each player/team has against the other player(s)/team(s) with whom it is tied.  If each player/team had one victory, for example, then the two players/teams advancing would be the two with the highest point differentials within the entire pool.

As an interesting sidebar, PickleballBrackets has always supported (and the software has always executed) the methodology being officially approved for 2025. In fact, this is the same methodology (according to the USA Pickleball Official Rulebook) used to break round-robin ties prior to 2023. It was only in 2023 and 2024 that the USA Pickleball Official Rules deviated from what was used before 2023 and again in 2025.

Final Thoughts

These are just six examples of pickleball rules that have been approved for change beginning in 2025. What say you? Should we leave well-enough alone or keep tweaking?  Please let us know in the comments below.