The 2023 Pickleball Season Kicks Off With Rule Changes From the USAPA

As the sport of Pickleball continues to gain traction in the United States, more and more people are playing recreationally and competitively. A recent survey conducted by the APP tour indicates that more than 36 million Americans played pickleball in 2022; that’s more than 10% of the country!

The core of the game is quite simple to pick up, and you don’t have to be a Pickleball Rules scholar to play, but the nuances of serving mechanics, line calls, and rules that bound Non-Volley Zone violations are a constant source of argument in both recreational play and in tournaments. At some point in their pickleball journey, players will be called out for a fault, and may find themselves searching out the rulebook for clarification.

Each year, the National Governing Body of the sport domestically, USA Pickleball, undergoes 6-month process to solicit rule change suggestions from the public, then months more of internal debate and review, which annually results in dozens of rule modifications that get laden onto the already-large rule book (2023 version: 88 pages and counting). There were nearly 80 official rule change suggestions received by the June 30^th, 2022 deadline for consideration in 2023, and USA Pickleball now maintains a portal just to keep track of all the change requests and their disposition.

You can read a summary of the all the new rules for 2023 at USA Pickleball’s site, but there is one big rule change for 2023 that will affect plenty of players, recreational and tournament.

The “Spin Serve” is now completely banned (Rule 4.5.A).

The past two seasons have seen the rise of the “Spin Serve,” also known in the community as the “Chainsaw Serve.” It was legal for several years prior to 2021, pioneered by Morgan Evans, but was really popularized by leading pro Zane Navratil as he chain-sawed his way to the top echelon of the Men’s Pro game.

What is a “Spin Serve?” A spin serve is when a player purposely imparts spin onto the ball as they are releasing it into their service motion. This extra spin was gained by artificially forcing increased spin the ball off of their paddle handle, or by spinning the ball out of their hand on the serve toss. This action imparted significant spin to the ball, which was then struck and given even more top- or side-spin, and the resulting serve would bounce erratically, often at severe and unexpected angles once it landed on the opponent’s side of the court. The more “grippy” the playing surface, the more extreme the irregular and unexpected bounce could be. Click here for a nice demonstration by Navratil of the variations of the Spin Serve.

Last year, the imparting of additional spin via your paddle or alternate hand was banned, but a one-handed spin technique was still allowed. Players could “snap their fingers” with the ball, put extra spin on it, and then achieve basically what the old chainsaw could do.

After a year’s worth of consideration, the USAPA has now completely banned the spin serve altogether. Players can no longer purposely impart any spin to the ball before or as they toss the ball up during the service motion. Interestingly, the USAPA solicited the input of the leading chainsaw servers, most of whom agreed with the change even though it personally affected their success. The detailed reasoning is explained in the rules portal, but the primary reasons were related to a lack of adoption and safety.

Crucially, players are still allowed to “spin” the ball as you hit it! Players can still hit with conventional top spin or side spin, especially on drop serves. This question has come up multiple times online when people say that “the spin serve is now banned,” thinking that top-spin serves are now illegal.

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There are more than a dozen other rule changes that were also adopted to start on January 1st, 2023. Most of the new rules for 2023 are tournament specific, very trivial, or just adding text to clarify an existing rule without making any substantive changes. A couple that might come into play for recreational players include:

– You can stop play immediately if the score is not called correctly. (Rule 4.K). Prior to 2022, if the server called the wrong score, players could just catch the ball, correct the score, and start the play over. A rule was put into place in 2022 that stopped this practice, asked players to play out the point, and only THEN address the score discrepancy. The committee decided this was not a wise course of action, and reverted to the pre-2022 rule guidance.

– The First Service Motion Violation is a replay, second is a fault (Rules 4.A.5; 4.A.6).

This is more of a tournament modification, since it may not be that “sporting” to call service motion violations during recreational play, but the intent is important. Previously a referee could immediately call a service fault on a service motion violation (for example, a hit that might be above the waist, or a cocked wrist, or a player who imparts spin on the ball). This led to cases where some questionable serves were allowed a re-do but others were not, which seemed to be unfair to the player who wasn’t given a chance to re-execute the serve.

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So, RIP to the Chainsaw serve, feel free to correct the score immediately, give illegal looking servers another chance, and keep on playing!