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Their ball bounces on your side and hits your metal mesh. Still in play?
In a rally, after the bounce, every surface on your side is in play: glass and mesh alike.
Their drive bounces once on your floor, then rattles off the metal mesh on your side and comes back toward you. What is the situation?
In a rally, after the bounce, every surface on your side is in play: glass and mesh alike.
Why
The serve is the only time the mesh is treated differently from the glass. In a rally, once the ball has bounced on your floor it can hit your glass, your mesh, or both, any number of times, and it stays in play until it bounces a second time. The mesh does behave differently, the rebound is deader and less predictable than off glass, so the shot you play off it is usually a lift rather than anything ambitious.
What this means at your level
Beginner
A ball that comes off the mesh dies quickly. Get low and lift it high; you are not going to do anything clever from there.
Intermediate
Read the mesh early. A ball heading for the mesh rather than the glass needs you a metre closer to it, because it will not come out to you.
Advanced
Against a pair that keeps finding your mesh with sliced volleys, stand a step wider so the ball reaches you before the fence does.
Common questions
Their drive bounces once on your floor, then rattles off the metal mesh on your side and comes back toward you. What is the situation?
In play, after the bounce, glass and mesh are both fair. In a rally, after the bounce, every surface on your side is in play: glass and mesh alike. The serve is the only time the mesh is treated differently from the glass. In a rally, once the ball has bounced on your floor it can hit your glass, your mesh, or both, any number of times, and it stays in play until it bounces a second time. The mesh does behave differently, the rebound is deader and less predictable than off glass, so the shot you play off it is usually a lift rather than anything ambitious.
Why not in play off the glass, out off the mesh?
That distinction exists only for the serve. In a rally the mesh is just another wall.
What should a beginner do here?
A ball that comes off the mesh dies quickly. Get low and lift it high; you are not going to do anything clever from there.
How does this change for an advanced player?
Against a pair that keeps finding your mesh with sliced volleys, stand a step wider so the ball reaches you before the fence does.
What do the rules say?
During a rally, after the ball has bounced once on a player's side, it may touch the glass or the mesh on that side and remains in play until its second bounce.
Puzzles like this one
The ball is coming off the back glass. When do you hit it?
Move back with the ball, let it pass you, hit it in front of your body.
beginnerCan you volley the return of serve?
The return of serve must bounce. It is the one ball in padel you are not allowed to volley.
beginnerThe ball bounced then hit your own back glass. Still in play?
One bounce on the floor, then any number of walls. Only a second floor bounce ends the point.