← Pickleball 55

Why we play pickleball with each other, not against

How a daily game with my wife turned into a cooperative way to play: same court, same paddles, a different purpose.

By Alex P. Wang | October 7, 2026

About two months ago, my wife and I started playing pickleball. About an hour, almost every day. We don't play hard. The goal was never to beat each other. The goal was to exercise, have fun, and, I'll admit, lose a little weight while eating a little more. Two months in, I'm five pounds lighter. Pretty good deal.

That was my experience, not a promise. Regular physical activity supports weight management alongside healthy eating, and results vary from person to person.

We never wanted to beat each other

What kept us coming back was doing something together. A long rally felt like a win for both of us. Neither of us needed the other to lose.

Standard pickleball scoring works the other way. It rewards the shot your partner cannot reach: the sharp angle, the hard drive at the feet, the lob over the head. That works for competition. That does not work for two people who just want to play together for an hour.

The winning shots are also the risky ones

Chasing a winning shot means lunging, backpedaling, and diving. For older players, those movements matter. A 2021 study of emergency-department injuries among players aged 60 and older found that 63.3% of pickleball injuries in the study involved slips, trips, falls, or dives. A 2024 study of fracture cases found that most involved upper-extremity fractures after falls in women over 60. A 2025 Vanderbilt case series found soft-tissue strains and ruptures were the largest category.

These studies count people who needed care, not anyone's odds of getting hurt. But they point at something simple: the game gets riskier when someone has to win the point.

So we flipped the goal

The question became simple. What if the rules rewarded the game we already enjoyed? Keep the ball, the paddles, and the court. Change the purpose.

Once the goal changed, everything else followed. Every shot is hit so your partner can return it. Lobs and smashes make no sense. Letting a difficult ball go becomes good play, not giving up. Nobody wins or loses, because there is only one team on the court.

We still wanted a score

Progress keeps people coming back. So we looked for a score that fits the purpose.

Counting shots mid-rally turned out to be hard. Noticing how long a rally lasted was easy. So a rally now earns team points by its length, and longer rallies earn a lot more. The points also stop at 90 seconds. That is hard to reach, but possible: our best so far is 1 minute 28 seconds. Once a rally reaches 90 seconds, it has earned everything it can, and nobody has a reason to push for a marathon.

Both players earn every point. Over weeks, the team score becomes a small record of time well spent together.

Easy in, easy out

A small 2018 study of middle-aged and older adults found pickleball provided moderate-intensity activity, with fitness, blood pressure, and cholesterol improvements after six weeks. That is real exercise, but only if you keep showing up.

AAOS guidance recommends warming up with easy hitting and keeping playing time manageable. So every session starts with a short, gentle warm-up and ends with a short wind-down. The games happen in between.

Who it is for

Anyone who does not want to play to win the old way. If you would rather rally with someone than against them, these rules are for you, at any age.

The 55 in the name is where it started. I had players 55 and older in mind, because that is where the gap between competitive pickleball and what people want is widest. It is a starting point, not an age limit.

The full rules, scoring, and play styles live in the rulebook, and they'll keep improving as more people play and tell us what they enjoy.