A 4 minute read, written in October 2026 and read over again on 12 October 2026
Playing outside the court in padel: por tres and the door
Por tres and por cuatro are padel's two ways of winning a point by sending the ball out of the enclosure after it has already bounced on the opponents' side, through the side opening or over the back fence. A ball that leaves your own side after bouncing can sometimes be chased through a door and played back, but only on courts built for it and only where the competition allows it.
Por tres and por cuatro, the two ways out
Once a smash has bounced on the opponents' side of the court, sending it out of the enclosure through the side opening, por tres, or clean over the back fence, por cuatro, wins the point outright. The ball has already done its job, bouncing once on the correct side, so there is nothing left for the other pair to chase before it would have bounced again.
It is the shot every beginner is warned about and every intermediate player secretly loves hitting. A smash that lands in and disappears through the side gap feels like the sport rewarding you for finishing a point cleanly, and it does.
Neither shot needs to actually leave the building. A ball that bounces in and then rolls out through an open gate along the ground counts exactly the same as one that flies out cleanly through the air. The only thing that matters is that the bounce happened first, on the correct side, before the ball went anywhere near the exit.
The door: when you may chase a ball outside
The opposite situation is a ball that has bounced on your own side and is heading out through a gate rather than the opponents'. Under the FIP's rules, a player may leave the court through that gate to chase it and play it back over the net, as long as it has not bounced a second time.
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Once you are through the door, the shot back is judged like any other: over the net, into their court. There is no special allowance for the fact that you are standing in the car park.
It also has to actually clear the net and land in on the way back, walls or no walls. A player who chases a ball through the gate, turns around and slaps it against the outside of their own glass has not done anything useful, whatever it felt like in the moment.
What the court has to have before this works
This only applies on courts built for it. The FIP's court standard calls for a gate on each side around 0.72 to 1.10 metres wide and a safety corridor of at least 3 metres behind it, 4 recommended under the rules that took effect in 2026, padded and kept clear. A court missing that setup simply does not offer the chase, whatever the general rule says.
Your call
The serve is floating slowly towards you and you could easily step in and volley it out of the air. Are you allowed?
The return of serve must bounce. It is the one ball in padel you are not allowed to volley.
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Plenty of courts, especially older or indoor ones squeezed into a warehouse unit, were never built to that standard. If you have never once seen anyone leave through a gate at your club, that is probably why, rather than any player at your club simply never having tried.
When competitions forbid it anyway
Even on a court that has the gates and the space, a competition can simply decide not to allow out-of-court play, and organisers sometimes do, particularly at lower levels where officiating the chase safely is harder to guarantee. Check the local rules before you assume your club's americano plays it the same way as the court down the road.
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It is worth asking before the first match starts rather than discovering it mid rally. A player sprinting for a gate that turns out to be locked, or chasing a ball nobody was actually going to let them play back, is a wasted point and occasionally a twisted ankle for nothing.
What counts as a legal chase
The ball must already have bounced on your side before it leaves. A serve, or any shot that sails out without touching the floor first, is simply out, door or no door. And the clock that matters is the second bounce, not the distance you have to run: get there and hit it back over the net before it would have bounced again, and the point is still live.
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In practice this rewards the pair who react fastest, not the pair who are fastest over twenty metres. A quick read that the ball is heading for the gate buys far more time than raw sprint speed does once you are already three strides behind the play.
The players who use it best are not the quickest movers, they are the ones who never stop watching the ball once it heads for the wall. Everyone else is still turning round to check where it went by the time it has already bounced.
Most club players never use the gate, because they assume the ball is gone the moment it disappears. See the full rules of padel and wall play for how the rest of a rally stays alive.
Today's Mock Game will put a ball near a wall sooner or later. When it does, work out whether it has bounced yet before you decide what you are allowed to do with it. The rules referee will back you up if you are not sure.