Pickleball Smash: the Garmin app that calls the three-number score for you

"Seven, five, two." The server bounces the ball, then stops. Was that right? The server's partner thinks the pair was still on its first server. The opponents think the side-out happened two rallies ago. Somebody suggests starting the game again, and everyone on the court knows how that discussion usually ends.

Pickleball is easy to learn and surprisingly hard to score. In traditional doubles, the score is three numbers long, only the serving side can win a point, and the right to serve passes through two servers per side before it changes hands. Beginners find the call baffling; experienced players still lose track of it on a busy morning. Pickleball Smash was built for that problem. It is a Garmin watch app from the Dutch studio Multipassionate that asks the players only one thing after each rally, who won it, and works out everything else.

What Pickleball Smash is

Pickleball Smash is a paid app for Garmin watches, sold once for €9.99 through Garmin's Connect IQ Store, with no account or subscription. It keeps the score of singles or doubles pickleball under traditional side-out scoring or rally scoring, tracks the server, the server number and the service box, and shows the wearer where to stand. Every match is saved to Garmin Connect, and an optional live scoreboard at pbsmash.app lets anyone follow the score on a phone, read aloud.

The app is made by Multipassionate, an independent studio in Utrecht, the Netherlands. In October 2026 it was at version 11.0.1, had passed a thousand downloads on the Connect IQ Store and held a 4.6 out of 5 rating from 15 reviews. Its Connect IQ Store listing names more than 100 compatible Garmin watch models, from older ones such as the Forerunner 245 and the vívoactive 4 to the Forerunner 965, the fēnix 8 and 9 and the Instinct 3 AMOLED.

Why the score is three numbers

In traditional doubles the score is called as the serving side's points, then the receiving side's points, then the server number: 7-5-2 means the serving side has seven, the receivers have five, and the second server of the pair is serving. Three rules make it hard to follow:

• Only the serving side scores. Win a rally while receiving and you win the serve, not a point.
• Each side has two servers. A rally lost by the first server passes the serve to the second; a rally lost by the second is a side-out.
• The first serving turn of each game is short. Every doubles game starts at 0-0-2, so the side that serves first gets only one server before the first side-out.

Add the question of where everyone stands, which in doubles follows the serving team's score (the starting server is on the right when it is even and on the left when it is odd), and a busy doubles court has a lot of state to keep track of. Pickleball Smash's own scoring guide covers the rules properly. The point here is the design decision: the app treats scoring as a set of rules to apply, not a number to remember. The players press one button per rally, Down if they won it and Up if they lost it, and the watch moves the score, the server number and the serving box accordingly.

Rally scoring arrives

Pickleball's scoring is also changing. Rally scoring, in which every rally wins a point for somebody, has been working its way into the rulebook. USA Pickleball has been running it as a provisional format, and the details have shifted from one year to the next: under its 2025 provisional rule a game could only be won on serve, while the 2026 rulebook lets either side win the game-winning rally.

Pickleball Smash supports all three versions and can switch between them during a match:

The difference shows up at the most tense moment of a game. Imagine leading 10-9 in a game to 11 while receiving, and winning the rally. Under traditional scoring, nothing is scored and the serve moves on. Under rally scoring, the game is won 11-9. Under Rally, Win on Serve, the receivers take the serve but not the point, and need to win the next rally on their own serve. Clubs that alternate between formats from one session to the next can set the type once and let the watch apply it.

The court in miniature

Most of the watch screen is a drawing of a pickleball court, with the non-volley zone (the kitchen) and the service areas marked. On it, three things move:

• A ball shows who is serving and from which box. It is yellow for Server 1 and purple for Server 2, so the server number is a colour rather than a number to remember.
• A player icon shows where the wearer should be standing.
• Score Glance shows the score as it is spoken on court, for example "7-5-2", so the server can read the call straight off the wrist.

A banner and a buzz mark game point and match point, and another buzz marks the moment to change ends at the midpoint of a game. Undo reaches back 15 rallies, even across the end of a game, so a mis-press at 10-10 does not decide anything.

The format is set at the start: a single game, best of three or best of five, with games to 7, 9, 11, 15 or 21, all won by two clear points. Singles follows its own serving rules, with the server on the right when their score is even and on the left when it is odd.

A club session as one workout

Pickleball is often played in sessions rather than single matches: an open-play morning, a ladder night, a round robin. Pickleball Smash is built for that rhythm. When a match is won, the app offers to start the next one on the same Garmin activity, so a two-hour session becomes one workout with every match inside it rather than five separate entries.

The summary at the end is detailed:

• every game score, with total points and total serves for each side,
• the serve success rate, the share of serves that won the rally,
• average and maximum heart rate, calories and total time, and
• one lap per game in Garmin Connect, with points, serves and success rate for both sides.

The serve success rate deserves a second look, because in traditional scoring it is effectively a measure of scoring efficiency: points can only be won on serve, so the share of serves that turn into points is the number that decides games. A pair that gets a lot of serves but converts few of them is losing its rallies on serve, not its matches on luck.

Matches are saved as a Pickleball activity on watches that know the sport, and as a racket or generic activity on older models, with the same data inside. If Garmin Connect is linked to Strava, the activity goes there too, while the pickleball score fields stay in Garmin Connect.

What changed in version 11

Pickleball Smash 11, the current major version, broadened what the app can score. It added singles, rally scoring in both forms, the match formats, game point and match point alerts, heart rate and calories on the summary, and support for 11 watch languages: English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Vietnamese, Japanese, Korean, and Simplified and Traditional Chinese.

The update also changed the default for the live scoreboard. Since version 11, sending scores to pbsmash.app is off until the player switches it on, so the watch does not use the phone connection during a match unless someone actually wants to follow it.

For the people on the bench

Pickleball is a social sport with an audience: partners waiting for the next court, friends at the fence, family at a tournament. The live scoreboard serves them. With Live Broadcast switched on, the watch shows a six-digit PIN, and anyone who enters it at pbsmash.app sees the score update after every rally. The page can announce the score aloud in 13 languages, so a phone on a bench can call the game for the whole court.

What is sent is limited to the state of the match: the points and games for each side, the serving side, the server number, the serve position, the wearer's court side, singles or doubles, the scoring type, the game length, the device language and the PIN. Heart rate, GPS location, name, email address and Garmin account details are never transmitted, according to the app's technical summary.

The limits

Pickleball Smash publishes a frank list of what it does not do, and the main points are worth repeating:

• It does not detect shots, count swings or decide who won a rally.
• Every game is won by two; there is no win by one and no point cap.
• There are no timeouts, break timers or penalty points.
• In doubles it tracks sides and server numbers, not individual players, and it has no player names.
• It runs only on Garmin watches. There is no phone app; the live scoreboard is a web page.

For players weighing their options, the app's site keeps a comparison of pickleball apps for Garmin.

What to look for in a pickleball scoring app

Pickleball's rules make it easy to build a scoreboard that is subtly wrong. Before trusting any app with a match, it is worth checking these points.

Four ways players use it

The open-play regular. Three mornings a week at a community centre, rotating partners, six or seven short games each time. The watch keeps each game right, New Match strings them into one activity, and the session lands in Garmin Connect as a single workout with every game as a lap.

The ladder or league player. Results matter and disputes are awkward. The score on the wrist, with the call shown the way it is spoken, ends most arguments before they start, and the saved match is a record if anyone asks later.

The new player learning the call. Rather than memorising the logic of 0-0-2 and side-outs on day one, a beginner can watch the ball change colour from yellow to purple and the score call update, and learn the system by seeing it applied.

The family on the bench. At a local tournament, a partner or parent follows the match on pbsmash.app with the PIN and hears every score called, without needing to see the court.

The app is less suited to anyone who needs player-by-player statistics in doubles, timeouts or point penalties, which it deliberately leaves out.

Its menu also has a Fitness Coach item, which opens Smash Coach on the phone with a pickleball onboarding flow. Smash Coach builds strength and conditioning around the sports a player already does, and has published a long read on HYROX and pickleball.

Part of the Smash family

Pickleball Smash is one of five racket-sport apps from Multipassionate. Padel Smash, Tennis Smash, Badminton Smash and Ping Pong Smash use the same controls and the same kind of live scoreboard, each adapted to its own sport's rules.

Pickleball Smash is available from its Connect IQ Store listing, with a full help centre and the live scoreboard at pbsmash.app.