Some Basics of Tennis
Tennis As A Sport
Similar to Ping-pong and badminton, tennis is a racket sport, playing in either singles or doubles. As recreational players, the doubles form is more popular and most time we play. Basically, using a tennis racket to hit the tennis ball over opponent’s court in such a way that the opponent cannot have a valid return, this time the player who is unable to return the ball validly will not gain a point, while the opponent player will have a point. For the doubles, not like Ping-pong, a player must alternate to return the ball, and more like badminton, no restriction on a player how many times he or she can hit the ball. In addition, a player can hit the ball in the air or let the ball bounce once.
Tennis Court
Tennis court is a firm rectangular surface with a low net stretched across the center, usually the same surface used for both singles and doubles, with only difference in the width lines, where the double lines are wide (the outside lines) on the both sides. The service line and baseline are the same for both singles and doubles. The court is 78 ft (23.77 m) long, and 27 ft (8.23 m) wide for singles, 36 ft (10.97 m) wide for doubles. The service line is 21 ft (6.40 m) from the net, and the baseline is 39 ft (11.89 m) from the net. Between the service lines, there is a center service line dividing the service area. Each serve has to be diagonally and within service area to be valid.
Tennis Scoring
Tennis scoring system is very different than any other sports. A player serves in a game and switch sides after every two games except of the first game and tiebreak. A game is won by the first player to have won four points and at least two points more than the opponent in a regular game. It scores from zero to three points described as “love”, “15”, “30”, and “40”. If both sides score three points like 40-40, then it is called as “deuce”. Either side needs to win two consecutive points to win the game. At the deuce point, the player wins the next point called as “advantage”, or “ad in/out”. Normally, winning 6 games is to win a set, but if 5-5, needs to win two more games; if 6-6, needs to play a tiebreak, normally 7 points, same win by two rule apply. A match is most time to win two sets, called as a best-of-three, however, due to play time for a tournament, it can be altered and set up accordingly.
Rule Variations
For amateur tennis, the tennis rules are adapted to fit the purpose or cut short. Commonly, it is to change the game without deuce points, call “No ad”, which means not to play deuce points, who wins the four points and wins the game. Because the seventh point becomes the game-deciding point, also called as “sudden death”, it is the receiver’s choice to decide which side of the court to serve. Regarding to a set, it is also popular to use “Pro set”, which means only play a set with “No ad” scoring for a match, either 8 or 10 games, who wins the 8 (or 10) games by a margin of two games will be the winner of the match. If it is 8-8 (or 10-10), a 12-point tiebreak is played to determine the match winner. In addition to this, sometimes a Match Tiebreak is played instead of a third set, this is called Super Tiebreak, up to 10 points to determine the match winner.
AFNB Match Rules
Due to the time and duration of the tournament, the AFNB tennis tournament has adopted its own tennis rules to apply. For the preliminary round (first day), the Round-robin format, each team plays against other teams once in a group, is used the 8 games Pro set with one deuce, and if occurs 7:7, the last game will be a 5-point tiebreak to determine the winner. The playoff (2nd day), is an elimination setting, like a regular tennis game, with no ads in the first two sets, and the cross-match, the first place of one group against the second place of the other group in the same division for a best-of-three. However, the third set if needed is a 10-point match tiebreak, two-point margin applied here. The final is the same as the semi-final scoring system.
Team Match Format
As a recreational tennis community, we also organize team competition to promote and encourage participation in Houston area, see Sugar Land vs. Woodland video. The format is specially tailored to team completion. Since there are only two teams with multiple players on each team, the competition is set up 5 rounds. Each round has 4 double matches play in the same time and each match is only to play 8 games with one deuce total, or each player serves twice regardless of winning or losing. The score counts total match winning or losing games of each team. This setting can have more people play within a limited courts and time, a lot of fun as well.
We do restring tennis rackets and change racquet grips to help our players. Re-string a racket is $15, not including string, and changing a grip is $5.
