The Basics

*Before we begin talking about the rules of tennis, I need to give credit to .http://www.historyoftennis.net/history_of_tennis.html and  http://tennis.about.com/od/history/a/earlyhistory.htm. Tha'ts where I got all my information! The pictures in the blog came from Google Images!

The Court

      To someone who has never played tennis, or watched a match before, the court can be a bit confusing. I've made a diagram to try and help explain it all:  

1. The Single's Sideline- This is the out-of-bounds line for a Singles match in tennis. I'll explain what a Singles match is in a bit.

2.  The Double's Sideline- This is the out-of-bounds line for a Doubles match. I'll also explain this in more detail.

3. The Double's Alley- This is just a part of the court that the Single's don't play with. It's only used for Doubles.

4. The Baseline- The baseline is the out-of-bounds at the end of each side of the court. If a ball hits here, it's considered out and the other player gets the point. This is also where the players serve from.

5. Left Service Box- This is where the player aims when serving from the advantage court. Look at #8 below.

6. Right Service Box- This is where the player aims when serving from the deuce court. Look at #7 below. 

7.  Deuce Court- This is the right side of the court. From here players serve to the right service box. All games start from this court. All even points are played from this side. (Don't worry scoring will be explained later.)

8. Advantage Court- This is the left side of the court. Players serve to the left service box. All odd points are played from this side of the court.

Scoring

 Now that you have a better grasp of the court lets move onto scoring.

    First 1 or 2 players are on opposite sides of the court. It depends on the type of match Singles or Doubles for how many players there are. (This will be explained in the next paragraph.)  Then whoever whens a coin toss, or raquet spin decides who is going to be recieving and who is going to be serving first. Then which ever player is serving starts from the deuce court, always the deuce court. They then serve to the right service court, (confused? go look at the court section.) as the game goes on points will add up. This is how the score is kept in tennis. It goes  LOVE-15-30-40-Game.  I know! LOVE? That makes no sense, but that's how its kept. Anyway the server always says their score first, so 15-LOVE, to be polite say the score before each serve.  If a game score gets to 40-40 or 40 all, then the players must enter deuce. While in deuce the score is Advantage-in or Advantage-out. Ad-in means that the server got the point, while Ad-out means the reciever got the point. A game must be won by two points.  Each Match has three sets of six games each. I should clarify that in each set the first person to win six games gets the set, to win a match a player must win two out of three sets.

    A player scores a point when the opposing player misses the ball, serves out-of-bounds or hits it into the net or out-of-bounds. A player gets two chances to serve each point. If the ball doesn't hit into the right service box or hits the net, then the player "Takes 2" and serves again. If a ball hits the net but goes over, it is called a LET and the player gets to try the serve again, so potenitally with that the player has three opportunities to get the ball over the net. If a ball hits the net and goes over when not in service it counts as a point if the opposing player doesn't return the ball.

Singles and Doubles matches

 

Left: Singles Match

Right: Doubles Match

The main difference between a Singles match and a Doubles match is that one uses two players on each team and the other is a solo thing.  In a Singles match one player is on each side of the net. The players use the first white line as their out-of-bounds line. The scoring and rules are the same. In a doubles match there are four players, two on each side. The out-of-bounds line is the second or furthest white line. When serving, the player in the correct service box must be the first one to hit the ball, other than that all the rules are the same.

I think we've covered everything, and maybe a little bit more, than the basics needed to get started. We've talked about the court, scoring and the rules. Next time we'll talk about serving and hitting the ball.

Ta Ta till then.

Here is a great video explaining the rules!

The video comes from Youtube and some of the information from http://westlake.k12.oh.us/hilliard/whspe/tennis/tennis_rules.htm. the rest is from experience