Tennis is a game to be played by two or four persons. Three may play,
by combining the two games, and having one play “singles” against the
other two playing “doubles.” But the game properly has two forms:
“singles,” wherein two persons play, one on each side of the net; and
“doubles,” with two people on each side of the net. This net, which
is 3 feet high in the center and 3 feet 6 inches at the sides, is
stretched taut from two posts, one at each side of the court, across
the middle of the court. The court has a perfectly smooth, level
surface, of clay, dirt, turf, or cement, as the case may be. (Indoors
the game is played on board floors.) It measures 78 feet in length
and 27 feet in width, for singles; 36 feet in width for doubles. The
court is laid out with white lines to mark the boundaries. These lines
are drawn with slacked lime or whitewash, or else marked out by tapes
which come for the purpose. Twenty-one feet from the net, on both
sides, a line is drawn, parallel to the net, to the sidelines of the
singles court. This space is in turn evenly divided by a line through
the center, running parallel to the sidelines, passing under the center
of the net. The four small spaces thus made are called the “service
courts.” The narrow spaces between the sidelines of the singles and
doubles court are called the “alleys.”
The game itself consists in one person (the server) putting the ball in
play by hitting (serving) it into the proper service court, and both
players then knocking it back and forth across the net until it is sent
either into the net or outside the boundary lines, or missed altogether.
The players take turns serving, each serving an entire game at a time.
The right to serve first is won by the player who calls the toss of the
racket correctly. The racket is spun about, one player calling “rough”
or “smooth”; that is, whether the lacing of colored gut is smooth side
up or not. The winner, if she chooses to serve first (instead she may
take the choice of courts, letting her opponent serve first), then
stands behind her baseline, to the right of the center, and, tossing
up the ball, knocks it into her opponent’s right-hand service court.
She has a second ball to try, provided the first is a “fault,” that is,
falls into the net or outside the correct service court. Many players
hold a third ball in their hand, or have it on the ground near them,
for if the ball strikes the top of the net and falls into the right
court, it is called a “let” ball and does not count one way or the
other. This is true only in serving, at all other times a “let” ball
is in play. The opponent, standing back of her service line, tries to
return the ball after its first bounce in the service court.
The ball is now in play, being knocked back and forth, until it is sent
out of court, or into the net, or bounces twice before being struck.
Once the ball is in play, it may be “volleyed,” that is, hit before
it bounces, but the service ball must first strike the ground inside
the service court. This is repeated, the server sending the ball
alternately into the right and the left-hand courts, from behind the
right and the left sides of her baseline, until the game is won. The
point is scored by the player who has last hit the ball into court. If
the server fails to send either ball into the proper court, she makes a
“double fault,” and loses the point.
The score is called as follows: the first point counts 15, the player’s
score which is zero (0) being called “love”; the next score, if
the point is won by the same player, is called “30-love,” the next
“40-love,” then “game.” If the opponent, in the meantime, scores, her
point is called as 30-15, 40-30, the server’s score always being called
first. If the points are even, the call is “15-all” or “30-all,” as
the case may be, instead of “15-15,” etc. If the points are evened at
40-all, the score is called “deuce.” Then one player has to win two
points in succession from the deuce point, the score going “deuce,”
“advantage server” (or “striker”), “deuce,” “advantage,” until the
player who has the advantage point wins the next one, and the game.
It takes six games to make a set, unless the games go to “5-all.”
This is equivalent to “deuce” in the point score, and requires two
consecutive games to make “set”--as 7/5, 8/6, 9/7. A match for girls is
always the best two out of three sets.
The ball on service is always tossed into the air and struck before
it bounds; a ground stroke is used to return the ball after it has
bounced; a “volley,” one wherein the ball has not struck the ground; a
“lob” is a ball knocked high into the air across the net; a “smash” is
a severe return of a lobbed ball. These strokes, their uses, and the
way to play them, will be taken up in subsequent chapters.