The big European tennis tournaments—the French Open and Wimbledon—are history, but the US Open is still to come at the end of August in New York. My advice, if you’re in the area, is to try to get out there during the first week and spend the day watching.
Why the first week? Because, in addition to seeing top players compete on the main stadium courts, you can walk around the outer courts and see the best players in the world practicing, playing doubles, or even sometimes playing an early round match.
If you get a chance, stand directly behind the service line, especially during a men’s match, and see how fast the ball comes from the server to receiver. You’ll get a sense of how fast the game is, how strong the players are, and how quick their reflexes have to be to get the ball in play.
If you’re a tennis neophyte, here are the basic rules:
A tennis match is made up of games and sets. A set is a series of games, and the first player two win six games wins the set. The first player to win two of three sets in a women’s match or double’s match, or three of five sets in a men’s match wins and goes on to the next round of the tournament.
Games and Points
There’s a coin toss to see who serves the first game. For the rest of the match, the serve alternates back and forth each time a new game starts. The server must hit the ball so it lands within a defined area of the court on the receiver’s side. The server has two tries to do this. If he misses both, he double faults, and his opponent gets a point.
The first player to win four points wins the game. But the points aren’t scored 1,2,3,4. Instead it goes like this:
0 = love
1 = 15
2 = 30
3 = 40
4 = game
Why? Not sure, although it seems this form of scoring originated in France in the Middle Ages.
If the players are tied at 40 all that’s called deuce, and the game continues until one player wins by two points.
Sets
A player wins a set when they win six games, as long as they are ahead by two games. If a set is tied 6-6 there’s a tiebreaker that has to be won by two points.
The exception to this rule is the fifth set at tournaments like Wimbledon, the French Open, and the Australian Open. Those have no tiebreaker so the set has to be won by two games. A couple of weeks ago this rule led to the longest tennis match in history. John Isner of the US defeated Nicolas Mahut of France 70-68 in the fifth set of a match that latest 11 hours and five minutes, and was played over three days (there are no lights at Wimbledon so the match was postponed twice on account of darkness). I watched some of it—one of the most amazing sporting events ever.
A game of exceptions
That fifth set rule isn’t the only exception…. now that you have the basics down, here are a few others.
The server gets two tries to hit the ball into the designated area on his or her opponent’s side of the court. Except if one of the two tries hits the net and then lands in the designated area. Then he gets a third try. Also, a player wins a game after scoring four points, but only if he or she wins by two. If there’s a tie at three points all, they continue playing that game until someone wins by two. And not all men’s matches are best of five sets—some are best of three.
Sounds confusing, but if you watch a few matches, it will begin to make sense. And if you want to see the best of the best playing—on the women’s side it’s Venus and Serena Williams, Jelena Jankovic and Caroline Wozniacki. The top men are Rafael Nadal, who just won Wimbledon for the second time, Roger Federer, Andy Roddick, and Andy Murray.
If reading’s not your thing, you can listen to this guy explain the basics of tennis in two parts:
