HOW THE GAME IS PLAYED.
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.