The Beautiful Game Of Tennis

A tennis court is 78 feet long and 27 feet wide for single matches with the width increasing to 36 feet for a double match. The court is marked with boundary lines that mark these distances for play. The net in the center of the court, across the court's width, is 3 feet 6 inches high at the posts and 3 feet high at its own center.nnAnytime the tennis player who is serving the ball commits a double fault, the receiver wins the point. A fault happens when a serve is too wide or not over the net, or when the player misses the bounds of his foot work by extending beyond the center mark or touching the baseline before the ball is hit. When two of these faults occur it is a double fault. nnServers can serve as many net balls (called a let or net service) as happen without being penalized. They are called void and they may retake the serve. Properly getting the ball across the net is called a legal service, at which starts the rally of the players alternately hitting the ball across the net. A legal return requires that the ball be only hit once before it bounces twice or hits a post to return it to the opposite court. Failing to make a legal return results in losing the point to the opponent.nnScores in tennis are love, which is zero, fifteen which equals one win, thirty equaling two points, and forty which means three point wins. A game is played by one person serving until the sequence of points occur and a game is won by the first player to have at least four total points, if this amount exceeds the opponents score by at least two. The score is deuce if both players have scored three points each. Sets in tennis are a sequence of games with the servers alternating between games and end when the amount of games won by one of the players is at least six, and this is at least two more wins than his opponent. If it is only one more another game is played.nnTennis hasn't changed much since the 1890's. The rules are the same other than the adoption of the tie-breaker in the 1970's. The game originated with British soldiers who had been stationed in India and learned the game of Poona or Badminton, or from the Basque game of pelota between 1859 and 1865. Another man developed a similar game involving a ball to be played with a racket in the lawn, such as a lawn for croquet, in 1873. This man was from Wales and he called his game Sphairistike, which was soon shortened to "sticky", and amused his guests with it. This man was also a military man.nnMillions of people play tennis, millions of people also watch tennis as a spectator sport, in particular the Grand Slam tournaments or major tournaments. These tournaments are the Australian Open, the Roland Garros (French), Wimbledon (of the United Kingdom) and the U.S. Open.nnTennis is an aristocratic sport originally, and probably still has tones of aristocracy. It spread through the upper class when first created and then grew into its current popularity.nnThe first championships were played in London at Wimbledon in 1877. nnThe United States created the United States National Lawn Tennis Association to standardize the rules and organize competitions in 1881. This association is now called the United States Tennis Association. They held the first U.S. National Men's Singles Championship at Newport, Rhode Island in 1881 on May 21. This match is now called the U.S. Open.nnFor more information on the game, and to learn how to perform a few strokes yourself, visit the Tennis section at the VideoJug website today.