Getting the Point: Singles, Doubles, and Winning at Both

You can play tennis in one of two formats: singles or doubles. Singles involves two players, one on each side of the net, playing against each other. Doubles is just what its name implies - you've got four people on the court with two people playing as a team against another two-person team.


Singles is a slightly more competitive and demanding game than doubles, for two reasons:

1. You get the intensity of one-on-one competition.
2. You have more court to cover all by yourself.

Regardless of whether you play singles or doubles, your goal is always the same; to win points. A point begins with a serve, which puts the ball into play. The player who keeps the ball in play the longest wins the point. How do you keep the ball in play? Read on...

Clearing the Net
The biggest obstacle that you face on the tennis court (aside from the temptation to reach for a drink after each point) is the net that divides the court in two sides - your side and the opponent's side. The first thing you need to do, no matter how goofy you may look doing it, is to make sure that any ball you hit makes it back over the net. If the ball doesn't clear the net, the point is over. You've lost it.

Officially, the net must be 36 inches tall at the center strap. But even though 36 inches may not seem very high, I assure you that sometimes the darned net looks as tall as the Great Wall of China.

Keeping the ball inside the ballpark
Tennis is basically a game of controlled power. Ideally, you hit the ball pretty hard and pretty far, but it must always land inside the lines (or court boundaries) to remain in play. If you hit a ball and it first bounces outside of the lines that define the singles or doubles court, you've lost the point.

One bounce only, please
Tennis would be a snoozer if all you had to do was clear the net and keep the ball inside the lines. The real degree of difficulty comes from this little kink: The ball can bounce only once on your side before you hit it. Of course, if you're standing at the right place at the right time, you don't have to let the ball bounce once before you hit it. But more than one bounce, and you've lost the point.

Causing the ball to bounce twice on your opponent's side wins you the point outright, which is called a winner. Winners are by far the most satisfying way to win a point. Cherish them for all they're worth.

Scoring more points
The winner of a tennis match is almost always the player who wins more points. You win points by hitting winners, or because your opponent made errors (that is, hit the ball into the net or beyond the lines). You lose points because of your opponent's winners and your errors.

In some cases, the winner of a match may have won just one single, solitary point more than his opponent. For example, when Pete Sampras and Goran Ivanisevic met in the semifinals of Wimbledon in 1995, Sampras won with a grand total of 146 points to Ivanisevic's 145 points. At other times, the victor may have won dozens more points than the loser. That's the difference between a blowout and a nail-biter.