Tennis is a great fun game and can be played at various levels, from the highly competitive to the fun social time with a few friends. If your looking for fun and fitness, tennis is a game where you can work on both as well as improve your co-ordination skills.
Tennis rules are not at all difficult and you will need minimum and in-expensive equipment to participate. All you need to play is a racquet, a tennis ball, a court (that has a net) and someone to play against. The court is almost 24 metres long and you will be exhausted in a very short time if you try to run to the other end to return your own shot. If you can’t find someone to play against, try practising your skills by hitting the tennis ball against a wall.
Here are the rules of tennis in a simple form that will give you an overview of how to play a game. For a more detailed and complete set of official game rules please follow this link to the downloadable pdf file. Tennis rules
Basic Rules
Toss a coin to find out who serves first. The server starts on the right hand side of the court and serves the ball, on the full, over the net to your side of the court. The ball must land in your service area which is diagonally across from the server. If it doesn’t, a fault is called and the server is allowed to have another attempt. If on the second serve, a fault is called again – a double fault, the server will lose a point.
If the serve is successful, the receiver needs to return the ball within their opponents court area. The ball will then go back and forth – a rally, until someone makes a mistake.
Points are scored from 15 to 30 to 40 to game. If both players are 40, it is called a deuce and the next point won is ‘advantage’. If the ‘advantage’ player wins the next point, they win that game. If not, it goes back to deuce and so on and so forth.
The one server serves for the duration of a game. Then the other player serves. The first player to 6 games and being 2 games in front of their opponent wins the set. Sometimes, if the game is tight, it will go to a tie break, and these are usually very exciting to watch because as soon as someone gets 2 points ahead, they win the set.
If you can get three friends together, you can play ‘doubles’. The rules are very similar, but you have a little more court space.