How to Practice Tennis Etiquette

Video Transcript

"Hi my name is Lincoln Ward I'm an USPTA certified teaching pro here in Austin Texas with Lone Star Tennis Company. Today we are going to talk about proper tennis etiquette. When you are playing tennis, there are certain untalked about rules that you should follow. One being when you are on the court hitting with the opponents and the ball comes on your side, that's when it's your responsibility to call the ball in and out. When the ball bounces on your opponent side, it's your opponent's responsibility and it's up to you to trust what they say. Now that doesn't mean when in doubt call it out, if you don't know if the ball goes in or out, it's up to you to call it in. I repeat call that ball in. Don't just assume that ball is out because you didn't see it. A couple of other things you need to think about when your opponent is hitting the ball, don't make any noises. That's grounds for having a redo or what they call a let in tennis. Now you don't want to walk behind players that are hitting as well. If your court is on the other side of the people that are currently hitting, wait till they are finished that point and then you can cross over. There's, it's very poor etiquette to cross over the court while people are hitting the ball and you can actually get hit by the ball so it's dangerous as well. Now when you are sitting in the stands watching tennis, it's really not a good idea to heckle the player while they are hitting the ball. You can clap and cheer, but heckling is generally frowned upon. And a couple of other things you don't want to do is as your opponent, or as a player serving, you don't want to make noise because it's easy to distract a player. Especially on a crucial time when they are serving. You don't want to cheer when someone double faults. That means when they miss their second serve and they lose the point because they couldn't get the ball in play. At the end of every match you want to go and shake hands with your opponent. That's just a show of good sportsmanship. That's probably one of the most important parts of tennis etiquette. My name is Lincoln Ward and that was tennis etiquette. Thank you very much."