How to Play Tennis

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name's Lincoln Ward, I'm a USPTA Certified Tennis Pro here in Austin, Texas with Lone Star Tennis Company. Today I'm going to talk to you about how to play tennis. Tennis is a great sport that can last a lifetime. You can play it many different ways. There are singles, doubles, you can just hit the ball around, you can hit a backboard, there are several different ways to play. When you're, when you just have one other person, you can go out to the court and just play a round of singles, keeping the ball in the singles sidelines. Or, if you're playing doubles, you can play with four people on the court, keeping in the double sidelines. Not only that, but you can tailor tennis to however you'd like to do. You can play on a full court, you can limit your game to the mini court, the four squares close to the net. You can play on the backboard. You can play with your partner on the backboard. One person hits the shot, and the next person has to hit it. And then back and forth almost like racket ball. Tennis is one of those sports you can modify however you want. There are many nets you can play in your driveway. Generally, what you want to do in tennis is follow the rules of the game. Let the ball bounce once or you can modify it to let it bounce twice or three times. Keep score. In tennis there's two ways of keep scores. Regular scoring and no add scoring. They both generally consist of win four points to win a game. If you're going to play a set, you want to win six games in a set. Or the first to win six games win by two. That means if one opponent has five games the other opponent has six games, you have to win one more to make it 7 - 5 to win the game. You have to win by two. Now, when you are playing your sets, you can limit to one set, two sets, best of three sets, or as some of the pros play in the grand slams, the best of five sets. Those generally take three or five hours to play. A good time with your friends can be two out of three sets. If you want to look a little more detail into playing tennis at home or looking up a tennis court near your house, please visit www.tenniswelcomecenter.com, or uspta.com, or especially the USTA website www.USTA.com. All three of these sites have a lot of tips that can help you out with your game and getting started in tennis. My name is Lincoln Ward, that's how to play tennis. Thank you very much."