Tennis is a racket sport that is played either individually against a single opponent (singles) or between two teams of two players each (doubles). Each player uses a tennis racket strung with a cord to strike a hollow rubber ball covered with felt over or around a net and into the opponent's court. The object of the game is to manoeuvre the ball in such a way that the opponent is not able to play a valid return. The player unable to return the ball validly will not gain a point, while the opposite player will.
A tennis court is the venue where the sport of tennis is played. It is a firm rectangular surface with a low net stretched across the centre. The same surface can be used to play both doubles and singles matches. A variety of surfaces can be used to create a tennis court, each with its own characteristics which affect the playing style of the game.
The US Open Tennis Championships, commonly called the US Open, is a hardcourt tennis tournament held annually in Queens, New York. Since 1987, the US Open has been chronologically the fourth and final Grand Slam tournament of the year. The other three, in chronological order, are the Australian Open, French Open and Wimbledon. The US Open starts on the last Monday of August and continues for two weeks, with the middle weekend coinciding with the US Labor Day holiday. The tournament is one of the oldest tennis championships in the world, originally known as the U.S. National Championships, for which men's singles and men's doubles were first played in August 1881. It is the only Grand Slam that was not affected by cancellation due to World War I and World War II, nor interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. All the players participating should be at least fourteen (14) years old.
The Wimbledon Championships, commonly called Wimbledon, is the oldest tennis tournament in the world and is widely regarded as the most prestigious. It has been held at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club in Wimbledon, London, since 1877 and is played on outdoor grass courts, with retractable roofs over the two main courts since 2019.
The Australian Open is a tennis tournament held annually at Melbourne Park in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. The tournament is the first of the four Grand Slam tennis events held each year, preceding the French Open, Wimbledon and the US Open. The Australian Open starts in the middle of January and continues for two weeks, coinciding with the Australia Day holiday. It features men's and women's singles, men's, women's, and mixed doubles, juniors’ championships, wheelchair, legends, and exhibition events. Until 1987, it was played on grass courts, but since then three types of hardcourt surfaces have been used: green-coloured Rebound Ace up to 2007 and blue Plexicushion from 2008 to 2019. Since 2020, it has been played on blue GreenSet.
The Grand Slam in tennis is the achievement of winning all four major championships in one discipline in a calendar year. In doubles, a Grand Slam may be achieved as a team or as an individual with different partners. Winning all four major championships consecutively but not within the same calendar year is referred to as a "non-calendar-year Grand Slam", while winning the four majors at any point during the course of a career is known as a "Career Grand Slam".
Gregory Rusedski is a British-Canadian former professional tennis player. He was the British No. 1 in 1997, 1999 and 2006, and reached the ATP ranking of world No. 4 for periods from 6 October 1997 to 12 October 1997 and from 25 May 1998 to 21 June 1998.
Hawk-Eye is a computer vision system used in numerous sports such as cricket, tennis, Gaelic football, badminton, hurling, rugby union, association football and volleyball, to visually track the trajectory of the ball and display a profile of its statistically most likely path as a moving image. The onscreen representation of the trajectory results is called Shot Spot.
Instant replay or action replay is a video reproduction of something that recently occurred which was both shot and broadcast live.
Jeffrey Gail Tarango is a retired American tennis player. He was a top-ten doubles player and a runner-up at the 1999 French Open men's doubles tournament. He is now the Director of Tennis at the Jack Kramer Club, which is just south of Los Angeles. In 2018, he was the tournament director of a $30,000 men's California championships. At that championships, ATP world-ranked No. 11, Sam Querrey, beat Davis Cup captain Mardy Fish to win this event.
The tennis scoring system is a standard widespread method for scoring tennis matches, including pick-up games. Some tennis matches are played as part of a tournament, which may have various categories, such as singles and doubles. The great majority are organised as a single-elimination tournament, with competitors being eliminated after a single loss, and the overall winner being the last competitor without a loss. Optimally, such tournaments have a number of competitors equal to a power of two in order to fully fill out a single elimination bracket. In many professional and top-level amateur events, the brackets are seeded according to a recognised ranking system, in order to keep the best players in the field from facing each other until as late in the tournament as possible; additionally, if byes are necessary because of a less-than-full bracket, those byes in the first round are usually given to the highest-seeded competitors.
A point in tennis is the smallest subdivision of the match. A point can consist of a double fault by the server, in which case the point is automatically won by the receiver. In all other cases, a point begins when a legal serve is hit by the server to the receiver on the opposite side of the court, and continues until one side fails to legally return the ball to the opposite side. Whichever side fails to do so loses the point and their opponent wins it.
This page is a glossary of tennis terminology.
Svetlana Kuznetsova defeated Elena Dementieva in the final, 6–3, 7–5 to win the women's singles tennis title at the 2004 US Open. It was her first major title, and she lost only one set during the tournament. Kuznetsova became the third Russian woman, after Anastasia Myskina and Maria Sharapova, to win a major that year and overall. This was also the second-ever all-Russian major final.
In tennis, an official is a person who ensures that a match or tournament is conducted according to the International Tennis Federation Rules of Tennis and other competition regulations.
An electronic line judge is a device used in tennis to automatically detect where a ball has landed on the court. Attempts to revolutionize tennis officiating and the judging of calls in the sport began in the early 1970s and has resulted in the design, development and prototyping of several computerized, electronic line-judge devices. The methods have been based upon the use of pressure sensors, sensors to detect magnetized or electrically conductive tennis balls, infrared laser beams, and most recently video cameras.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to tennis.