Tennis Games

There is a decent number of variations of tennis games that one can play. By far, the most popular and well-known variations are singles and doubles tennis. Singles tennis is the standard way of playing one-on-one tennis games. It uses all the standard rules of tennis and is played with the narrower 27-feet court width. In a singles match, one usually plays 3 to 5 sets. Within each set, the service normally rotates back and forth with the completion of each game. In professional tennis, winning a game when one is not serving is significant enough that it is called winning a "break point."

Tennis Game

Doubles tennis is, obviously, the two-on-two counterpart of singles tennis. A doubles tennis game uses the wider 36-feet court width - however, the service areas remain the same as in singles. In doubles tennis, the service rotates with the completion of each game, but through all four players. Strategy in doubles tennis is somewhat different from that of singles, for the obvious reason that each side has an extra player. Ideally, in a doubles game one player from either team plays close to the net while the other keeps to the back of the court. In this way, the two players on a given team can stake out their "zones" and avoid interfering too much with each others' play. The "net player" focuses on volleys (hitting the ball near the net) while the "backcourt player" handles any shots that the net player does not screen. Because of this extra backup, common techniques in singles tennis such as lobbing (hitting the ball at a high angle over a player who is at the net) are not quite as successful in doubles tennis. Scoring in doubles tennis games works the same as in singles tennis games.

Tennis Games

A further distinction of doubles tennis is mixed doubles, where each team has a man and a woman.

Tennis Game Rules

There are also special sets of rules for situations when three people want to play tennis games together. One such variation is called Jordache tennis. In Jordache tennis games, normal one-on-one games are played, with the man-out rotating in for whoever loses the game in progress. Winning a game is often scored as 5 points, with the loser getting a lesser number of points based on the score he or she managed to achieve. The first to reach 50 points is the winner. Cutthroat tennis is another three player variation, simply played when one of the players is considerably better than the other two, and takes them both on at once.