History

• Although games similar to tennis can be traced back thousands of years, the equipment and rules of the sport we know as modern tennis were patented in London in 1874 by Maj. Walter Wingfield. A tennis match could be played by two or four people, just like today, but the court and net were quite different. The court was hourglass-shaped and the net was set at between 5 and 7 feet high. Today's net is 3 feet at its center. The sport rapidly gained popularity around the world, and a tennis tournament was held for the first time in the United States in 1875. The first Wimbledon tournament was held in 1877.
  
  

Identification

• A tennis match comprises sets of individual games of tennis played between either two players or two pairs of players. Matches can be best of three sets or best of five sets. In a best-of-three-set match, players must win two sets; in a best-of-five-set match, they must win three sets.
  
  Sets are composed of games, and a player must win at least six games to win a set. If players are tied at six games apiece, additional games are played until one player is ahead by two, or a tiebreaker is used, which is a single game played until one player scores seven points; however, he must be ahead by two, or play continues.
  
  

Singles and Doubles Matches

• Singles players use the entire length of the court--78 feet--but only the inner boundary of the width, which measures 27 feet. Players take turns serving, starting behind the baseline on the right side of their court and alternating between the left and right side until a game is finished.
  
  Doubles players, also known as partners, use the entire length and width of the court, so while the length is the same as for singles, the width is 36 feet. Partners take turns serving, but alternate with the opposing players. For example, a player on one team serves, a player on the other team serves, then the other player on the first team serves, and so forth. Except for serving, players do not have to take turns hitting the ball; that is, one partner could hit the ball for his team's turn throughout an entire game.
  
  

Surfaces

• Tennis matches are typically played on one of three surfaces: grass, clay and a composite asphalt or other hard court. The Grand Slam of tennis uses all three. Wimbledon is played on a grass court, the French Open is played on clay, and both the Australian Open and U.S. Open are played on hard courts.
  
  

Record Match

• The longest tennis match in the history of sanctioned play took place from June 22, 2010, to June 24, 2010. The Wimbledon match between American John Isner and Frenchman Nicolas Mahut took 11 hours and five minutes to complete, finally ending when Isner beat Mahut 70-68 in the fifth set. The match began on a Tuesday, was postponed by darkness, continued on Wednesday and was again postponed by darkness. It finally finished on Thursday afternoon. Another reason the match continued for so long is that, unlike many tournaments, Wimbledon does not use a tiebreaker in the fifth set. That means that play continues until one player is ahead by two games.