Tennis Rules: How To Play Tennis (A Beginner's Guide)

Playing tennis for the first time or just trying to figure out what’s going on when watching a tennis match on television? Don’t worry, after reading this beginner guide, everything will make sense and you will be able to understand this beautiful game of tennis.

We will start by going through all the general rules that will help you understand the basics of how the game works. After that, we will go through more in depth all the rules and how the scoring system works. Keep in mind that the rules for doubles are slightly different, so if that’s what your are looking for, check out this post.

Table of Contents show

The Basics

Tennis is a game played on a rectangular shaped court, which can be on either clay or hard courts. But, it’s sometimes also played on grass. It’s either played in singles (1v1), or doubles (2v2).

The concept of the game of tennis is that the players stand on opposite sides of the net and uses a racquet to hit the ball back and forth to each other. Each player has a maximum of one bounce before they can hit it back to the opponent side. If a player fails to hit the ball after one bounce or hits it outside the court boundaries, the opponent wins a point.

General Rules

A ball must land within bounds for play to continue; if a player hits the ball outside of bounds, this results in the loss of the point for them.
Players/teams cannot touch the net or posts or cross onto the opponent’s side.
Players cannot hit the ball twice.
Players must wait until the ball passes the net before they can return it.
A player that does not return a live ball before it bounces twice loses the point.
Any ball that bounces on the lines of boundary are considered good.
A serve must bounce first before the receiving player can return it.

If you are unsure about what’s considered within and outside the boundaries, take a look at the purple lines that I drew on this picture. Except from the serve, all balls are allowed to bounce inside the purple lines. If the ball hits outside the purple line, the opponent wins the point. The lines that are outside the purple lines are made for doubles.

Serving Rules

After going through all the general rules that you need to know, it’s time for another very crucial step towards understanding the game of tennis, the serve.

Every point starts with a serve, and understanding all the rules involved with the serve is crucial. That’s not only because rules are important, but also because that knowledge will help you to keep score in tennis. That may sound weird, but it’s true and we will go more in depth about that later in this post.

General Serving Rules

You serve from behind the baseline (anywhere between the singles sideline and the centre mark of the court)
You have 2 chances to make a proper serve each point
If you didn’t make a proper serve on neither of them, it counts as a double fault (point goes to your opponent)
If the ball hits the net and after that lands on the correct side, the serve won’t count
You are not allowed to step your feet inside the court (foot fault)

Still unsure about what a proper serve should be like? Take a look at this picture. I drew a blue line on the right side that shows you where you are allowed to stand when serving. The other blue line on the left shows you where you are supposed to hit the serve. If you don’t hit the serve inside the blue line, it will count as a fault.

The blue lines on the picture above illustrates how a proper serve should look like on every even point. After the first point, you move to the other side of the court and serves the same way, but on the opposite side of the court. On the third point, you serve on the opposite side again.

When the score is even: You serve from the right side of the court into the opponents left side.
When the score is odd: You serve from the left side of the court into the opponents right side.

If you are unsure about the current score, you can always think of which side you most recently served at. This won’t tell you the exact score, but it will give you the information about whether not the current score is even or odd.

If you are a complete beginner to this, I understand that this may seem a little bit confusing. But, if you understand the scoring system, it will make everything so much easier.

Keeping Score In Tennis

Now when you got the basics knowledge about all the rules involved in tennis, it’s time for the hardest part, the scoring system. At a first glance, the numbers may look very weird and hard to understand, but it’s actually pretty simple.

Every tennis match consists of 2 or 3 sets (best of 3) and to win a set, you need to win 6 games.

These are the points that are used in every game. (Here is why 15-30 and 40 are used in tennis)

1 Point = 15
2 Points = 30
3 Points = 40
4 Points = Game

To win a game, a player need to win at least 4 points. So, if you are leading with 40-0, 40-15 or 40-30 and wins the next point, you win the game. To win a set, you will need to do this 6 times. But, there are some boundaries to this.

Deuce

If you are leading with 40-30 and your opponent wins the next point, the score will be 40-40, which in tennis terms are called deuce. If you win the next point, the score will be AD-40 (AD=advantage). If you win the point after that as well, you win the game. However, if the opponent wins the next point, the score will go back to 40-40 (deuce). So basically, 40-40 or “deuce” is the same as if the score was 30-30.

40-40=Deuce
40-40=Either player needs to win 2 points in a row to win the game

Tiebreak

As I mentioned earlier, every set is played first to 6 games, however, there are one exception to that.

In order for the first to 6 games rule to work, a player need to win with at least a 2 games margin. For example, one set could end 6-4 6-3 6-2, 6-1 and 6-0. However, 6-5 is not a valid score. If you are leading with 6-5 and your opponent wins the next game, the score will be 6-6 and something called tiebreak will occur.

But, how does a tiebreak work? A tiebreak is played first to 7 points and whoever wins the tiebreak will win the set (7-6).

Tiebreaks are played first to 7 points
You need to win with 2 points

Serving order in tiebreaks

Point 1=Player A Serves
Point 2=Player B Serves
Point 3=Player B Serves
Point 4=Player A Serves
Point 5=Player A Serves
Point 6=Player B Serves
Point 7=Player B Serves

Player A serves the first point to the opponents deuce side and after that Player B will serve the next upcoming 2 points (starting from the left side, since the score is odd). Then it goes back to player A again.

Now, when you got all the information needed to understand the beautiful game of tennis, it’s time to start playing. Here are some other articles that could help you out as a beginner.

Tennis Rules: How To Play Tennis