Adriano Panatta accredited the legend according to which, in the genesis of the tennis score, he would have put the claw a spiteful devil: not only and not so much because the tennis score is brain and complicated, but for the fact that, due to this complication, it allows you to lose a game even by making a sum of points higher than that of the winning opponent.
Points and Games
Let’s see how it works: the tennis points do not go, as a rational mind would imagine, from 1 and up. Instead, there are a strange way: The first point is 15, from there you go to 30, and then to 40. If you also bring home the next point to 40 you win the game and go 1-0 (because the game – Games-, unlike the so -called fifteen, there are one starting from one).
This strangeness was not enough, there is a but: if you find it 40-40 (which reads 40 even, not 40 to 40), on the other hand, we go to the so-called advantages because on 40-40 a point is not enough: to obtain the game you have to win two points below. Let’s take an example: if Sinner-Alcaraz are 40-40 and Sinner wins the point you go to AD-40 (where it is for Advantage/advantage), because having won the first point Sinner has the advantage that allows him to win the game if the next point is also won. If, on the other hand, the Alcaraz point wins on the AD-40, there is 40-40 (otherwise called “Deuce”, word of uncertain origin) and Continue with this swing until one of the two contenders does not detach the other of two consecutive points. It seems difficult, so said, but after a few games you watch on TV you get used to it.
15-30 or 30-15? Whose point is it?
During the games we hear about 15-30 or 30-15, how do you understand who the point is? It is understood by the fact that the first of these two elements of the score always indicates the player who in that game is located at the joke (or service)on TV it is identified, in the overpass schemino showing the score, thanks a ball or a mustache next to the name.
At each game/game, the service passes by hand. And at every odd game you change the field. Every seven game the player who goes to the service does it with new balls, which gives a slight advantage of power.
What is the break?
To the “breakage” letter, In tennis the break is the game won on the opposing service: given for awarded that the player at the high -level service is benefited in commanding the exchange, the tennis challenge is to be able to win the game in response, in jargon “tearing the opponent’s service”, prelude to the two detachment games that serve to win the set.
The player wins the set who first totales 6 game detaching the opponent at least two. Most male tournaments and all women play with three sets games, won by the first that totals two. The four most important tournaments, which make up the Grand Slam, in the male circuit are played instead with games of 5 sets: therefore it is necessary to win three to win the meeting.
Break the knot, break the stall: Tie-break and SuperTie-break
Originally from 6-6 the risk was that the games continued indefinitely. To stop the stall, the tie-break was invented, at the letter “breakage of the knot”: it is a quick game, in which the two players play 7 points: serving twice each, except for the first point, which provides for a single service, because the points are odd. Here too the first player who reaches 7 with two points ahead wins the end -stalled set on 6 even.
So it is usually, but for a long time the large tournaments did not have the tie-break in the decisive set, for example on 2-2, 6 equal of the fifth set: in these cases we went to the bitter end. And so the longest game in history was produced: the longest game in the history of professional tennis. John Isner against Nicolas Mahut after 11 hours and five minutes of play was over in Wimbledon on June 24, 2010 and won, spread over three days. Also due to episodes like this, organizational and television programming needs have convinced some organizers over the years to introduce the tie-break there too, others, however, left everything as it was, with the result that each tournament did in their own way.
So it was, until In March 2022 the four Grand Slam tournaments have jointly decided to standardize the situation: since then the Australian Open, Roland Garros, Wimbledon and US Open tournaments, in the event of a 6-6 equality in the fifth set in the men’s tournament and in the third in the female tournament to decree the winner is a 10-point super tie-break.
Net or Let? The stumbling block in the network
Net In English it is the network, This word is used when a ball touches the net, falling here or there as in a famous film by Woody Allen. During the game the NET is valid go as it goes, If, on the other hand, it is a service to touch the net, things change a bit: if the ball touches the net and does not pass or passes but comes out of the lines of the field of the field in which the service has to fall, the player at the service has the right to a second ball. SortAnd it is wrong a second time ago “double foul” and loses the point. If, on the other hand, the ball touches the net and enters the regulatory square, that ball is repeated: this situation in tennis is called “Let” And in that case you will hear the chair referee sentenced: “Let, First/Second Service”, means that It starts from the first/second ball as if that joke had not existed.
Falco eye, the Var of Tennis
The challenge is instead the Var of tennis, that is, the possibility that each player is given, maximum three times to each set, to have the technological verification of a dubious call inside/outside the line judge.
Used for the first time on March 22, 2006 the technology commonly called “Falco eye” (From English Hawk-Eye, in homage to his first developer Paul Hawkins) to Key Biscayne, he is now in use throughout the circuit of the major tournaments and from 2025 he will also enter the fields in Red Land where so far he has resisted the sign of the gap of many battles between players and referees.
Not only that, Pandemia has also accelerated the Electronic Line Calling Live (Elc Live), which replaces the human line judge, electronically calling the ball directly inside or outside, the system from 2025 will be official in all the tournaments of the male professional circuit.
World ranking and other rankings, as you become number 1
The associations of male professional (ATP) and female (WTA) tennis update the world tennis ranking every Monday (ranking), which takes into account the points that each player has conquered in the last 52 weeks: Since the tournament calendar is always in the same order, At the end of a tournament for each player, they expire, that is, they are subtracted from the count valid for the ranking, the points conquered in the previous edition of that same tournament and are replaced by those taken in the current year.
This explains why Novak Djokovic, previous number 1, which he had won in 2024 (2000 points expiring), would have needed to arrive at least in the final and take 1,200 to maintain the ranking on Sinner, who had almost no points expiring in Paris, but that he had accumulated many from autumn 2023. In Sinner therefore it would have been enough that Djokovic came out of the tournament before the final to become number 1 and would have happened even if he would have happened even if he had not had a number 1. participated in Roland Garros. If, on the other hand, Djokovic had arrived in the final, Sinner could have become number 1 during the Parisian tournament only by defeating Djokovic in the final.
So the tournaments give the numbers: how to do ATP points
The points of the ATP world ranking come from the sum of the points gravped in the 19 most important tournaments: the 4 Tournaments of the Grand Slam give 2000 points to the winner, 1,200 to the finalist and 800 to the semifinalists. A Master 1000 is called this because it gives a thousand to the winner ditto for tournaments 500, 250 etc. Each professional must participate in the 4 Slam, at 8 Masters 1000, at least 4 500, to which they are qualified according to the ranking. This means that in the tennis circuit you can never stop, otherwise it is almost impossible not to fall from the ranking. In the event of a serious injury or pregnancy, with at least six months of stop, the possibility of asking for a protected ranking is allowed: that is, to return, counting, for a maximum of nine tournaments, on the ranking you had at the time of interruption. However, a right that is lost if it stops for more than three years. At the end of each season the best 8 of the calendar year are conquered the right to participate in the ATP Finals.
Other rankings: Race and Olympic
To decide who participates in the ATP Finals, in recent years scheduled in Turin, you do not look at the world ranking ATP, calculated as above, but the so -called Race: i.e. the ranking that sums, in the same way as the ATP Ranking, the points conquered in the calendar year starting January 1st. Every year we start from scratch so without points to defend.
The so -called Olympic Race instead determines direct access to 56 of the 64 seats of singular, based on the ranking in the case of Paris on 10 June 2024. Each National Olympic Committee (Coni for us) will be able to register a maximum of 4 players, who must be in compliance with the commitments of the Davis Cup and its female equivalent, Billy Jean King Cup. Davis and Cup do not give points in the ATP and WTA rankings, but those who do not respond to the call cannot participate in the Olympics.
What is the Grand Slam, the Arab Fenice of Tennis
It is the maximum aspiration and the arabic Phoenix of the tennis players: Those who win Australian Open, Roland Garros, Wimbledon and Us Open wins it in the same calendar year, an undertaking successful only to five tennis players in historythree from the beginning of the Open era (i.e. professional, since 1968) and only to Steffi Graf since the ranking has been drawn up to the computer (1974).
1938 – Don Budge (male singular)
1953 – Maureen Connolly (female singular)
1962 – Rod Laver (Male Singular)
1969 – Rod Laver (Male Singular)
1970 – Margaret Court (female singular)
1988 – Steffi Graf (female singular, photo reuters)
A mysterious jargon
The language of tennis jargon is mysterious, the evolution of the ancient ball games with different propulsive systems, tennis has at least Renaissance origins. Patented by English Walter Clopon Wingfield in 1873 tennis had existed for centuries And it was already called this for some time: in the first act of the ENRICO V of Sheakespeare (1598-99) there are “Tennis Balls” (tennis balls) and the first known image of a consortium racket dates back to June 1552, in a portrait of Carlo Massimiliano Duke of Orléans Child: This explains why the words of the jargon of this sport, often probably mixed with English and French, often have uncertain origins and emes. Anyone wishing to know all the fascinating story should draw on the monumental 500 years of tennis of the scribe Gianni Clerici, from whom these two attestations of antiquity are taken.
