Part 1
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[Illustration: MRS. GEORGE W. WIGHTMAN,
(Hazel Hotchkiss)
Four Times National Champion.]
SPALDING “RED COVER” SERIES OF ATHLETIC HANDBOOKS No. 76R
TENNIS FOR GIRLS
BY
FLORENCE A. BALLIN NEW YORK
PUBLISHED BY AMERICAN SPORTS PUBLISHING COMPANY 45 ROSE STREET, NEW YORK
Copyright, 1919, by American Sports Publishing Company.
INTRODUCTION.
There are a number of books on tennis, but none has heretofore been written for the young girl just starting in to play. It may be argued that the game is the same for both boy and girl, therefore the same book will do for both. This is true to a certain extent. But just as there is a difference in the finished game, so there is a difference in the early training; and I believe that, properly started, a girl’s game may be developed to the point where it is much more like the boy’s game than it is at present. Tennis is a game requiring a quick eye and good judgment. Now a boy’s eye is naturally trained to judge a ball in flight; he plays at some kind of ball game from the day he is strong enough to toss one. His body, too, responds more readily to what his eye tells him he must do. Therefore, a girl has to spend more time and attention in developing her “eye,” and in learning to get quick and accurate response from her muscles. There is no good reason why a girl should not be as quick as her brother; it is merely a matter of training.
HOW THE GAME IS PLAYED.
Tennis is a game to be played by two or four persons. Three may play, by combining the two games, and having one play “singles” against the other two playing “doubles.” But the game properly has two forms: “singles,” wherein two persons play, one on each side of the net; and “doubles,” with two people on each side of the net. This net, which is 3 feet high in the center and 3 feet 6 inches at the sides, is stretched taut from two posts, one at each side of the court, across the middle of the court. The court has a perfectly smooth, level surface, of clay, dirt, turf, or cement, as the case may be. (Indoors the game is played on board floors.) It measures 78 feet in length and 27 feet in width, for singles; 36 feet in width for doubles. The court is laid out with white lines to mark the boundaries. These lines are drawn with slacked lime or whitewash, or else marked out by tapes which come for the purpose. Twenty-one feet from the net, on both sides, a line is drawn, parallel to the net, to the sidelines of the singles court. This space is in turn evenly divided by a line through the center, running parallel to the sidelines, passing under the center of the net. The four small spaces thus made are called the “service courts.” The narrow spaces between the sidelines of the singles and doubles court are called the “alleys.”
The game itself consists in one person (the server) putting the ball in play by hitting (serving) it into the proper service court, and both players then knocking it back and forth across the net until it is sent either into the net or outside the boundary lines, or missed altogether.
The players take turns serving, each serving an entire game at a time. The right to serve first is won by the player who calls the toss of the racket correctly. The racket is spun about, one player calling “rough” or “smooth”; that is, whether the lacing of colored gut is smooth side up or not. The winner, if she chooses to serve first (instead she may take the choice of courts, letting her opponent serve first), then stands behind her baseline, to the right of the center, and, tossing up the ball, knocks it into her opponent’s right-hand service court. She has a second ball to try, provided the first is a “fault,” that is, falls into the net or outside the correct service court. Many players hold a third ball in their hand, or have it on the ground near them, for if the ball strikes the top of the net and falls into the right court, it is called a “let” ball and does not count one way or the other. This is true only in serving, at all other times a “let” ball is in play. The opponent, standing back of her service line, tries to return the ball after its first bounce in the service court.
The ball is now in play, being knocked back and forth, until it is sent out of court, or into the net, or bounces twice before being struck.
Once the ball is in play, it may be “volleyed,” that is, hit before it bounces, but the service ball must first strike the ground inside the service court. This is repeated, the server sending the ball alternately into the right and the left-hand courts, from behind the right and the left sides of her baseline, until the game is won. The point is scored by the player who has last hit the ball into court. If the server fails to send either ball into the proper court, she makes a “double fault,” and loses the point.
The score is called as follows: the first point counts 15, the player’s score which is zero (0) being called “love”; the next score, if the point is won by the same player, is called “30-love,” the next “40-love,” then “game.” If the opponent, in the meantime, scores, her point is called as 30-15, 40-30, the server’s score always being called first. If the points are even, the call is “15-all” or “30-all,” as the case may be, instead of “15-15,” etc. If the points are evened at 40-all, the score is called “deuce.” Then one player has to win two points in succession from the deuce point, the score going “deuce,” “advantage server” (or “striker”), “deuce,” “advantage,” until the player who has the advantage point wins the next one, and the game.
It takes six games to make a set, unless the games go to “5-all.” This is equivalent to “deuce” in the point score, and requires two consecutive games to make “set”--as 7/5, 8/6, 9/7. A match for girls is always the best two out of three sets.
The ball on service is always tossed into the air and struck before it bounds; a ground stroke is used to return the ball after it has bounced; a “volley,” one wherein the ball has not struck the ground; a “lob” is a ball knocked high into the air across the net; a “smash” is a severe return of a lobbed ball. These strokes, their uses, and the way to play them, will be taken up in subsequent chapters.
PROFESSIONAL TEACHING.
It has been seen that the main object of the game of tennis is to keep the ball in play and put it where the other person cannot reach it. This entails more or less skill and accuracy in making shots. The quickest way to gain this skill is, as in all things, to start in right. Learn the correct way and form, whereby the best results are obtained with the least effort. If a good professional is within reach, the simplest and quickest method is to take a number of lessons from him to get the fundamental principles of the strokes; then start playing, keeping these instructions actively in mind until they become more or less instinctive. A girl usually has to make more of a conscious effort to acquire some of the fundamentals than does her brother, for she is not accustomed to games involving a ball in flight, nor to the quick muscular response required. She has to train both eye and mind to their proper uses.
[Illustration: Lines M N and O P should extend only to the service lines I J and K L, but the dotted lines show that the service side lines may be extended to the base lines, as provided in the second paragraph of Law 27.]
[Illustration: PLATE I.
Backhand grip, showing the thumb diagonally across the handle, helping support the force of the stroke; the wrist well “behind” the racket. ]
[Illustration: PLATE II.
Correct backhand grip--head of racket slightly up, but the racket is in the same plane as the arm. (See Plate III.) ]
[Illustration: PLATE III.
Incorrect backhand position--the hand and end of the racket are leading the stroke, the line of the arm and racket being that of a wide V, instead of a straight line. ]
[Illustration: PLATE IV.
Forehand grip--palm of hand behind racket, head of racket up, showing the wrist in an easy position, no strain as shown in Plate V. ]
[Illustration: PLATE V.
Incorrect forehand grip--the head of the racket is dropped, straining the wrist at “A.” ]
[Illustration: PLATE VI.
Forehand grip from the back.]
Many older players, who have taken up the game “any old way” and believe in “just doing the best they can,” claim that professional teaching is useless, as it makes a player “all form and no play.” Of course, a professional cannot make a star player out of every pupil, but he can make their best much better than it would otherwise have been, much less tiring to the player, and more pleasurable to the onlooker, by teaching them the correct form, the right way to handle themselves and their racket.
Few start playing golf without taking lessons on how to drive, putt, etc., or else reading the various articles that have been written on how to play. There are just as many different strokes in tennis and just as definite ways to play them in order to attain the best and most consistent results. If the player knows the science of the strokes, when she is off her game a little thought will soon find her error; whereas if she is playing “hit or miss,” she will merely be disgusted at being “off her game,” and have to trust to her lucky Providence to get her “on” again.
A player who is “all form” has merely not carried her game far enough, either has not played long enough or else has not in herself the makings of a first-class player. But at least she looks well on the court, plays a fairly consistent game and really fails only when it comes to crack tournament play. As a matter of fact, she is a player whom first-class players are always willing to play against, for she is steady and has reasonable pace to her balls, making her a good opponent in practise. Then, too, many people make this criticism of someone who is taking lessons, when the pupil is really only just starting in, and has to concentrate so much on how she is hitting the ball that she has little thought left for strategy. Once, however, a player learns how to stroke the ball correctly and how to handle herself on the court, the rest comes rapidly. But the fundamentals have to be learned first, and learned thoroughly, so that they become second nature to the player, before there can be much thought of studying the tactics of play.
A professional, besides being able to give his pupil the required ball again and again for the stroke under study, can also watch and tell her what she is doing incorrectly. To pick up the game alone is, as in all things, more difficult than to have someone pointing the way. However, learning by oneself requires greater concentration and thought on what one is doing, and insofar is all the better training.
The best way to begin without professional aid is to find a smooth board wall against which the ball may be hit, with a level cleared space in front of it. It is well to draw a chalk line the height of the net, 3 feet from the ground, so that the player may become accustomed to hitting the ball high enough.
By practising against this board for a while before playing any games, the beginner can put all her attention on _how_ she is hitting the ball. She has no opponent, no score, to worry her, and can become thoroughly at home with the fundamental principles of the strokes. This is the practise that a girl needs more than a boy, for it will give her the necessary training for eye and body. She will learn to keep her eye on the ball, to time her strokes correctly, and to use her body easily and quickly in response to the demands of her eye. Above all, she will be acquiring the habit of concentration, a habit most important in tennis, and something that no one can teach.
The easiest and quickest way to learn to serve is to take a half dozen or so of balls out on the court and practise hitting them in the right way into the opposite service court, just as if a game were in progress. In a very short time, the beginner will find that she is ready to go out and hold her own against those of her friends who have been “batting around” for some time but without any real thought as to what they were doing.