Queen of Sports

Queen Of Sports 101: Tennis Score

August 30th, 2010 | Posted by Queen of Sports in Sports 101,Tennis

The US Open begins today! In honor of the tennis tournament we are going to discuss how tennis is scored.

A tennis match is comprised of  points, games and sets. A match is won when a player or doubles team wins the majority of prescribed sets. Traditionally, matches are either a best of three sets or best of five sets format. A set consists of games, and games consist of points.

A game consists of a sequence of points played with the same player serving. A game is won A game is won by the first player to have won at least four points in total and at least two points more than the opponent. The running score of each game is described in a manner peculiar to tennis: scores from zero to three points are described as “love”, “fifteen”, “thirty” and “forty”.  If at least three points have been scored by each player, and the scores are equal, the score is “deuce”. If at least three points have been scored by each side and a player has one more point than his opponent, the score of the game is “advantage” for the player in the lead.

A game point occurs in tennis whenever the player who is in the lead in the game needs only one more point to win the game. The terminology is extended to sets (set point), matches (match point), and even championships (championship point).

A break point occurs if the receiver, not the server, has a chance to win the game in the next rally. Break points are particularly important because serving is generally advantageous. A receiver who has two (score of 15-40) or three (score of love-40) consecutive chances to win the game has a double break point or triple break point.

Now that you know how the scoring is done, make sure to catch some of the tennis action this week. Check out the US Open schedule here.