4 Tennis Terms Every Player Needs to Know

Our adidas Tennis Camps are open to just about anyone each summer. Our camp directors and top-notch coaches create a positive, personal, and fun atmosphere to learn in for youth tennis players aged 8 to 18 of all ability levels. It doesn’t matter if you’re just starting out in the “sport of a lifetime” or you’re a four-year varsity starter in high school with hopes of playing in college.

Either way, our camps – which are located in 19 different states, which also includes our highly regarded New Jersey Tennis Camps – will provide something actionable to go home with and get better when it comes to your on-court skills. But what if you’re a beginner and you’re having a hard time figuring out all of the official tennis lingo without having to ask a million questions?

If you haven’t been surrounded by tennis your whole life, watching a match – whether it’s on TV or in person – is a difficult thing to do when you’re unfamiliar with all the terms and parts of the game. There’s nothing wrong with doing a little vocabulary research before coming to an adidas Tennis Camp. We’d actually recommend doing so because it’ll help beginners get the most of their experience with us. After all, it’s a short camp and we try to pack as much information in there as possible!

Here are four different tennis terms that’d be helpful to know before stepping foot on a tennis court to play for the first time:

Ace

Nope, this is not the best pitcher on a baseball pitching staff. In tennis, an ace is basically a serve that doesn’t get returned by the opposition. The key for a serve to be considered an ace is that the ball lands in the service box or on a service line without touching the net. If an opposing tennis player touches it, though, it’s considered a service winner and not an ace.

Deuce

This is a fancy way of saying that two tennis players are locked in a 40-40 tie for any particular Game. When a Game gets to this point, one of the players must score two consecutive points to win. If that doesn’t happen, the score eventually reverts back to Deuce, and technically, this can go on forever.

Love

This is a scoring term that’s really just a fancy way for saying zero points. At the start of a new game, the score is technically Love-Love, but when a player scores the first points, the score then turns into 15-Love. The levels of scoring go from Love to 15, 30, 40, and then game. There are only two ways for a player to get past a “Love” score, and it’s to either score points or have their opposition win the Game.

Service Box

The service box is an area defined by the net and three surrounding service lines, which includes the far service line, the middle service line, and the sidelines sideline. In order for a serve to be legal in the game of tennis, it must land in the service box that’s located across the court from where the server is positioned.

There are four service boxes on a tennis court, which two on either side of the net. If you’re venturing into the world of playing doubles, the service box will also come into play rather frequently for volley shots, as well.