Glossary

Coaching conversations assume a vocabulary that nobody ever formally teaches. This is that vocabulary, grouped by where you are likely to meet it. Terms in bold appear elsewhere in this notebook.

The court

• Baseline — the line at each end marking the back boundary. Also, loosely, the position from which most rallying happens.
• Service box — one of the four boxes formed by the service line and centre service line; a serve must land in the box diagonally opposite the server.
• Service line — runs parallel to the net, marking the back of the service boxes. It is not a boundary during a rally.
• Centre mark — the short line bisecting the baseline, marking the inner limit of where a server may stand.
• Tramlines / doubles alley — the corridors on each side, in play for doubles rallies but never for serves.
• No-man's land — the area between the service line and the baseline. Awkward to defend from, because balls land at your feet. A place to pass through, not to stand in.

Scoring

• Love — zero.
• Deuce — 40–40; a player must then win two consecutive points.
• Advantage ("ad") — the point after deuce; winning the next takes the game, losing it returns to deuce.
• Deciding point — a format in which deuce is settled by a single sudden-death point.
• Break / break point — winning a game against the opponent's serve; a break point is a point which, if won by the receiver, wins the game.
• Hold — winning your own service game.
• Tiebreak — played at 6–6 to seven points, margin of two.
• Match tiebreak — a tiebreak to ten points replacing a deciding set.
• Let — a point replayed, most often a serve that clips the net cord and lands in.
• Bagel — a set won 6–0. Informal.

Strokes and shots

• Groundstroke — a forehand or backhand struck after the ball has bounced.
• Volley — struck before the bounce, usually near the net.
• Half-volley — struck immediately after the bounce, on the rise; the hardest timing in tennis.
• Slice — backspin, from a high-to-low path with an open face. Stays low after the bounce.
• Topspin — forward rotation, from a low-to-high path. Makes the ball dip and bounce higher.
• Approach shot — a shot hit while moving forward, intended to set up a net position.
• Passing shot — hit past an opponent at the net.
• Lob — hit high over an opponent at the net; offensive if disguised and low enough to be unreachable, defensive if hit high to buy time.
• Overhead / smash — a serve-like stroke played against a lob.
• Drop shot — a softly struck ball with backspin intended to land just over the net.
• Winner — a shot the opponent does not touch. Distinct from a forced error (they reached it and missed under pressure) and an unforced error (they missed with time and balance).

Serving

• Fault / double fault — a serve that misses; two in a row loses the point.
• Foot fault — touching the baseline or the wrong area with a foot before striking the serve.
• Ace — a serve the receiver does not touch.
• Kick serve — heavy topspin and sidespin producing a high, bouncing, angled serve. The safest aggressive second serve.
• Trophy position — the checkpoint at the top of the toss: tossing arm up, hitting elbow raised, knees bent.
• Pronation — the outward forearm rotation through contact that produces racket-head speed and spin.
• Racket drop — the lowest position of the racket behind the back during the service motion; the best single predictor of racket speed.

Movement

• Split-step — a small hop landing as the opponent strikes, loading the legs for the first move.
• Unit turn — shoulders and hips rotating together as the first preparation movement.
• Recovery — returning to the correct position after a shot; correctly, to the bisector of the opponent's possible replies rather than to the centre mark.
• Open stance — feet roughly parallel to the baseline at contact, allowing a hit while still moving outwards.
• Adjusting steps — the small final steps that set the distance between you and the ball.

Equipment

• Head size — the strung area in square inches. Larger is more forgiving and more powerful; smaller is more precise.
• Balance — where the mass sits along the frame; head-light frames feel quick, head-heavy frames plough through.
• Swingweight — how heavy the racket feels while swinging. The most predictive single specification.
• Stiffness (RA) — how much the frame deforms. Stiffer means more power and a harsher feel.
• String pattern — the grid density, e.g. 16×19 (open, more spin) or 18×20 (dense, more control).
• Gauge — string thickness; higher numbers are thinner, giving more spin and less durability.
• Hybrid — different strings in the mains and crosses.

The formal definitions of court dimensions, equipment specifications and the rules that use these terms are published by the International Tennis Federation. If you want the vocabulary in context rather than alphabetically, the scoring page and the racket page are the two most term-dense places to start.