Choosing/Replacing Balls | USTA Choosing/Replacing Balls Q. With most of the top players going to their bag for a new racquet upon the introduction of new balls, what happens when a ball is miss-hit into the stands? Are new balls put in or do the ball handlers go short? A. You are referring to a fan-friendly initiative that was established for the 2005 US Open. On the three stadium courts, when a ball bounces or flies into the crowd, the fan that catches the ball gets to keep it. These balls are replaced at the end of that particular game. Prior to the match, the umpire walks on court with a bag full of balls that have been worn to varying degrees. If a one-game old ball is hit into the crowd it will be replaced with a newer ball than if an eight-game old ball is lost. Q. Just wanted to know what the pros look for in a ball when they pick up three balls and look at them, then choose two before they serve. A. Generally, players try to choose the ball with the least amount of fluff on it. That way, when they serve, it travels through the air faster.

However, some baseline retrievers might look for the fluffiest (or heaviest) ball to slow down a powerful opponent. Lastly, sometimes players are just trying to gather their thoughts, and they use the ritual of finding a “lucky” ball to slow themselves down between points. Remember, at the professional level, six new balls are switched after the first seven games (and the five-minute warm-up) and then every nine games thereafter. Q. Before serving, I noticed most of the professionals examine multiple tennis balls before they pick two. What are they looking for, and why? A. For some players this may simply be an idle pre-point ritual. While they fiddle with the balls, they are actually focused entirely on what they need to try to do in order to win the next point. For others, it is a case of them choosing the balls that will best suit them. For example, a big server will look for the least-worn (newest) ball, so that it flies through the air fastest. Conversely, a baseline “grinder” might seek worn, fluffy balls to slow the pace of play a little.

Lastly, some players are simply superstitious and they are looking for the “lucky ball” or, perhaps, the ball they used to win the last point. Q. After how many games do they give out new balls? A. During most sanctioned USTA tournaments, you start with one can of balls and then only after splitting sets do you get three “fresh” balls for the third set. If you are talking about during professional matches, then balls are switched after the first seven games (because the warm-up counts as two games of “use”) and then every nine games thereafter. Six balls are used at all times during Tour matches. By the way, I strongly advocate that recreational players use six balls when they play as well, because less time will be spent chasing down stray balls and players will get to hit more balls per hour on-court. Q. A friend of mine had a Golf magazine and it stated that maybe the PGA needs to make the pro golfers use a different ball than the common player due to the distances a pro golfer can hit a normal golf ball.

The article stated that in Tennis it is a well known fact that the pro tournaments use a different ball than what the common player would use because the pros would hit the normal ball much to fast. Is this true? A. No. This is false. Sometimes the women use a different (regular duty felt) ball than do the men (extra duty felt) during hard court tournaments. In fact, this occurs at the US Open. This is designed to “speed up” the women’s game and to “slow down” the men’s game, if only marginally. But, no… the balls that professional players use in tournaments can be purchased over the counter. Q. Recently, I was in an argument with my neighbor because he said the tennis balls for women's matches at the US Open were actually lighter and smaller. He said that it was to help "speed" the play of the ball and the matches. Is this true? - I have watched many professional matches and I have never heard that. A. I am not sure that I would categorize the balls as being lighter or smaller, but your neighbor is generally correct. The women use regular duty felt balls while the men play with extra-duty felt during the US Open.

If his facts are a little off, at least his reasoning is accurate. This selection was designed to increase the ball speed in women’s game and to slow down the velocity of the balls in the men’s game. Q. The pros always look at a few balls before rejecting one when they're about to serve. What are they looking for? Why would they choose one over another? A. New balls are used after the first seven games, and then after nine games, during professional matches. Hard servers like the newest balls because they tend to fly through the air faster before their knap gets all fuzzy. On the other side of the coin, I believe that defensive baseliners actually seek the biggest and fluffiest balls- which is the opposite of big servers. Some players ask for the same “lucky” ball with which they just won the last point. And still some others might examine balls before serving as a part of their pre-point ritual. So, there are lots of explanations but finding the “newest” ball is the most common reason. Q. If I freeze a tennis ball before a match, will it improve my game? A. Ahhh, I doubt it.

Although, you might have recognized that some tournaments- notably Wimbledon- keep the cans of tennis balls refrigerated prior to opening them for matches. Presumably, this is to help the playability of the balls. We do NOT practice this at the US Open. Whit's Tennis Tips doesn't work without your questions, so please send those tennis related questions you've always been trying to get answered to AskWhit . Knowledge Areas: Choosing Tennis Balls: A Ritual Built on Science and Superstition - The New York Times The New York Times Tennis |A Ritual With Roots in Science and Superstition Search Continue reading the main story Photo Roger Federer, left, taking three tennis balls from a ball person at the United States Open. Credit Uli Seit for The New York Times Before every point at the United States Open , the server will turn to a ball person and request a ball. Or two. Or three, maybe four. The server will then examine them intently or just knock the extras back with barely a glance. It is a long-held tennis ritual , the choosing of the balls, a process built at least as much in superstition as in science. Many players acknowledge that it probably does not make much of a difference which ball they choose.

“But I’m convinced in my head that it does,” said Novak Djokovic, seeded No. 4. He tends to take an extra ball or two, only to dismiss them quickly. Players generally look for the newest, least-fluffed balls — the ones whose fuzzy felt covering is the least disheveled — of the six in use during a match. The perception is that the felt starts to fluff after a few hard whacks, and a fluffed ball will be “heavier,” slowed by drag as it travels through the air. Advertisement Continue reading the main story “After a long rally, if you use the same ball, it is like this,” he said. Whether there is truly an appreciable difference is debatable, but the process of choosing the ball offers glimpses into the psyche of the players. Photo Lleyton Hewitt during his match on Saturday. Credit Uli Seit for The New York Times Top-ranked Roger Federer is not especially particular or quirky, but wants the “fastest ball for the first serve,” he said. He usually sends an extra ball back with a no-look, behind-the-back pass from his racket.

Andy Roddick, who relies heavily on his serve, which is considered the fastest in the game , is pickier. He sometimes looks at several balls resting on his racket, like a chef holding an omelet pan, looking for the sleekest one that might go an extra mile per hour. If nothing else, the few seconds it takes to choose a ball can buy players time to exhale from the previous point and focus on the next. “You try to take your time, get a little focus, and I look for a faster ball,” Djokovic said. The men and women play with different balls at the Open. The ball for men is Wilson’s extra-duty version , marked with a black Open logo. The women use Wilson’s regular-duty balls, with a red logo. The only difference is in the felt, according to Jason Collins, the global business director for Wilson balls. The regular-duty balls have a tighter weave and fluff up less. Because of that, they play a bit faster than the extra-duty balls that the men use. The extra-duty balls have longer fibers, Collins said, and fluff up a bit more during use.

(The men often use regular-duty balls on clay, so that the dirt does not get into the looser weave, Collins said, and during indoor tournaments, where static electricity can make the balls fluffier than usual.) Advertisement Continue reading the main story The six balls in play are replaced with new ones after the first seven games, and every nine games after that. (The opening balls are used in warm-ups, too.) When examined after a match, used balls do not look noticeably fluffier than new ones. They mostly look dirtier. Photo The U.S. Open men's ball. Credit Uli Seit for The New York Times Collins said that there might be a reason to find the least-used balls in the first few games with a batch of new balls, because some could have been used during long rallies while others could have been hardly hit at all. But wear probably evens out after a couple of games, he said. And for such a short duration of play, Collins added, there is no issue with bounce or any other breakdown in the ball’s core. “Is there really a reason to be picky?” Collins said. “I don’t see it being a huge advantage.” Still, most players ask for one more ball than they need.

Men, who usually put a second-serve ball in a pocket of their shorts, typically ask for at least three. They often examine the balls by swirling them in their fingers, the way Captain Queeg of “The Caine Mutiny” did with steel balls during times of stress. Sometimes, either unsatisfied with the choices or wanting more time to gather themselves, players will turn and ask for balls from someone else. They may or may not even look at the balls before settling on which to use. Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up Privacy Policy The women tend to be less particular. About half of them use one ball at a time, including the hard-serving Venus Williams. And they rarely send back what they are given. But an increasing number of women seem to request an extra ball. “The women seem to do it more as a ritual, whereas the guys want the balls that are less fluffy,” said Danny Casesa, who has been a ball person at the Open since 1992 and has worked the last five men’s finals.

Casesa says he generally cannot tell the difference in the feel of the balls, but tries to offer the freshest-looking ones in his batch. He said he believed that most players used the ball-choosing process as “a mechanism to keep themselves calm.” Players admitted as much. Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, seeded seventh in the men’s draw, is typical. He usually asks for three balls, examines them for a couple of seconds, then flips one back. His process alters without warning, which is not uncommon among players. Photo The U.S. Open women's ball. Credit Uli Seit for The New York Times At one point during his match Friday against Jarkko Nieminen, Tsonga accepted three balls, then hit one back. He walked toward the other ball person, got two more and quickly knocked them both back. Then he served. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Tsonga joked later that it was simply a matter of obsessive-compulsive behavior, contagious on the professional tours. “I think this one is good, I think this one is good,” Tsonga said, mimicking his own thought process. He shook his head and laughed. “They’re all the same.” Some players have strong superstitions about certain balls.

After a winning point, the former player Conchita Martínez would sometimes ask for the same ball back. It became so exasperating that one opponent, Patty Schnyder, once tucked the ball away to hide it. Similarly, Goran Ivanisevic usually wanted the ball back after an ace. No current players are quite as superstitious. But some will win a point and ask for balls from the same person until the winning streak ends. Others will take balls from whoever is positioned on the same side they are serving to, alternating with each point. It seems more ritual than superstition. Then there is the occasional counterpoint. Caroline Wozniacki, the women’s No. 9 seed, often serves the fluffiest ball if her opponent is known as a strong returner, believing that a slower return is more advantageous than a faster serve. “Sometimes,” she said, “it really depends on my mood.” A version of this article appears in print on , on Page D2 of the New York edition with the headline: A Ritual With Roots in Science and Superstition. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe BBC Sport Academy | Tennis | Features | Having a ball at Wimbledon! Having a ball at Wimbledon!

Around the Academy: Each ball is date-stamped, making an excellent souvenir Tennis balls - they're small, round, brightly coloured and bouncy. What else is there to know? Well, quite a lot actually! Let the Sport Academy put a spin on tennis ball technology... Talk tennis on our messageboards What are tennis balls made of? Modern tennis balls are made of a hollow rubber core, covered in a wool or nylon shell which is known as the nap. Pressurised air inside the rubber core makes the ball bounce. Balls which haven't got enough pressure inside make a thud when they hit the floor. These are called dead balls. For the first Wimbledon tournament in 1902 balls were hand stitched - which meant no two balls ever bounced the same way. These days, a heated press is used to bind the cloth to the core. This is how the seam (the white markings on the ball) is created. If all the cloth used to make the balls during Wimbledon was laid out, it would cover a pitch the size of the Millennium Stadium! Do the balls differ depending on the tournament? Yes. Different tournaments are played on different surfaces.

The surface of the court will affect the speed and bounce of the ball, so the weight and compression will differ slightly. The cloth also has to be more durable on abrasive surfaces such as hard court and clay. In tournaments, all balls have to be white or yellow in colour. How many balls are used at Wimbledon each year? This year, Slazenger is supplying 52,200 tennis balls to Wimbledon. About 20,000 of these are used for qualifying and practice. Every single ball will have been individually hand tested for bounce, weight and compression. That's because according to strict tennis rules, the ball must bounce between 53 and 58 inches after being dropped onto concrete from a height of 100 inches. Each ball must also measure two-and-a-half inches (6.35cms) in diameter and weigh two ounces (56.7g). Sign up for the Academy newsletter Does size really matter? Actually, the sport's governing body, the International Tennis Federation, is looking into the possibility of using larger tennis balls on fast courts like the ones at Wimbledon. That's because a lot of people think tennis is simply getting too fast - which makes it boring to watch.

Hard hitters such as Andy Roddick can win matches on the strength of their serves alone, cutting down the number of rallies in a match. One way of slowing the game down would be to make the balls bigger. The bigger the ball, the slower it travels through the air. New balls please! But why? When balls lose pressure and get fluffed up they're not as bouncy. This usually starts to happen after around three hours of play and can affect a player's control and accuracy. That's why the balls are changed every seven and nine games alternately (after the first seven, the next nine, next seven and so on throughout the match). The spare balls are stored in a refrigerated container at the side of the courts. The balls are kept at 68� farenheit to keep them in perfect condition. So what happens to the balls after they've been used at Wimbledon? A house for a mouse The balls are sold at the All England Tennis Club and funds raised are donated to charities such as the Balls for Schools scheme which helps support the tennis stars of the future. Two years ago, 350 balls were donated to the Wildlife Trust who used them as nest boxes for harvest mice! When do the pros change balls?

| Talk Tennis When do the pros change balls? I always hear the pros use new balls at 7 & 9 games but never quite understand it. Can someone explain this to me? Thanks. psp2 , Nov 26, 2007 bruno hau said: ↑ I always hear the pros use new balls at 7 & 9 games but never quite understand it. Can someone explain this to me? Thanks. Click to expand... Ball change: 1st change: after 7th game (allowance for the use during warmup) Changes thereafter: after 9th game; however, ball change does not occur if the change is to takes place on a tiebreak. Balls would be changed the following game. do they use new balls for the begining of a set regardless of when the last ball change was??????????? LPShanet , Nov 26, 2007 TheShaun said: ↑ do they use new balls for the begining of a set regardless of when the last ball change was??????????? Click to expand... No. They are only supposed to change every 9th, as described above.

The reason they do one after the first 7 is that the warmup is approximated to equal two games. bruno hau , Nov 26, 2007 LPShanet said: ↑ No. They are only supposed to change every 9th, as described above. The reason they do one after the first 7 is that the warmup is approximated to equal two games. Click to expand... Is this every 9th game fair for both players where they alternate serving with new balls? Or can one player manipulate the score and always serve with new balls since the tie-break is considered one game? Hummm, i believe a player already has a lot of things to think about to be thinking when he is going to get new balls to serve for only one game. LPShanet , Nov 27, 2007 bruno hau said: ↑ Is this every 9th game fair for both players where they alternate serving with new balls? Or can one player manipulate the score and always serve with new balls since the tie-break is considered one game? Click to expand...

Any player who can go to a tiebreak at will and still guarantee a win in the set deserves the new balls for the effort. I think the priorities are a little backwards in your scenario. How to Be a Tennis Ball Boy: 8 Steps (with Pictures) - wikiHow So, you want to be a tennis ball boy? Go ahead. It's fun, but you also need to be prepared. Here are some ways you can be ready. Steps 1 Understand what the job is. So that you know what's going on, you're going to have to know some information on the basics of ball boy setup and rules. In a tennis match, there are normally 6 ball boys; 2 at the net and 1 in each corner. The ball boys at the net are positioned so that they each have a side. One at the left of the net, and one at the right. The ball boys have shifts, however, normally lasting 30-60 minutes. 2 Know what the job entails. The ball boys at the net are responsible for rolling down the ball to the serving end.

The ball boys in the back corners are responsible for either retrieving the ball and rolling it down to the serving end, or retrieving the ball and handing it to the server. Since there are 6 ball boys in a tennis match, how is it decided who gets which ball? Normally, the person closest to the ball retrieves. At the net, there are several variations to who gets which ball. When there are 2 ball boys at the net, each ball boy is designated a side, but when a ball lands close to a ball boy at the net, even if that ball boy is not on that side, he may get it. Note that no ball boys should ever attempt to roll down the ball during a second serve or a let. 3 Since there are many possibilities and variations that could happen, always keep several things in mind. Which choice will take the least time? Is this going to be of annoyance to the players? Is it going to annoy the audience? If your choice follows all of those guidelines, it is most definitely permitted. 4 Learn what to do when. If you find yourself in a situation where you only have five ball boys in your group, and you’re making your way onto the court, what should you do?

Obviously, if you are a ball boy for a major tournament, this would never happen, but you probably going to be reading this if you are or were in a major tournament like Wimbledon or even the Rogers Cup. So, if you do actually face this problem, the most logical thing to do would be to designate a person to be a “runner”. There always has to be two ball boys at the net, but the ball boys in the back, or corners, are not always needed. The most important thing to remember is that you need two people at the back on the server’s end, and one on the receiver’s end. When the players change serving roles, your “runner” will have to run to the other side so that there are two people on the serving end now, and one on the receiving end. Make note of when you don’t have to run to the other side. This is when the score in the total amount of games in that set is odd. However, in the tiebreak, the players don’t change every even. Let’s say that you are a ball boy at the net, and you are chasing down a ball.

The ball that you are chasing, however, didn’t stop where you thought it would, but rather kept on rolling and now find yourself not near the net, but near a ball boy in the corner. What do you think is the most sensible solution? If you had thought it through, it would be staying with the ball boy in the corner for one point, and then go back to your original position. 5 When a player asks you for a towel, you give it to them. Normally, this isn’t a hard task, however, if that player is the server, keep two things in mind. The first one is to remember to give him the towel and drop that ball onto his racket. The second is to keep in mind that he/she doesn’t want to be waiting for you, so give him/her the towel, pick up any balls that you have to retrieve (quickly!) and take back the towel and put it back in the designated area. When players are switching sides, make sure that you give the towel back to the player, they don’t want to use someone else's! 6 Know when the ball needs to be replaced.

When the server has just finished a point with a ball, he/she normally won’t want to play with that same ball again. If you have no other balls but that one, give it to him/her, but normally they will turn around to another ball boy. If it just so happens that you have no balls whatsoever, show your two hands showing the player that they are empty. Do this also to show how many balls you have, even when you have three, four or even five. When you are feeding a tennis ball to the player, make sure it bounces once on the ground and “floats” about at the player’s waist level. 7 Help with refreshments. Sometimes tournaments supply water or refreshments for the players. If the player asks for some type of beverage, run to the bin and get it. Same as for the towels, if a ball is rolling down, and the player needs a tennis ball, give it to the player, and then retrieve the ball. 8 Learn what other aspects of the job you should know about. If you are at the net, you will most likely be asked to hold an umbrella for the tennis player. Sometimes the ball boys at the back will be asked to stand in front of the players.

Community Q&A How Instant Replays Changed Professional Tennis - The Atlantic The Atlantic How Instant Replays Changed Professional Tennis Most Popular Text Size Hawk Eye technology—and the challenge system that comes with it—has transformed the world's politest game. Reuters It was nearing 1 a.m. New York time on Sept. 7, 2001, when the first tremors of a substantial tennis meltdown shook the U.S. Open. Fiery American newcomer Andy Roddick and his 20-year-old Aussie rival Lleyton Hewitt were in the fifth set of their quarterfinal matchup, and the pair had been trading groundstroke after punishing, sweaty groundstroke for more than three and a half hours. But suddenly, when Roddick was serving at 4-5, fate and optical illusion teamed up to do a mean, baffling thing to the teenage home-country hero. A powerful cross-court forehand by Roddick just kissed the alley line furthest from the chair umpire, a neat trick that would move Roddick one point closer to the semifinal. Or, at least, that's what the linesman (and Andy Roddick) thought.

Chair umpire Jorge Dias, from atop his perch on the other side of the court, saw something different. He overruled the line judge's call and awarded the point to Hewitt, sending Roddick into a tailspin of white-hot rage . Afterward, TV replays would show that the ball might have actually landed in. But five points later, a still-bewildered Roddick congratulated Hewitt on his victory and then trudged bitterly out of Arthur Ashe stadium. Fast-forward 11 years to the last match of Roddick's career—a fourth-round U.S. Open match against Juan Martin del Potro, just this Wednesday night. Early in the fourth set,Del Potro unleashed a monstrous first serve at 40-15. A line judge shouted that the serve was wide. Chair umpire Carlos Bernardes overruled, calling the serve an ace. Roddick disagreed. But instead of scoffing, or scowling, or hurling a racket, the American simply raised his right hand. "Mr. Roddick is challenging the call," said the loudspeaker.

Both panting players turned toward the stadium's JumboTron to watch a neon yellow orb travel across the screen, finishing its journey just wide of a thick white stripe. The word "OUT" appeared. Roddick was right: The serve had been long. Then both players jogged back to the baseline. Del Potro tossed up a second serve, and play went on. MORE ON TENNIS Billie Jean King on Playing Tennis Before Title IX Roddick, to be sure, was an older and a wiser man when he left tennis than when he arrived (though he remained a magnificently hot-tempered one throughout his career). But it's not just Roddick who's matured since that sour night in 2001. The game has evolved, too. Hawk-Eye instant-review technology and its accompanying challenge system made their Grand Slam debut at the 2006 U.S. Open. Since then, the provision of three challenge attempts per set has largely been appreciated as a nifty little rule tweakage that boosts convenience and helps avert would-be tantrums like Andy Roddick's.

But if we look a little closer, the truth is that challenges have subtly transformed the game of tennis as we know it. In a post-Hawk-Eye world, elite-level tennis is injected with the purest form of justice: the kind that's unblemished by human error. Six years into the regulated, widespread use of Hawk-Eye , three in every 10 challenged calls in professional tennis are overturned on the spot. Three times out of 10, in other words, machinery baldly exposes the unintentional unfairness of tennis' long-standing tradition of human umpiring. Hawk-Eye's high-precision technology has restructured the power dynamic of a sport once governed only by physics and the honor system—for better or for worse. HAWK-EYE TECHNOLOGY: A BRIEF HISTORY Hawk-Eye is the patented name for a complex instant-replay system that detects the trajectory of a tennis ball as it bounces off the court.

Developed in Romsey, England, in the early 2000s, the system tracks a tennis ball's path by compiling images provided by 10 high-speed video cameras mounted strategically at different viewpoints around the court, and then compiles an image to present to players, umpires, spectators, and TV audiences just moments later—usually via JumboTron. Hawk-Eye's instant review was first used in tennis in 2002 as part of the BBC's Davis Cup coverage, and won an Emmy the next year for Outstanding Innovative Technical Achievement. The on-court replay system got its real big break, though, in 2004. A series of controversial line judgments were proven to have worked against Serena Williams in her three-set loss to Jennifer Capriati in the quarterfinals of the U.S. Open, and a clamor arose for better, more reliable line officiating. Hawk-Eye then began cropping up at professional-level tennis events all over the globe for instant-review purposes. Early on, tournaments were allowed to decide for themselves how many challenges players were allowed.

Some tournaments gave players an unlimited number of challenges, others permitted two or three per set, and others devised systems with allotments dependent on whether the challenges had been successful. When the news broke in the spring of 2006 that the U.S. Open would be adopting the player-challenge system that fall, players' reactions were mostly positive. James Blake, the promising onetime Harvard man positioned at No. 21 in the ATP rankings, told USA Today : "The ball's moving so fast these days that sometimes it's impossible for anyone to see, even a trained official." Roddick, Blake's compatriot, had set a new record for the fastest serve in tennis just two years before—at the dizzying, blink-and-you'll-miss-it speed of 155 mph. "With instant replay," Blake said, "we can take advantage of technology and eliminate human error." Larry Scott, the chairman of the Women's Tennis Association at the time, also endorsed the integration of the instant review technology. "With all that's on the line in tennis these days, we felt we had to pursue every means possible to utilize technology to make sure that calls were accurate without losing the human element of officials on the court," he told ESPN .

"While tennis is at a very high level of officiating, there's no denying that through this technology players and fans can know that the right call was given." Not everybody loved the idea, of course. Roger Federer believed the money being spent on correcting "just a few points"—roughly $50,000 per court at the time—could have been better used elsewhere. "I am against the whole idea of replays," the Swiss phenom, then 24, declared. True to his word, Federer would maintain a complicated, begrudging relationship with line-officiating technology for years afterward . But whether Federer and his fellow agnostics liked it or not, Hawk-Eye and its challenge system were here to stay. In 2008, the four governing bodies of professional tennis (the International Tennis Federation, the WTA, the Association of Tennis Professionals, and the Grand Slam Committee) bestowed their blessing on a unified set of challenge rules to be used across tournaments at the pro level: Players would be allowed three unsuccessful challenges per set, with one extra allotted if the set reached a tie-break. Today, a hefty portion of significant matches take place on courts equipped with Hawk-Eye's high-precision line judging.

Hawk-Eye is used on the show courts at three of the four Grand Slam tournaments—the lone exception being the French Open, where the dusty red clay surface itself shows the exact location of the ball's impact. Thus, nearly every high-profile early-round match, and virtually all matches after the quarterfinal stage of a major, take place on a court equipped with Hawk-Eye systems. Hawk-Eye graced the courts at the Olympics in 2008 and 2012, and it's also in use at a majority of smaller tennis venues: The Indian Wells Tennis Garden, the California home of the BNP Paribas Open, has Hawk-Eye cameras installed on every one of its eight courts —and has been said to be setting a new standard . The adoption of an instant-replay system in any sport can be interpreted as a vote of no confidence in the game's once-trusty honor system, or in the officials charged with managing it.

So Hawk-Eye, a provision that allows players to challenge line calls—to question the authority, you could say—does feel a little antithetical to some of the core virtues of tennis; lest we forget, once upon a time tennis was known for its altruism, its respectful deference to authority, and its almost comical levels of chivalry. (Tennis isn't the only sport that's learning to adapt to this new technology. Earlier this year, FIFA—the famously tech-averse world governing body of soccer—announced its intention to use Hawk-Eye goal-line technologies in the 2014 World Cup.) BOTH MORE POLITE AND LESS "What a polite game tennis is," the turn-of-the-20th-century British author J.M. Barrie once remarked . "The chief word in it seems to be 'sorry,' and admiration of each other's play crosses the net as frequently as the ball." Indeed, many of the traditions from the early days of tennis are characterized by humble reverence to the chair umpire, the linesmen, and to the opponent across the net.

At the dawn of lawn tennis, for example, if an umpire blew a call, the beneficiary of the wrongly awarded point would sometimes lose the following one on purpose. "This would be greeted by a discreet and genteel ripple of applause from the gallery accompanied by benign smiles of approval," the Telegraph reminisced in 1960 . And when the contest ended, the Telegraph explained, "The defeated player leaped gaily over the net and warmly congratulated his opponent, all but kissing him on both cheeks." In theory, then, the inclusion of a challenge system in tennis could violate the very principles of gallantry that the game was founded on. And perhaps it does. But while tennis does still hold dearly to some of its antique courtesy rituals (see: the never-sincere hand-wave of apology after a lucky netted shot hops in), anyone who witnessed Martina Hingis' blaze-of-glory breakdown at the 1999 French Open or any of Jimmy Connors' tirades of epic proportions can attest that by the time Hawk-Eye came along, the days of apologetic point concessions and bashful deference to the chair umpire were already long over.

And in practice, Hawk-Eye has actually made tennis a far more sportsmanlike game than it was in the past. The players, once under the thumb of the infallible officials, can now both question authorities and definitively prove it when they're wrong—which has curbed some of the on-court fits that became a hallmark of tennis in the Open era. Had the computer-assisted challenge system been around in John McEnroe's time, for example, he may never have uttered the "You cannot be serious!" heard 'round the world (and he's said as much himself). Dr. Allen Fox, Ph.D., a pro tennis player-turned-sports psychologist and the author of Tennis: Winning the Mental Match, remembers watching Nicolas Kiefer, a talented, volatile German player who peaked at No. 4 in the world rankings in 2000, play a match just after the advent of Hawk-Eye. Kiefer, as Fox puts it, "always felt like he was getting cheated," and in this particular moment, he found himself on the unlucky end of what he thought was a bad call. "He'd get all emotionally unraveled during his matches. The whole world was conspiring against him, and so forth," Fox says.

"So he was starting to go into his histrionics act when he realized he could challenge it." According to Fox, Kiefer challenged the call, and it turned out the line judge's ruling had been correct. "It sort of took all the wind out of his sails," Fox recalls. "I could almost see the wheels turning, and for a minute he didn't really know what to do." It's players like Kiefer, Fox says, who most benefit from challenge-aided tennis—those players who take the line judges' calls personally, lose their composure, make excuses, or dwell on unfavorable points after they happen, or whose level of play drops when they're flustered. "It evens them out right away," Fox says. "The strong-headed [players], they straighten themselves out anyway." In other words, Hawk-Eye can help even the playing field by lessening the overemotional reactions that sometimes causes less resilient players' concentration to capsize. Even the most resilient players, though, benefit from being able to challenge.

Fox, a onetime NCAA tennis champion and Wimbledon quarterfinalist, says that no matter who you are, "It takes an effort of will to put [a perceived bad call] out of your mind. When you've actually won a point, but then through somebody's error you lose it, that's really hard to accept." So Hawk-Eye helps everybody, according to Fox. "But," he adds, "it can keep the bad-headed guy in there longer." That's not to say, though, that Hawk-Eye has fully eliminated tennis' quarrel-prone nature. Tantrums in the instant-review era are alive and well for plenty of other reasons—and player challenges have been known to create controversies of their own . There are still disputes over how quickly a challenge must be requested after a point has ended, for instance, and at the 2007 Wimbledon singles final, the normally imperturbable Roger Federer was so ruffled by some seemingly unbelievable Hawk-Eye rulings that he swore on live television and then insisted that the shot spotter be turned off for the rest of the match. And though Hawk-Eye is unquestionably more precise than the naked human eye, it, like all machines, has imperfections.

It's advertised as having a 3.6-millimeter average margin of error, and, as the Czech power hitter Tomáš Berdych was dismayed to learn in 2009, its performance can be affected by shadows on the court . KNOWLEDGE, POWER, AND ORDER ON THE COURT The challenge system has also enacted a quiet revolution in tennis: It can weaken the officials' authority by making their blunders suddenly visible to everyone. "In the old days, the chair umpire could overrule a linesman's call, and nobody would know if he [or she] wasn't correct in overruling," Fox explains. But today, with the advent of JumboTron-displayed instant playbacks, the fact of whether the ball in question actually landed in or out becomes public (very public) knowledge. "That gives the players some control," Fox says—and, perhaps more importantly, it puts the pressure squarely on the officials to get their calls right the first time. There's a whiff of public shaming, Fox explains, when a linesman gets a call wrong—like Carlos Bernardes did on Wednesday night.

"When the chair umpire overrules a linesman, the player challenges, and then the chair umpire is wrong—that's disastrous," Fox says. "Because not only is the umpire claiming that [he or she] saw it, but that [he or she] saw it clearly. Clearly enough to overrule a linesman." Thus, the knowledge that a player has an arsenal of challenges at his or her disposal "probably makes the umpire more hesitant to overrule a linesman," Fox says. "Because if the umpire is wrong, [he or she] can be exposed." After the 2007 Australian Open, the second Grand Slam to incorporate Hawk-Eye technology, ESPN reported that over the course of the fortnight, "There did appear to be fewer overrules by chair umpires of line judges' calls on Rod Laver Arena." Federer, ever the staunch contrarian, addressed that same power shift when he told ESPN he found the entire addition of the Hawk-Eye system to be "nonsense." But Federer's chief complaint was that challenges actually put undue pressure on the players to know whether balls were inside or outside the line.

"We would like to be able to rely a little bit on umpires," Federer said. "They tend to now just let us do the work, the tough stuff. They let us get embarrassed, basically." And that's true: The humiliation factor works on players, too. Being wrong in public is hard for everybody, and it's a bummer to have wasted a challenge when only a meager three are allotted. Plus, stadiums full of fans have been known to snicker at players who make challenges on obviously valid calls. The inclusion of player-requested challenges has also built yet another layer of intrigue to the game of tennis—for spectators, and for players. Fans were quick to embrace Hawk-Eye-assisted challenges as part of the spectacle, giving challenges their own little act in the larger repertoire of arena customs. Every time a player challenges a call at the U.S. Open, for instance, night-session crowds clap their hands in rhythm as the computer-generated yellow ball travels across the screen, their voices escalating until it plops into its predestined landing spot. And on the court, challenges have become a handy way to play mind games or kill momentum from across the net. "Players will challenge occasionally just to disrupt the rhythm of the match," Fox explains.

"If things are going badly, you slow the whole thing down. Make your opponent wait a little bit." Fox points out, though, that gamesmanship wasn't born when Hawk-Eye arrived. Players have long been known to take strategically timed bathroom breaks, change rackets, request new balls, and even take medical timeouts for the same reason. HAWK-EYE CHALLENGES AND THE HAWK-EYE-CHALLENGED There is also some amusing speculation around which players, and which types of players, challenge calls most effectively. Though little extensive research exists on the topic, Serena Williams, Jelena Jankovic, Andy Murray, and—hmm—Roger Federer were all identified in a 2009 Forbes report as some of the most miserable challengers at the previous year's U.S. Open. The same report revealed that the highest successful-challenge rates at the time belonged to James Blake and Caroline Wozniacki. Some have even wondered if there's a cultural bent to how efficiently players challenge.

The Australian, for instance, recently asserted that the British pro players in general are "hopeless at winning challenges." Similarly, a sports-reporter friend of mine remarked to me last summer that somehow, in the matches she'd just covered at the 2011 Davis Cup tie between the U.S. and Spain, the Spanish players seemed almost preternaturally good at making challenges. "They never seemed to lose one," she told me. She also noticed on that trip to Austin that the entire Spanish team was almost always on the bench during matches, cheering on their teammates. (When I revisited that with her recently, she recalled that she couldn't help but notice that the U.S. players' support on the sidelines usually consisted of just their team captain, Jim Courier—and that their collective challenge rate was dismal by comparison.) Those two phenomena, Fox says, may be linked. The "best" challengers are those who only challenge calls they know for certain are incorrect. Some players, he explains, make challenges in hopes that an unfavorable call was wrong—and that approach would predictably lead to a lower success rate in challenges overall. So his speculation is that the Spaniards may be better challengers simply because they trust that the line judges' calls are correct.

Which could have something to do with their supportive sportsmanship off the court, according to Fox. "The Spanish players are known to be friends with each other, and there's a kindred spirit there," he says. "They've got a little more camaraderie than a lot of countries. They stick together. They build each other up." Fox hypothesizes that because the Spanish players grew up playing on the same circuits, and clearly still enjoy such a healthy solidarity between players, they've likely grown accustomed to both giving and getting the benefit of the doubt. "The Spaniards," he says, "are pretty darn good sports." JUSTICE IS SERVED In its own peculiar little way, the challenge provision has both bolstered the politeness of tennis and undermined it. Hawk-Eye and the challenge system have managed to inject modernity and autonomy into a sport deeply rooted in old-fashioned chivalry. Some would call that a loss; others, a gain. That call, happily, remains open to interpretation. Fun Tennis Games for Kids and Junior Tennis Players Caleb Marshall Caleb runs Tennis Drills HQ, the web's largest resource for free tennis drills & exercises. He is a certified Advanced Tennis Coach from Sydney, Australia.

The key to keeping tennis fun for kids is to introduce enjoyable games to mix in with the drills and with match play. As children learn that tennis is fun, they will be far more inclined to make it one of their lifetime sports. Coaching kids and junior players is one of the most difficult tasks for a coach. Kids require tennis to be challenging enough to keep them engaged but not too hard so that they lose interest and passion for the sport. This is where kids tennis drills and games are so important. It keeps a lesson fresh, exciting and full of fun! We’ve put some of our favorite kids drills below that will keep the boys and girls engaged as they learn how to play tennis. Note: due to legal and privacy issues, the kids’ drills are filmed with adults. However, all these drills have been used extensively and successfully in kids’ tennis lessons. Tennis Game for Kids #1: First to the Baseline This drill should be using a modified net and balls, as shown in the video below. A coach needs to arrange the boys and girls so that they are standing on a cone each. Be sure to have no more than 4-5 players per coach for this drill, to give each child enough room to hit their shots.

The coach will set up the cones a couple of metres away from the net, depending on the standard of the players. When a child hits the shot in they will move their cone back towards the baseline one step, if they miss a shot they will move their cone in towards the net one step. The objective of the drill is for a player to move their cone all the way to the court’s baseline (or equivalent baseline for a kids court), and to hit a successful shot over the net from that “baseline.” The first player to do this wins. A good tip is to feed randomly to the children so they are always alert in ready position. This reduces any downtime that the kids have and will keep them actively engaged. For children who are at a higher standard than the other kids, hit the ball to their backhand or make them move a little to hit the shot, this tends to even up the competition without the kids being fully aware of it. Tennis Game for Kids #2: First to Five The underlying love for tennis with kids is generally rallying. Kids love to be able to rally, and it’s one of the main reasons why modified tennis has been so important for junior development, as it allows kids to rally at a young age.

First to Five works on kids being able to rally. The rules of the game are simple; kids need to rally 5 balls in with a partner and when they successfully do this they get a point. If you have a group of kids split them up into even teams and have a competition to see which partnership can reach a certain amount of points first – e.g. 7 points wins the match. It’s important to have progression and regression when coaching. So if two players are not able to rally 5 balls then you should bring them closer to the net to rally, and perhaps even lower the height of the net. If two players are finding it easy to rally then you should move them further back, or only have them hit certain shots, such as backhands. Tennis Game for Kids #3: Simon Says Simon Says is a much loved kid’s game that can be adapted for the tennis court. It’s a real winner with kids, especially the younger ones. For those that don’t know, Simon Says is a game where the coach says to do something e.g. “Simon Says hit a forehand shadow swing” and the boys and girls must do it.

However if the coach says “Hit a forehand shadow swing” without saying “Simon Says” then the players who do it lose and are eliminated from the game. So therefore a player should only do a task when the coach says “Simon Says.” The coach can also have another rule, which eliminates the child who is the last to do a certain task or skill when the coach says “Simon Says.” There are a number of varieties of drills the coach can use for this including shadow swings, racquets skills (see next drill below), movement drills such as running to different lines on the court, touching certain parts of the racquet that the coach names and even hitting certain shots if you give each child a ball and enough room to swing safely. Make sure the games are fast as there is elimination involved and you don’t want kids sitting out for too long. So if a game drags out for too long, be sure to declare joint winners and invite the kids who are eliminated back in for the next game. The other option is to have the child who was just eliminated choose what the next task “Simon Says” the players must do, and let the coach know this by whispering it in the coach’s ear, before the coach gives the instruction.

Tennis Game for Kids #4: Racquet Skills Challenge Kids need to learn how to “feel” the ball on the strings of their racquet. Self-rallies are a great way to learn how to do this, as the child isn’t relying on anyone else to place a ball in their strike zone such as a coach. Therefore the responsibility is on the child to control the ball. A child can learn how to control their shots by progressing through a range of racquet skills. There are a number of different skills you can get kids to do including bouncing the ball down between their strings and the ground. You could then progress to hitting the ball up in the air, allowing the ball to bounce on the ground between shots. The next progression could be to do this again without letting the ball hit the ground, keeping the ball “live” in the air the whole time. Further progressions are bouncing the ball on one side of the strings and then quickly rotating the racquet to bounce the ball on the other side of the strings.

Once kids have mastered that they can try hitting the ball a certain number of times on the edge of their racquet, and if they’re particularly advanced they can try bouncing the ball on their strings while having the racquet stretched around their back. Racquet skills are a great learning tool for kids as the boys and girls can start with fairly basic skills and then progress to advanced skills that require advanced control off a player’s racquet. If you’re coaching a group of young players then a fun alternative to this is the racquet skills relay race, where teams will compete against each other doing a set racquet skill as a relay race. This could be simply bouncing the ball along the ground as they move towards a cone 10m away and then going around the cone and back to their partner to tag them. Always Keep It Fun! The key to all kids’ tennis drills is to make sure that they are easy enough for kids to feel that they are achievable, as the sense of accomplishment is an important motivating factor in skill acquisition and learning. On the flip side it’s important that the drills are still challenging enough to keep a player motivated to continue to improve and to help accelerate their learning.

Above and beyond all this, it’s important that a kid receives an abundance of encouragement from their coach and/or parent. The coach is a source of empowerment and belief in the young child, and with this a love for the game is much easier to develop in the player. Finally don’t forget the golden rule. Everything must be fun! Fun is what motivates a child, fun is what makes them stay in the sport and become a life-long member of the game! How to Play a Tennis Tiebreaker: 12 Steps (with Pictures) How to Play a Tennis Tiebreaker Three Parts: Serving in a Tiebreaker Switching Sides in a Tiebreaker Winning the Tiebreaker Community Q&A In tennis, there are games, sets and matches. To win a game, a you must score four points and have a two point lead. To win a set, you must win seven games and have a two game lead. To win the match, you must win the best of three sets or the best of five sets depending on where you’re playing. [1] In tennis, there are no ties. When both sides are tied at six games a piece, a tiebreaker game will take place to decide the winner of a set.

Tiebreakers have their own unique rules that are different from those of normal games in tennis. If you want to compete in tennis, you should know what to expect when you have to play a tiebreaker. Steps Serving in a Tiebreaker 1 Decide who goes first. The person who was set to serve at the end of the last game will serve first in the tiebreaker. In tennis, the server switches at the end of every game. If you were the receiver in the game before the tiebreaker, then you will serve first. Just like in a normal tennis game, the first service will be from the deuce (right) side of the of the hash. Unlike a regular tennis game, the first server in a tiebreaker will only serve one point. In normal tennis games, only one person serves throughout the game. 2 Alternate servers. After the first player serves one point, the second server will serve two points. For the rest of the tiebreaker, each server will serve two points at a time. Remember that you will change servers after every serve where the total score is odd. [2] If the the score is four to three, then you would change servers because the total number of points is seven, an odd number.

If the score is four to two, then the server would have one more serve because the total number of points is six, an even number. 3 Serve from the advantage (left) side of the hash first. After the first serve in the tiebreaker, each player will perform the first of their two serves from the left side of the hash. In normal tennis games, you always serve first from the right side of the hash so it may feel a bit awkward to switch it up in the tiebreaker. An easy way to remember this is that every even point will be served from the advantage side of the court. For example, if the score is four to three and you are serving the eighth point in the game, then you will serve it from the left side of the court. [3] 4 Hit your second serve from the deuce side of the court. After you serve from the left side of the hash, you will move to the right side of the hash to perform your second serve. The exception to this rule is of course that the very first point in the tiebreaker is also served from the deuce side of the court. Every time you serve an odd point, you will serve it from the right side of the court.

For example, if the score is three to three and you are serving the seventh point in the game, then you will serve it from the right side of the court. Part 2 Switching Sides in a Tiebreaker 1 Keep your side at the beginning of the tiebreaker. In tennis, players only switch sides at the end of odd numbered games in a set. The tiebreaker is technically the thirteenth game in a set so both players will remain on the same side of the court they were on for the twelfth game. In normal tennis games you would switch sides after the first game, the third game, the fifth game and after any other odd numbered games. 2 Change sides after every six points. In normal tennis games, players keep their side for the entirety of the game. In tiebreakers however, players will alternate sides after every point where the total score is a multiple of six. Switching sides during the tiebreaker keeps everything fair. One side of the court may be at a disadvantage, especially if you’re playing outside. [4] If the score is five to one, then the total score of the game is six and the players would have to alternate sides.

Some examples of disadvantage you may have on a particular side of a court include: the glare from the sun, the wind blowing in your face and the blinding lights at the venue. 3 Switch sides in the middle of your service set. Because players change sides of the court at the end of an even number of points (six) and servers alternate after odd numbered points, whoever was serving before the side switch will serve their second serve after the side switch. [5] In normal tennis games, the side switch occurs at the beginning of a new game so there is always a new server. 4 Trade sides after the tiebreaker. If there is another set after the tiebreaker, the players will start the first game of the new set on the opposite ends of the court from where they ended up in the tiebreaker. If the score of the tiebreaker is seven to two, the players will switch sides for the next game even though there has only been three serves since the last side change. Most professional organizations worldwide don’t allow tiebreakers to be played in the final set of a match so there will always be a new set after a tiebreaker. The U.S.

Tennis Association is one of the only worldwide tennis organizations that does allow tiebreakers to be played in the final set of a match. Part 3 Winning the Tiebreaker 1 Be the first to score seven points. You only have to score four points in order to win a normal tennis game. In a tiebreaker however, you have to score seven points to achieve victory. The way points are counted in a tiebreaker is also different from the way they are counted in a normal tennis game. [6] In a normal tennis game points are counted as: love (zero), 15 (one), 30 (two) and 40 (three). In a tiebreaker points are simply counted as: one, two, three, four and so on. 2 Win by two. Just like a normal game of tennis, you must attain a two point advantage over your opponent to win the tiebreaker. The game will continue as long as it takes for one player gain a two point lead over the other. [7] If the score is seven to six, the player with six points has one more chance to even the score up. 3 Be aggressive. Tiebreakers are mental and can be high-stress situations.

You may be tempted to play it safe, but you’ll likely be more successful going into attack mode. Keep the intensity of your serves and be unpredictable. Try to get off to an early lead by getting in your opponent's head. For example: If both you and your opponent are right handed, then it would be safer to serve the ball down the middle of the court so they’d have to return it using their backhand. However, they might be caught off guard if you serve towards their stronger forehand. [8] Tiebreakers are often decided by mental errors. Force your opponent to make mistakes by making it impossible for them to know where you’ll hit the ball next. 4 Get in shape. If you and your opponent are evenly matched, then a tiebreaker can last for a long time. The game can go back and forth a number of times before one player finally earns a two point advantage. Make sure to do plenty of cardio to build your endurance. The last thing you want to do is run out of steam in the middle of a close match. Basic cardio exercises like jogging will help you build your general stamina but tennis is a sport that requires quick bursts of energy. Be sure to do drills that help your body build endurance specifically for tennis.

[9] Do mirror drills. One partner runs up court, down court and shuffles side to side while calling out where they’re moving. A partner on the other end of the court does their best to mirror the first partners motions. If the first partner says “left” then he’d shuffle to the left of the court and the other partner would shuffle to his right. Switch partners after sixty seconds and do this drill at least five times. Do side to side drills. A feeder hits one ball to the left side of the court, one to the middle, one to the right and then back again. A runner tries to chase down and return each ball. Each player should be runner for about five minutes. The feeder should have quite a few extra balls so the drill can run smoothly. Community Q&A In a tie break, why does the second server serve from the left side of the court? wikiHow Contributor The first serve is served from the right side of the court. The second serve is served from the left side of the court. This helps the players to keep track of the score, based on which side of the court the ball is being served. When the tiebreaker is finished,do the players switch sides of the court?

wikiHow Contributor The tiebreaker score is reported as 7-6 (4). What does the (4) signify? wikiHow Contributor It signifies how many points the loser of the tiebreaker scored. So in this case, the tiebreaker score was 7-4. Why was an advantage set played instead of a tie breaker in the match between Daria Garilova and her opponent at the Australian Open? wikiHow Contributor Most professional tennis associations require the last set in a match to be an advantage set. The U.S. Tennis Association is one of the only ones that allows a tiebreaker to be played during the last set of a match. During a tiebreaker in doubles, can the server choose which side to serve to first? wikiHow Contributor What is the serving order in a tiebreaker? wikiHow Contributor The person who received during the last game will serve the first point of the tiebreaker, then the other person will serve two points. After that, the server will change after ever two serves. Is there a limit to tiebreaker points to win the set. Do players keep playing until one wins by 2? What happens if the score is 7-7 or 8-8? wikiHow Contributor There is no limit.

The score could be 10-10 and they would have to keep playing until someone wins by 2.

Question: After how many games in a professional tennis match are the balls first replaced?
Answer: Seven