My favourite sport is tennis and it is played by two opposing players (singles) or pairs of players (doubles). We use a racquet to play and hit the ball over the net in a rectangular court. Points are given to a player or a team whenever the opponent fails to hit the ball over the net correctly. The tennis court is 78 feet (23.77) long. Its width is 27 feet (8.23) for singles matches and 36 feet (10.97 metres) for doubles matches. There are five surfaces to play tennis.
Clay court, carpet court, hard court, grass court and indoor court. Indoor courts allow you to play tennis regardless of the hours of darkness and in any weather conditions and has more comfortable playing conditions. Grass courts are the fastest type of courts in common use.
They consist of grass grown on very hard-packed soil. Tennis originated in the mid 14 th century. It was originally called lawn tennis. The word tennis came into use in English in the mid-14th century from old French. At this time there were two types of tennis known as Royal tennis and Real tennis.
The medieval form of tennis was known as Real tennis - a game that evolved over three centuries, from an earlier ball game played around the 12th century in France which involved hitting a ball with bare hands and later with a glove. In 1877, the very first tennis tournament took place.
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| Serena Jameka Williams |
It was the Wimbledon Tennis Championships and it was held at the All England Croquet and Lawn Tennis Club in Wimbledon, London and they were singles matches.
There are many good tennis players and these are some of my favourites. Roger Federer is a Swiss professional tennis player. He is ranked number five in the world by the Association of Tennis Professionals. He has won 20 Grand Slam men’s singles titles, an all-time record shared with Rafael Nadal and 14 Grand Slams.
Federer has been number one in the ATP rankings for a record total of 310 weeks – including a record 237 consecutive weeks – and has finished as the year-end number one five times. Federer has won 103 ATP singles titles, the second-most all-time behind Jimmy Connors and including a record six ATP Finals. Men’s singles titles at Wimbledon in 2009. Serena Jameka Williams is an American professional tennis player and former world number one in women’s singles tennis. She has won 23 grand slam singles titles, the most by any player in the open era, and the second most of all time behind Margaret Court (24). The Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) ranked her world number one in singles on eight separate occasions between 2002 and 2017. She reached the number one ranking for the first time on July 8, 2002. On her sixth occasion, she held the ranking for 186 consecutive weeks, tying the record set by Steffi Graff. In total, she has been number five for 319 weeks, which ranks 3 rd in the open era among female players behind Graf and Martina Navrovitina.
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| Sandail Perera |
Williams holds the most Grand Slam titles in singles, doubles, and mixed doubles combined among active players. Her 39 Grand Slam titles put her joint-third on the all-time list and second in the Open Era: 23 in singles, 14 in women›s doubles, and two in mixed doubles. She is the most recent female player to have held all four Grand Slam singles titles simultaneously.
My father who is a tennis fan enjoys playing tennis too. He use to take me to watch him playing tennis. That made me interested in playing tennis. So, I wanted to give it a try. It was fun and enjoyable. I started playing tennis from nine years . I believed it improved my social and mental skills. I go for tennis practices during weekends and I play at school too practicing to improve. My school won the best tennis team title in 2019 and it encouraged me to play tennis.
Sandail Perera
Grade 7, Bishops College, Colombo