It is one of those tennis things that feels so normal you almost stop seeing it. The grass is green, the lines are white, the umpire says “quiet please”, and the ball is that fizzy, highlighter shade of yellow that somehow looks both cheerful and mildly radioactive. So, why are tennis balls yellow? The short answer is visibility. Yellow balls are easier to see, especially on television, and once tennis entered the colour TV age, the sport had a very practical reason to move a

Every tennis crowd has its own little ecosystem. There are the people who clap politely after a let cord, the ones who look physically unwell during a second serve, and the ones who somehow know the junior ranking history of a player currently ranked 87th in the world. That is part of the fun. Tennis is a sport of patterns, pressure, rituals and tiny emotional collapses disguised as forehands into the net. Naturally, it attracts all kinds of fans. Some watch with notebooks. S

Tennis scoring can feel like someone designed it during a rain delay and then refused to explain themselves. Love, 15, 30, 40, deuce, advantage, games, sets, matches. Lovely sport, mildly eccentric admin. So, what is the difference between a game, a set and a match in tennis? The short answer is this: points make up games, games make up sets, and sets make up a match. Think of it like Russian dolls, only with more grunting and the occasional argument about a line call. Tennis

Tennis scoring looks odd until it suddenly clicks. Then you realise it is not chaos at all, just a neat little ladder with some vintage wording sprinkled on top. Why does it go 15, 30, 40? Why is zero called love? Why can a game feel over, then somehow not be over for another ten minutes? So, how does tennis scoring work? In the simplest terms, a match is made of sets, sets are made of games, and games are made of points. Win enough points to win a game. Win enough games to w

Tennis looks like one sport until the surface changes. Then suddenly the same forehand behaves differently, the same serve lands with a different threat, and the same player can look either perfectly at home or faintly annoyed with the universe. Not naming any names, but a certain very tall, lanky Grand Slam champion immediately springs to my mind! That is part of the fun. Court types and balls shape tennis more than almost anything else. They affect bounce, speed, timing, mo