Tennis Talk

Coach Derek Bertsch answers common questions about tennis, how it is played

What equipment is needed to play the sport of tennis?

“You gotta have a racket. Personally, I like to have my tennis shoes [but] some people have actual court shoes. But if you’re just beginning, just tennis shoes work great. You just need tennis balls and a court to go play at and luckily, tennis is a pretty popular sport throughout the United States, so you can pretty much find a tennis court close to where you’re at.”

How are points counted during a match?

“It goes love, 15, 30, 40, and then game. It’s just a different way of scoring. Basically, you go whoever gets the four first. Then, if you tie at 40 all you go to a deuce, and either we play the next point wins, whoever gets the next point wins that specific game. And if not, then we do something called add, and you have to basically win by two.”

What are the basic shots in tennis?

“You can have a slice shot where it kind of falls short. You have your forehand, which is just on your dominant side. So if you’re right handed, that would be your forehand. If you’re left handed, that would be your forehand. Whichever is your non-dominant hand is your backhand shot.”

How many tournaments are played throughout a school year?

“It can vary. Just off the top of my head [we’ve had] about 25 tournaments. That includes the fall and spring season because tennis runs all year round. But I know some schools can have upwards of 30 [while] some only do 20.”

How do the players improve their physical fitness?

“We do a lot of conditioning. We’ll go run and do some sprints. We’ll do some long distance but [lots of] sprints because you got to be able to sprint a lot on the tennis court. We do the weight room every now and then but we try to not hit it too much during the season just because they tend to get a little bit sore and fatigued if we do that. That’s about the full extent we do with just weight room strength and conditioning.”

How important is the balance of strength in tennis?

“Luckily you don’t have to have too much strength for tennis, although it does help, but I know that there’s a lot of people who just rely on fine motor skills. A lot of it just depends on how skilled you are at the actual swing or the movement. I would say that for most people, they’re more conditioned for endurance or sprinting rather than ‘oh I’m gonna go lift or I’m gonna go be like a powerlifter.’”

What is the process to choose the right tennis racket?

“So for the right racket, it definitely depends on the person. You have some students who like to have a racket that has less resistance which basically means the swing a little bit harder, and the ball doesn’t go as far whereas you have some that like a very tight balanced racket, which means that you swing a little bit less but your ball is definitely going to hit a little bit further. It’s just a lot of trial and error depending on what feels good to that specific person.”