Sports 360: Tennis

By Kelly Kinas ‘16

Another week, another lesson in a sport I find really cool. Tennis is my family’s sport of choice. Both of my parents still play, my sister was the captain in high school, and my brother’s being recruited for D3 in college. You can imagine my parents faces when I told them in 4th grade that, after a year, I didn’t want to play anymore and wanted to take up competitive cheerleading. I was the black sheep at that point.

I’ve always loved watching tennis and I actually just picked up tennis again by taking the tennis class offered here at USC for 1 unit on Fridays from 11-1pm. With the Australian Open just finishing, I thought this would be a great time to explain tennis and get everyone educated before the USC teams win it all.

Hit a serve and get ready to rally. Here we gooooo!

BASICS OF TENNIS:

• There are 5 different variations: Men’s Singles, Women’s Singles, Men’s Doubles, Women’s Doubles, and Mixed Doubles.
  
• There are 4 Grand Slam Tournaments: US Open, Wimbledon, Roland Garros (aka French Open), and Australian Open.
  
• The thing in their hands is called a “racquet” and use that to hit the yellow ball (tennis ball) over the net.
• The goal is to hit the ball over the net, into your opponents court within the boundaries.
• There are different types of swings one can do: Forehand, backhand, slice, volley, overhead, and serve.

FAMOUS CURRENT TENNIS PLAYERS YOU SHOULD KNOW:

• Serena Williams (GOAT)(21 Grand Slam Singles Titles)
  
• Roger Federer (GOAT)(17 Grand Slam Singles Titles)
  
• Rafael Nadal (Rival of Federer)(14 Grand Slam Singles Titles)
  
• Novak Djokovic (11 Grand Slam Singles Titles)
• Maria Sharapova (5 Grand Slam Singles Titles)
  
• Bryan Brothers (They’re brothers)(16 Grand Slam Doubles Titles)

FAMOUS PAST TENNIS PLAYERS YOU SHOULD KNOW:

• Steffi Graf  (22 Grand Slam Singles Tournaments) 
  
• Andre Agassi (Husband of Steffi Graf, also won 8 Grand Slam Singles)
  
• Pete Sampras (14 Grand Slam Singles Titles)
  
• John McEnroe (7 Grand Slam Singles Titles)
  

THE FOUR GRAND SLAMS (THEY ARE ALL DIFFERENT):

• Australian Open: Held in January in Australia, hard court, first grand slam
  
• Roland Garros: Held in May in Paris, clay court
  
• Wimbledon: Held in June in Wimbledon (in Britain), grass court
  
• US Open: Held in August in New York, hard court, last Grand Slam
  
• Some tennis players are really good on certain courts and only okay on others. Nadal is the master of the clay court but that’s most of his grand slam wins. Federer, on the other hand, handles himself well on all courts.

USC TENNIS TEAMS ARE AMAZINGLY AWESOME

Both the Men’s and Women’s teams have won the PAC-12 championship multiple times and the NCAA tournament. The whole point behind the article is that the tennis season has official started for the teams and USC is spiffing up the courts to make them super cool. USC has a tennis stadium, Mark’s Stadium, that is across the way from KAP. EVERYONE SHOULD GO SUPPORT THE TENNIS TEAMS. 

The Men’s next home match is April 1st, but they play UCLA in Westwood March 1st! The women’s team’s next home match is February 19th at 1:30 so everyone go out to Mark’s Stadium and support!

Tennis is so much more than people grunting and hitting a ball over a net. That’s a part of it but it’s one of the most universal sports because there are Grand Slams played all over the world. Keep an eye out!

Fight on!