How to keep score in tennis

Tennis scoring at a glance

How do points work in a tennis game?

Every point goes to whoever wins the rally, whether they served or not. Instead of 1, 2, 3, tennis uses its own names for the points in a game:

• 0 points: love
• 1 point: 15
• 2 points: 30
• 3 points: 40
• The next point: game, as long as you are 2 points ahead

So from 40-0, 40-15 or 40-30, the leader wins the game with one more point. A game won without the opponent scoring is a love game. Nobody knows for certain why tennis counts this way; why tennis is scored 15, 30, 40 covers the main theories.

How do you call the score in tennis?

The server's score always comes first. "30-15" means the server has 2 points and the receiver 1; "15-30" means the receiver is ahead. Level scores are "15-all" and "30-all", and three points each is called "deuce", not "40-all". In matches without an umpire, it helps if the server calls the score before each point, so any mix-up is caught straight away.

What happens at deuce?

When both players reach 40, the score is deuce. From deuce a player has to win two points in a row:

• Win the next point and you have advantage (often shortened to "ad").
• Win again from advantage and you win the game.
• Lose the point at advantage and the score goes back to deuce.

There is no limit on how many times a game can return to deuce. Some formats remove the advantage stage: with no-ad scoring, the next point at 40-40 wins the game.

Here is a deuce game point by point. In the examples the two sides are called Us and Them; the Us side serves this whole game, so each game score reads server first:

How do you win a set?

A set goes to the first player to win 6 games with a lead of at least 2. 6-4 finishes a set; 6-5 does not, so play goes on to 7-5 or 6-6. At 6-6 the players play a tiebreak, and its winner takes the set 7-6. The tiebreak counts as one game.

The older alternative is an advantage set, with no tiebreak at all: play continues until someone leads by 2 games. Wimbledon played its deciding sets that way until 2018, which is how Isner v Mahut finished 70-68 in the fifth set in 2010.

How does a tiebreak work?

A tiebreak is counted 1, 2, 3 rather than 15, 30, 40. The first player to 7 points with a 2-point lead wins it; if it reaches 6-6, it carries on until someone is 2 ahead. The player due to serve serves the first point, then each player serves two points in turn, and the players change ends every 6 points. The tiebreak rules page covers serve order, ends and the variants in detail.

How many sets are in a tennis match?

Most matches are best of 3 sets: the first player to win 2 sets wins the match. Best of 5 (first to 3 sets) is played in men's singles at the four Grand Slams. Some formats, ATP Tour doubles among them, replace the deciding set with a single 10-point match tiebreak, and at the Grand Slams a final set that reaches 6-6 is settled by a 10-point tiebreak. For a shorter game, FAST4 plays sets to 4 games.

Who serves, and when do you change ends?

• Serve: one player serves a whole game, and the serve alternates every game.
• Serving court: each game starts with a serve from the right-hand (deuce) court, and the server switches sides after every point.
• Ends: players change ends after the 1st, 3rd, 5th and every odd game of each set. If a set ends on an odd number of games (6-3, 7-6), they change straight away; if it ends on an even number (6-4), they change after the first game of the next set.
• Doubles: partners take turns to serve their team's games, so each player serves every 4th game. Each team can choose which partner serves first at the start of every set.

After a tiebreak set, the player who served first in the tiebreak receives in the first game of the next set.