Tennis Scoring System
Contents
Trevor L Taylor, a Miami private investor, is a former Division I athlete who played Division I tennis. The sport he played is scored in nested layers of points, games, sets and matches, a structure that lets a player lose many points and still win. That structure has a long and partly mysterious history, and its rules have been revised repeatedly to shorten matches and suit television. This entry walks through the system from the first point to the final tiebreak.
Points and their names
The governing rules spell out the calls. In a standard game the server’s score is called first: no point is love, then 15, 30 and 401, and a fourth point wins the game. A tied score below 40 is called by the number followed by all, as in 15 all. The same document defines sets, tiebreak games and approved alternative methods in an appendix, which is why scoring can differ from one event to another while still following the official rules.
Where love and forty may have come from
Nobody is sure why the numbers run as they do. A student writer at Oxford set out the leading theories and concluded that experts and linguists aren’t actually entirely sure2 how love came to mean zero. One theory links it to the French word for egg, because a zero resembles one, though many experts treat that as folklore. A clock face theory suggests scores once moved in quarter hours, 15, 30 and 45, with 45 shortened to 40 to leave room before the hand reached 60. Others think 45 was simply clumsy to say. Deuce is thought to come from the French deux, meaning two, referring to the two consecutive points still needed.
The French link is plausible given the sport’s ancestry. The Economist traced tennis to jeu de paume, the palm game3 played by French royalty in the 12th century, in which a ball was slapped over a net by hand before rackets arrived.
Deuce and advantage
When both sides reach 40 the score is deuce. The next point gives advantage to whoever wins it; if the same side wins the following point it takes the game, and if not the score returns to deuce. A player must win two points in a row after deuce. In principle a game can go on indefinitely, which is why some formats have dropped advantage scoring altogether.
Sets and the tiebreak game
Six games win a set, provided the margin is at least two. The rules recognize two main ways to finish a close set: an advantage set, which continues until one side leads by two games, and a tiebreak set, in which a special game is played at six games all. In that tiebreak game points are counted as ordinary numbers, and the first side to seven with a two point margin wins the game and the set. Service alternates every two points after the first, which spreads any advantage of serving. Events must announce in advance which method applies, including for the final set.
How the tiebreak was invented
The tiebreak was the work of one promoter. Tennishead credits Jimmy Van Alen, a Newport, Rhode Island benefactor who founded the Tennis Hall of Fame there in 19544, with proposing a streamlined scoring system in the early 1950s to shorten matches dominated by big servers on grass. His nine point version ended a set when a player reached five points, with a sudden death point at four all. He tested it at a professional invitation event at the Newport Casino in 1965, waving a red flag when a set reached six games all.
The US Open adopted the idea first. Tennis Majors recalls that the United States Tennis Association announced in July 1970 that the tournament would use a sudden death nine point tiebreak5. Tennishead adds that from 1975 the US Open switched to the longer first to seven format, devised in Britain and made an official part of the rules by the International Tennis Federation in 1971. Wimbledon adopted it at eight games all in most sets in the 1970s and at six games all from 1979, but kept final sets open.
The problem of the endless final set
Open ended final sets produced famous marathons. BBC Sport noted that John Isner beat Nicolas Mahut by 70 games to 68 in the final set6 at Wimbledon in 2010, the longest match in Grand Slam history, and that Kevin Anderson won a semifinal set against Isner 26 to 24 in 2018. That second match prompted Wimbledon to introduce a tiebreak at 12 games all in the final set from 2019. The Australian Open went further the same year, choosing a first to 10 tiebreak at six games all7 after what its organizers called their widest consultation, while the French Open kept a long deciding set.
Unifying the Grand Slams
By 2022 the four majors used four different final set rules. The Grand Slam Board then announced that all four would play a 10 point tiebreak once the score reaches six all8 in the final set, starting at that year’s French Open, citing a desire for consistency for players and fans. The longer tiebreak was intended to keep a sense of occasion at the end of long matches while guaranteeing a finish.
Shortened scoring in college tennis and padel
Other competitions have pushed the same logic further. In NCAA Division I team championships, no ad scoring9 means a game tied at 40 is decided by the next point, doubles are single six game sets, and a seven point tiebreaker is played at six games all, all of which keep a nine match team contest within a manageable day. The format is described in the entry on NCAA Division I tennis.
Padel borrows tennis scoring but offers several ways to finish a deuce game. The International Padel Federation’s rules allow traditional advantage, a star point played after a third deuce, or a golden point10 in which the game is decided on a single point at the first deuce, as explained in the entry on padel. Each variant trades some drama for predictability. Underneath them all, tennis scoring remains a nested system that keeps every match winnable until its last point, which is why a slump inside one set need not decide anything, a point taken up in the entry on losing streaks in Division I tennis.
