Pretty Good on Paper

I checked earlier this week to see if anyone had a site that laid out the game of triples tennis, and other than a fictitious USTA news report about what looked to be a very different game (where two of the players work to distract those on the other team and may hit the opposing distracting player with his racket) there was none.  So here is one for the www, finally.  I live only to serve you. 

This is the game everybody at my Saturday morning tennis clinic shows up for.  It is played with two teams of at least three players.  More may be used as an alternate, which I will detail in a future post.  An additional person, the feeder, must also be there to make it work. 

It starts out with players in the positions below.  The feeder (F) feeds a ball into play.  The feeder should have a relatively large bucket of balls.  About 50 will do pretty well although 200 or so would be better, because you could play four games or so without having to pick up balls.  The feed should bounce about waist high and not be difficult to hit back. 

The point is then played out.  When the point has ended, the feeder immediately feeds in another ball.  Both sides rotate counter-clockwise at the end of the point (see below) and player 1 must hit the fed ball to the opposing team. 

If player 1 does not react quickly enough, or is slow to drag his lazy carcass to the forehand court in time to get it back, both sides continue to rotate counter-clockwise until someone manages to keep the ball in play.  Missed feeds count as lost points. 

Play continues until some point total, usually 21, at which time the players switch courts and the opposite team gets the feeds for a game.  In the case here the team signified by letters gets the feed for a game. 

This is just a starting point, of course.  The finer points of the game will be discussed in future posts, as well as essential strategies.   Please do let me know (in comments) if any of this could use clarification.