Singles, the greatest strain in tennis, is the game for two players.It is in this phase of the game that the personal equation reaches its crest of importance.This is the game of individual effort, mental and physical.
A hard 5-set singles match is the greatest strain on the body and nervous system of any form of sport.Richard Harte and L.C.Wister, the former a famous Harvard University football and baseball player, the latter a football star at Princeton, both of whom are famous tennis players, have told me that a close 5-set tennis match was far more wearing on them than the biggest football game they had ever played.
Singles is a game of daring, dash, speed of foot and stroke.It is a game of chance far more than doubles.Since you have no partner dependent upon you, you can afford to risk error for the possibility of speedy victory.Much of what I wrote under match play is more for singles than doubles, yet let me call your attention to certain peculiarities of singles from the standpoint of the spectator.A gallery enjoys personalities far more than styles.Singles brings two people into close and active relations that show the idiosyncrasies of each player far more acutely than doubles.The spectator is in the position of a man watching an insect under a microscope.He can analyse the inner workings.
The freedom of restraint felt on a single court is in marked contrast to the need for team work in doubles.Go out for your shot in singles whenever there is a reasonable chance of getting it.Hit harder at all times in singles than in doubles, for you have more chance of scoring and can take more risk.
Few great singles, players are famous in doubles.Notable exceptions to the above statement come to mind at once in the persons of the Dohertys, Norman E.Brookes, and F.B.Alexander.Yet who could accuseW.M.Johnston,R.N.Williams(notwithstandinghisWorld's Championship doubles title), Andre Gobert, the late Anthony F.Wilding,M.E.M'Loughlin, or Gerald Patterson of playing great doubles? All thesemen are wonderful singles players, playing singles on a double court alongside some suffering partner.The daring that makes for a great singles player is an eternal appeal to a gallery.None of the notable doubles players, who have little or no claim to singles fame, have enjoyed the hero-worship accorded the famous singles stars.H.Roper-Barrett, Stanley Doust, Harold H.Hackett, Samuel Hardy, and Holcombe Ward, all doubles players of the very highest order, were, and are, well liked and deservedly popular, but are not idolized as were M'Loughlin or Wilding.
Singles is a game of the imagination, doubles a science of exact angles.
Doubles is four-handed tennis.Enough of this primary reader definition.I only used that so as not to be accused of trying to write over the heads of the uninitiated.
It is just as vital to play to your partner in tennis as in bridge.Every time you make a stroke you must do it with a definite plan to avoid putting your partner in trouble.The keynote of doubles success is team work; not individual brilliancy.There is a certain type of team work dependent wholly upon individual brilliancy.Where both players are in the same class, a team is as strong as its weakest player at any given time, for here it is even team work with an equal division of the court that should be the method of play.In the case of one strong player and one weaker player, the team is as good as the strong player can make it by protecting and defending the weaker.This pair should develop its team work on the individual brilliancy of the stronger man.
The first essential of doubles play is to PUT the ball in play.A double fault is bad in singles, but it is inexcusable in doubles.The return of service should be certain.After that it should be low and to the server coming in.Do not strive for clean aces in doubles until you have the opening.Remember that to pass two men is a difficult task.
