A legal shot must cross to your opponent’s side without bouncing on your side and it must bounce – or hit or be hit by your opponent – in their side of the court. Fail to fulfil those criteria and you lose the point.

The tennis scoring system works in a way in which players accumulate points, games, and sets. Tennis points are counted as 0, 15, 30, and 40. The first player to win 4 points wins a game, and the first player to win 6 games wins a set. In order to win the match, a player must win 2 sets.

Most tennis matches are played in a best-of-three format, which means that players need to win 2 sets to win the match. In Grand Slams, men play best-of-five sets while women play best-of-three sets. Doubles matches are best-of-3 with a 10-point tiebreak in lieu of the third set.

A tennis match is composed of points, games, and sets. A set consists of a number of games (a minimum of six), which in turn each consist of points. A set is won by the first side to win six games, with a margin of at least two games over the other side (e.g. 6–3 or 7–5).

There are 5 five ways of winning points: winners, double-bounces, errors by the opponent at the net, errors from the opponent where they hit the ball outside the court markings, and double-faults. Each of these ways gives the player one point.

So how do we read the scores in a tennis match? In brief, within each game scores increase from 0 to 15 to 30 to 40 as points are won. If a player wins the next point when they are on 40, they score 1 game – but only if their opponent is not on 40 too.