Dear President / Secretary / General Manager,

An Taoiseach, Micheál Martin, this evening announced the return of “full scale” Level 5 restrictions from midnight tonight until at least January 31st in a bid to contain the spread of the Covid-19 virus.

Unfortunately, this means that no indoor or outdoor tennis activities, including those involving children, should take place with an exception for designated High Performance Players*

Since the start of the pandemic in Ireland, Tennis Ireland have fully endorsed the public health advice of the Irish Government. We have engaged extensively and successfully with government to highlight the health and mental health benefits of tennis and the strong compliance with the safety protocols which has ensured that our sport has been a safe outlet for people of all ages during the pandemic.

We will endeavour to maintain this engagement in an effort to ensure our sport remains closed for as short a period as possible and to seek additional supports for our clubs during these difficult times.

Regards

Richard Fahey
Chief Executive
Tennis Ireland


*High Performance is defined as covering those who are:

Professional sports people and those who participate within professional competition
A member of a high-performance team funded by Tennis Ireland e.g. Davis and Fed Cup, Team Ireland programme recipients
Those who compete at major international events including European and World Champions, Olympic and Paralympic Games, Grand Slam, ATP, WTA, ITF Men / Women’s World Tour
National level Junior Players are not considered High Performance Players

As a tie break doesn’t happen too often and sometimes players can end up scratching their heads trying to remember how to proceed, here’s how...

The player who would normally be serving after 6-6 is the one to serve first in the tie break, and the tie break is considered a service game for this player.
The server begins his service from the deuce court and serves one point. After the first point, the serve changes to the first server’s opponent. Each player then serves two consecutive points for the remainder of the tiebreak. The first of each two-point sequence starts from the server’s advantage court and the second starts from the deuce court. In this way, the sum of the scores is even when the server serves from the deuce court. After every six points, the players switch ends of the court; it can occur in the middle of a server’s two-point sequence.

The tie break winner is the first person to reach 7 points or above with a 2 point lead on their opponent.