Sports is nowadays one of the most widespread recreational activities. One type of sport, namely Tennis, has over the last decades experienced an outstanding growth in popularity. Tennis is a sport which requires total involvement of its players, from an excellent physical shape to a superior mental state: a professional player of this sport needs to have iron nerves, amazing intelligence, instinctive reflexes, an above average reaction speed, but also adequate physical training. Maybe it's this that makes tennis one of the most dynamic sports, and its evolution all around the world as a performance (and Olympic) sport the more surprising.
In the late 1960's the first ever institutional form of organization of this sport was established. This led to the so-called Open Era. The tours were divided between categories and a ranking as well as a scoring system based on the importance of each tourwere put in place. All the strictness afterward resulted in one particular thing: tennis became representative to sports, but also to respect and fair-play.
Tennis is a sport with impressive dynamics. There are quite a few things which allowed that to happen: there are men’s as well as women’s singles, doubles, and mixed tours. Moreover, there are also competitions held especially for disabled or elderly persons.
Furthermore, in tennis, at the top level of competition, the scoring system and the operating rules stand as ideal premises for surprise and ranking twists, that is for atypical dynamics.
The scoring system implies the ‘defending’ of the scores gained over the previous season. Competitiveness is thereby stimulated, since, as a competitor one cannot allow oneself to be relaxed in any of the tours, having to defend the scores gained over the past year. This is perhaps why the players who manage to lead the professional circuit for years in a row are examples of genuine professionalism. The Swiss Roger Federerholds an impressive record: he managed to hold first place in the ranking for more than 4 straight years, from 2004 to 2008.
