Road tennis is a variation of

tennis Tennis is a racket sport that is played either individually against a single opponent ( singles) or between two teams of two players each ( doubles). Each player uses a tennis racket that is strung with cord to strike a hollow rubber ball ...

invented in

Barbados Barbados is an island country in the Lesser Antilles of the West Indies, in the Caribbean region of the Americas, and the most easterly of the Caribbean Islands. It occupies an area of and has a population of about 287,000 (2019 estimate). ...

in the 1930s by primarily local working class Barbadians who could not afford to play

lawn tennis Tennis is a racket sport that is played either individually against a single opponent (singles) or between two teams of two players each ( doubles). Each player uses a tennis racket that is strung with cord to strike a hollow rubber ball cove ...

. Though mainly concentrated in the island nation of Barbados, it has been since further introduced to

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

and the wider

Caribbean The Caribbean (, ) ( es, El Caribe; french: la Caraïbe; ht, Karayib; nl, De Caraïben) is a region of the Americas that consists of the Caribbean Sea, its islands (some surrounded by the Caribbean Sea and some bordering both the Caribbean Se ...

. It is often played on public residential roads or at schools, community centres and recreational areas around the island where most road tennis courts are located, either on asphalt or concrete pavement surfaces.

Equipment

The game is played using two wooden rackets and one tennis ball with the fur removed. An eight-inch-high plank wood net is used on the court or road, which requires 21x10 feet of space to play.

Rules

The first player to 21 points is declared the winner. There are no volleys in the game and the server alternates after five points have been scored. Similar to

table tennis Table tennis, also known as ping-pong and whiff-whaff, is a sport in which two or four players hit a lightweight ball, also known as the ping-pong ball, back and forth across a table using small solid rackets. It takes place on a hard table div ...

, each serve must bounce once in the server's court. Some popular competitions include Monarch of the Court in Barbados. The governance for the sport is the Professional Road Tennis Association. Champions The player with the most attained tournament wins is Julian “Michael Jackson” White, other known as "The World Boss".

References

{{reflist Forms of tennis Sport in Barbados