Anyone for real tennis?

In just a few weeks' time the World’s tennis greats will descend on Melbourne for the Australian Open, one of the premier events on the Australian sporting calendar.

But for lifelong racquet sports lover, Chris Doucas, the real tennis action takes place a short walk from Rod Laver arena in the neighbouring suburb of Richmond.

Starting January 9, Chris will be competing in the Boomerang Cup, a team event in the sport of real tennis.

Also known as court tennis or royal tennis, real tennis is the ancestor of modern lawn tennis.  Played on a walled court with an asymmetrical wooden racket and a cork-core ball, real tennis is notable for its truly dizzying scoring rules.

“It takes a couple of months to get used to all the scoring,” Chris said, explaining that he was introduced to the game after stumbling across a real tennis club while working in Hobart.

“I became a member and ever since then I've been addicted to it, because it's a very special type of sport, arguably one of the first organised sports in the world.

“And yeah, the scoring is quite amazing,” he said, before attempting to explain a few of the differences to Orange City Life.

“It starts off very similar to lawn tennis, you know, like sets and games and first the six, et cetera,” he began.

“But it's not like in lawn tennis where you serve out a full game and then you swap; there's no automatic swapping… in theory, if the conditions are right, the person could serve for the whole time.”

Unique in racket sports, Chris said, is that in real tennis, the ball bouncing twice does not win the attacking player a point.

“You are not penalised for it, but you keep track of where that mark was — and there's markings on the wall to designate that and it's called the chase,” Chris continued.

“So they keep a record of that (in yards) and it's these chases that actually determine how the serve changes. So this concept of chases, which is quite complicated at times. It changes the whole dynamics.”

Then there’s a window in the back of the court, which may or may not contain a picture of a Pope or church bishop, he continued.

“So that is a target and if you hit that target, you get a point,” he said.

“And on one side, there's a cowbell hanging on to the mesh that protects the spectators, and if you hit that cowbell, that's an automatic point… So there's many different ways of scoring points.”

Players of real tennis also receive a handicap, like golf, he said.

Then there’s the court, with an angled wall on one side which also adds to the complexity of the play.

“The net, by the way, is the least of the player's worries in this game,” Chris said.

“It's a lot of the angles played like squash off corners and you’re trying to get the ball into a corner. So it's quite an interesting and dynamic game.”

With just a handful of real tennis courts in Australia, Chris has had to get creative with his training in the lead-up to the tournament in January.

“I practise on a squash court, to get the angles, especially the serve, and so that my shot in real tennis will actually die in the corner, not hit the back wall and bounce up,” Chris said.

A lover of all racquet sports, Chris said there is just something about the game of real tennis that’s very special.

“Look,  I've spent over 50 years playing lawn tennis and that's probably my home base.. but I'm probably most excited about real tennis because it's just so different.”

The 2023 Boomerang Cup gets underway at the Royal Melbourne Tennis Club in Richmond, Victoria, on January 9 and concludes with a presentation dinner on January 21.