Strings (tennis)
In tennis, the strings are the part of a tennis racquet which make contact with the ball. The strings form a woven network inside the head (or "hoop") of the racquet. Strings have been made with a variety of materials and possess varying properties that have been measured, such as dynamic stiffness, tension retention, thickness (gauge), string texture (shape of the string), and rebound efficiency.
Tie (draw)
In most professional tennis matches, a tiebreaker rule applies in each set to avoid lengthy matches, as happens quite frequently if the traditional tennis rule for winning a set is followed. When players reach a score of 6–6 in a set, instead of continuing the set until one opponent wins with a two-game difference, a special game is played to decide the winner of the set; the winner is the first to reach at least seven points with a difference of two over the opponent. This however does not apply to the final set of matches at the French Open, allowing the total number of games in a match to be virtually unlimited (for example, the final set of the Isner–Mahut match at the 2010 Wimbledon Championships ended only when John Isner beat Nicolas Mahut 70–68). The Australian Open and Wimbledon Championships did not use a final set tiebreaker through the 2018 tournaments, but will begin to use a tiebreaker in 2019 (For Wimbledon, the final set tiebreaker will only occur once the score of the final set reaches 12–12).