Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. Singles. Let us suppose the strokes to have been mastered, and the habit of keeping the eye on the ball to have been mastered also, so that you can forget the man already at the net or the man running up to the net. Now glue your mind on the game, and forget the score, especially if it is against you. Play up hard for each stroke. Do not, however, play to kill each ball straight out. A very good lob, for example, you should not try to kill right out of reach, but you should return it by a stroke with fair pace and length, relying on your chance of killing the ball eventually. There are three ways of playing Singles, differing according to your position in the court. The first is play from behind the base-line. In No. 14.—STEPPING INTO THE BACKHAND POSITION. this case, like A. W. Gore, you scarcely ever volley at all. The second is to run in on your service, and to volley everything. Campbell started this game in America, and the Americans in general adopt it. The third plan is to play from just behind the base-line until you get your opponent out of position, then to go right up on a good-length drive and volley at the net. But in all three cases there is this rule, to return to one of the two positions directly after every stroke, the back position being just behind the centre of the base-line, and the forward position being 2 to 4 yards away from the net, but along the centre-line from the net. There is a third position, which may be called the anticipating position, when your opponent's stroke is practically confined to one or two possibilities. But anyhow, you must begin to get into position for a stroke in good time, and you must begin to recover from a stroke and get ready for the next in good time also. There are too many play...