Perhaps the most important matter is sleep. Going to bed at two and sleeping till ten is by no means the same thing as getting eight hours sleep earlier in the night. It has come to be a well-recognised fact that one cannot go to a ball and play matches the next day.
CHAPTER III.
THE DOUBLE GAME.
I do not intend to discuss different ways of playing the double game, such as one man at the net and the other back, &c., because at the present time there is only one style of game among good players.
Both men should stand a yard or two yards in front of the service-line, and each near enough to his own side-line to prevent his being passed on that side. I do not mean that each player should have a spot in the court where he should stand, for then it would be easy to put the ball between the two players or outside of either of them.
When waiting for the return of the service, the player on that side should keep well out to defend his own side-line, and his partner (the server) should come up near enough to the middle-line to prevent the ball from passing between them. This principle applies more or less to all cases where the return is to come from a spot near a side-line. When the ball is in the middle of the court, each player of the other side should stand about the middle of his own court, and, as in the single game, should fall back a little if he expects a lob, and come forward a little to meet a low ball.
One great difference between the single and double games is that in the double the court is more fully covered, as there are only eighteen feet for each player to defend, instead of twenty-seven. The result is that it is much more difficult to place a ball where it cannot be reached, and one has to hit harder to kill than in the single game.
It is hard to say just where the server should stand to serve, but it should not be so near the middle as in the single game, because he has more space to cover on one side and none on the other. Perhaps the best place is about the middle of his own half of the base-line, but it is rather a matter of taste.
His partner should stand on the other side of the court just in front of the service-line, and near enough to the side-line to make it impossible for the ball to pass him on that side. There is hardly anything that discourages a player so much as to see his partner leave his side-line unprotected.