TENNIS IN PHYSICAL EDUCATION AND SPORTS CLASSES IN SOME COUNTRIES

Abstract

Tennis is one of the most widespread and popular sports in the recent years. The great interest is justified due to the fact this sport develops all motor skills, speed, endurance, strength, agility. Tennis is an individual sport extremely important to master the technique of all the elements to achieve high results where the players rely only on their own skills, unlike team sports. Tennis is a sport for all ages. Everyone could start tennis training in the earliest childhood (5-6 years), as well as starts training in old age (20-60 years), as long as, there are no ambitions in achieving high level of mastery which would lead to participate in the largest tennis tournaments in the world and to compete with the best tennis players.

Each country has its own policy in the students’ educational system. Physical education is a small but essential part of this education in any educational degree. Different educational systems include the study of different sports in their physical education and sports programs. It is natural that sports such as athletics and gymnastics should be the ones that are largely the basis for the development of other popular sports. Basketball, football, volleyball and handball are mandatory sports games in almost all training programs in physical education and sports classes. Getting acquainted with the educational programs of some countries, I found that each of them includes tennis training in physical education and sports classes, of course, under different conditions and standards.

In all educational programs the main factor for the presence of tennis in the thematic distribution of teachers is the availability of appropriate facilities including playgrounds - tennis courts, usually with flooring that does not require serious maintenance, as well as the ability to use these courts for other sports. and goals and related equipment - tennis rackets, balls and some auxiliary devices that would help organize the educational process. In addition to the necessary material base, of course, the teacher must have the knowledge and skills to teach tennis at least to learn the basic types of strokes. In some of the programs, tennis is present as part of the elective sports in the group of racquet sports (tennis, table tennis and badminton) and has a limited number of hours per year. In other programs, with the desire of the management, the teacher and the availability of appropriate facilities, students can be trained to play tennis in a number of hours determined by the director of the school.