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Learn to play tennis like the pros:

The Game of Tennis
The game of tennis is played on a court 78 feet long by 27 feet wide on a variety of surfaces including clay, grass, carpet and hard.
 
The court is divided in half by a net over which players must hit the ball. There are white baselines at each end of the court, where serves are taken and beyond which the ball must not bounce - if it does, then the ball is out and the hitter loses the point.
 
Each side is lined with two white marks to indicate the width of the court. The inner line shows the dimensions for singles play and the outer for doubles play.
 
Stretching from the net, to halfway down the court, there is a short white line dividing it into boxes - this is the service court.

The alleys are out-of-bounds for singles play. You sometimes still see dedicated singles courts without alleys, but usually the court is bounded for doubles and uses singles sticks to mark where the net post would be in singles.

tennis court

Tennis is a game of skill. It requires as much thinking and planning as stroke production. And it can give you as much or more fun from outfoxing opponents as you can get from whacking the devil out of the tennis ball.- William Talbert

THE AIM OF THE GAME:
There are only three principles in tennis. All of the rules are just details to support these three principles.
 
Principle One:
You must get the ball over the net.
 
Principle Two:
The ball must land in the court on your opponent's side of the net.
 
Principle Three:
Move the ball at the desired speed, angle and condition.
 
If you always do these three things, guess what? It is almost impossible to lose! All you have to do is get the ball over the net and into the court one more time than your opponent, and you're practically unbeatable.
 
Sounds simple enough, doesn't it?