Tennis practice system

Abstract

A tennis practice apparatus consisting of an enclosure providing a playing area and having a regulation-height net member at one end located in front of a cage-like structure forming the end of the apparatus. This cage-like structure is arranged to cause a ball passing rearwardly over the net member to drop into the lower portion of the structure, which is concave and which is provided at its lowest point with a conduit connection leading to a pneumatic ball collecting and propelling mechanism having an outlet conduit directed so as to project balls forwardly over the net toward a player. The mechanism has an upper compartment with an inclined ramp element leading to a rotary ball-feeding member operated by a Geneva-type driving system acting to sequentially feed balls into registry with an outlet duct and a valved aperture in a partition wall between said upper compartment and a lower compartment. A blower or similar air compressor device provides positive air pressure in the lower compartment and negative air pressure in the upper compartment. The positive air pressure propels the balls forwardly to the player through the outlet conduit. A photoelectric scoring array is provided in the cage-like structure to record scores in accordance with zonal location of returned balls.