The Washington Kastles, the local World Team Tennis franchise, played their 2009 home opener last night. Sadly, their 23-16 loss to the 1-2 Philadelphia Freedoms (whose star player Venus Williams was the big draw of the evening), pushed their record back to 0-3 overall. But World Team Tennis is not entirely about what’s going on on the court or trivial things like win-loss records. In fact, we’d like to dub World Team Tennis as something more appropriate. Moving forward, we’ll call it what it is: Party Tennis.

Party Tennis’ rules are a little different from what you’re used to:

• Two men and two women compete on each team.
• The match format consists of five sets (men’s singles, women’s singles, men’s doubles, women’s doubles and mixed doubles).
• Every game counts as a point in the overall score. (For instance, a typical score is 23-19.)
• A team must win the last game of the last set or the match goes into overtime.

Got it? In addition to all that, you have a rowdy crowd that’s encouraged to cheer, actual cheerleaders and hypemen (and women), a knight mascot and giant plushie tennis ball named Topspin roaming the stands, an exuberant announcer giving play-by-play, a coach who can challenge calls, let serves that are still in play and thundering music coming from a DJ booth. Like I said: Party Tennis.