Tennis umpires may pursue officiating on the tennis court as a line umpire, rover or chair umpire.  Tennis umpires may pursue officiating as a tennis tournament administrator (i.e. referee or chief umpire).  Your officiating career may encompass one or more of the preceding positions.  During your first year, you should strive to network yourself and officiate at as many tennis events as you possibly can.

Typical assignments for beginning officials may vary - a representative sampling is listed below:

Roving Official:  As a roving umpire, you will be responsible for monitoring multiple courts.  Roving umpires are responsible for setting up the courts (including placing singles sticks and measuring the net), maintaining proper warm-up and rest period times, resolving scoring disputes, controlling spectators and enforcing the rules of tennis (which includes calling foot-faults and administering the point-penalty system if needed). 

Solo Chair Umpire:  As a solo chair umpire, you are the “only” working umpire and therefore responsible for everything involved with the match.  Prior to the player warm-up, the solo chair umpire informs the players what the chair umpire’s responsibilities are to be during the match. The chair umpire responsibilities are as follows:
• The chair umpire will toss a coin and request the players to make their choice of side/serve/receive.
• The chair umpire then times the warm-up and makes a brief pre-match introduction for the benefit of both players and spectators. 
• Solo Chair Umpires may make all line calls during the match or the players may call their own lines with the chair umpire overruling clear mistakes. (You will receive guidance on this from the Tournament Referee or Supervisor) 
• During the match, the chair umpire calls the score and makes all other calls including, but not limited to foot faults, lets, not-ups and code violations.

Line Umpire: Line umpires are used at larger tournaments.  As a line umpire you will call all shots directed at your assigned line.  As a base line umpire you may also call foot faults.  As a service line umpire you are responsible for calling the serve.  As a long line umpire you are responsible for calling the sidelines.  All line umpires are able to give an unsighted signal if he/she did not clearly see the ball to make a call.  As a line umpire you can make corrections to your initial call and report code violations to the chair umpire.

Referee:  As a referee, you will supervise all aspects of play (including conduct of players, coaches, parents, umpires, ball persons and administrative personnel.)  The Referee, along with the tournament committee, makes the draw and substitutes players in the draw.  The Referee ensures that courts are properly set-up, playable, assures that players are sent to their courts and that match scores are recorded.  The Referee settles scoring disputes and enforces the point penalty system.

As your tennis officiating career advances you will want to begin to work events such as sectional tournaments, USTA run tournaments, ITA college matches and tournaments, or professional tournaments such as (USTA Pro Circuit tournaments, WTA tournaments, ATP tournaments and high level international events).