Let's talk about hand positions...

Hand positions are a good thing to learn when you play tetherball. Like, when you get served a ball and try to get it hit, are you gonna do it open handed? You can but it's Generally not a good idea for two reasons: 1. It hurts because the palm and fingers of your hands are some of the most sensitive parts of your body. 2. Because the ball isn't as likely to go as far. Simply because of the muscles you use.
Now, let's get on... the two main Hand postions to use are (1)The fist position(making a fist and using the end oposite to your thumb), And(2) The Open Hand Position(open handed, using the palm and fingers of your hand). The Most used(and the position you want to keep your hands in most of the time) is the fist position. You use it to serve and to hit when comming the oposite direction of where you're trying to go. It's good to keep your hands in this position most of the time because you're much less likely to jam your fingers because they're not sticking out as much. However, your Open Hand Postion is vital too, once you get the tetherball going the way you want it to, you want to keep it going! and that's when it's good to have your fingers sticking out because they provide more mass so you're half as likely to miss the ball. Once you get the ball going, you want to make it always sail over your oponants head far enough that they can't reach it. Depending on where at on the court you are, it depends on whether you should make the ball go up or down. If you've got the tetherball going and you've got your back to the line, then it's good to point your tetherball down so that it will come back up by the time it gets to your oponant. But, if you are facing the line, then it's good to get your tetherball as high as possible. If you have a higher pole, the tetherball will go slower and if you have a shorter pole, it's gonna go faster! The longer pole makes for a longer game and plus you have to cover more distance. And by the way, if you play tetherball very much, you either want to place your pole where there's no grass or in a spot where you don't mind the grass dying because, you'll tear up all of the grass within the circle if you play very much.
There, I hope that helps!