rough or smooth: racket games used as a call when spinning a racket in a game of tennis or squash to decide which player should serve first or choose the end to serve from.

http://encarta.msn.com/dictionary_1861706198/rough.html

The Game and Hints on Play.The players decide who shall serve by spinning a racquet on its head. One spins and the other calls rough or smooth, ***the rough side of the head of the racquet showing the knots of some of the lower strings.******

http://31.1911encyclopedia.org/T/TE/TENNIS.htm

Esto es : rough, es el lado de la raqueta donde están los nudos del encordado. El otro lado (que no tiene los nudos) es el smooth.
No sé si existe una palabra para cada uno de los lados, pero por lo pronto, lo que te puedo sugerir es que expliques con un poco más de palabras: " uno de los jugadores elige o el lado del encordado que posee los nudos o el que no los posee".


The twisting tennis racket
This talk will present an explanation of the following experiment: Take a tennis racket and mark its faces so that they can be distinguished. Call one rough and the other smooth. Hold the racket horizontally so that the smooth face is up. Toss the racket attempting to make it rotate about the intermediate principal axis (which is perpendicular to the handle in the face of the racket passing through its center of mass). After one rotation catch the racket by its handle. The rough face will almost always be up! Thus the racket has made a near half twist around its handle.
http://www.math.ubc.ca/Dept/colloquia/cushman.html

Bueno, espero haberte podido ayudar aunque sea un poquito. Saludos y suerte!!