A Tour Of Tennis Through Time

We take a look at how tennis has developed from a game played by kings to a sport played by millions

There is, of course, an ongoing debate about the precise origins of tennis, which is made all the more understandable when one realizes the games that predated it, and thus could be said to have spawned it, were so simple they could have come from anywhere. However it is agreed that “Jeu de paume” (game of the palm) where two players hit a ball back and forth with the palm of the hand, is probably the main thread of providence for this now hugely popular game.

Jeu de paume was awfully popular itself in 12th century France and Louis X was a fan and player, continuing as the game developed. It was this French monarch who built the first indoor court, and indeed died after a particular strenuous game in 1316 AD, and other courts were built by other courts including that of Charles V in the Louvre Palace. It might seem strange to us but it wouldn’t be for another few hundred years before anyone thought of using racquets, in the 16th century.

This is when it first gained the name tennis which etymologically comes from the French “tenez”, a word as easily used to mean “take” and “receive” as it is “hold”, which was the call made by a player upon service, something that has more recently been replaced with unnerving grunting. Only played indoors where the walls could be utilized, the game was popular in England and France with Henry VIII a big fan of this “real tennis” and he was known to bet on sports in the UK before there was one.

The biggest change, the revolutionary moment, for the development of tennis wasn’t, however, anything to do with tennis per se, but an invention first patented in 1830 created by a man called Edwin Budding in 1827 in a town called Thrupp, the lawn mower. The ability to get uniform grass surfaces played a huge role in the popularization of many outside sports, and one of them was tennis that no longer required a huge expensive indoor court to be played. This accessibility would prove to be the secret to its longevity.

A New Era For Tennis

From The 12th Century To the Modern Day

• Tennis was once the sport of kings

• Popularity rose over a hundred years

• People support their favorites with mobile betting

In the early 1860s two friends, messers Augurio Perera and Harry Gem, created a careful mixure of games that included influences from the Basque game Pelota amongst others they played on a croquet lawn, and in 1872, with two doctors, started the first tennis club in the world in, of all places, Leamington Spa, something taken a step further by Major Walter Clopton Wingfield who patented a similar game called Sphairistike, the Greek for “ball playing” which took on the rather more simple name of “sticky” and became very popular.

Obviously the elements of the modern game were all there, balls, racquets, net, etc, but his sale of them together as a boxed set made it quite the garden game at parties, and it was this marketing that saw it sold across the world and being the real engine of the game’s popularity. Perhaps more importantly there was the laid down rules included so for the first time everyone was playing the same game wherever they were, however the fact that Wingfield was so well connected might well have helped.

In 1874 he sent sets to the aristocracy and but three years later in 1877 the first Wimbledon Championships were played in London, a surefire testament to his industrious skills of selective publicity, but there were still refinements to the rules that were highlighted in this championship, but it would be another fifty years before a proper set were promulgated, in the meantime the game took the world by storm, possibly helped by people wagering on it despite strict UK gambling laws at the time.

Mary Ewing Outerbridge brought the game to the US in 1874 and in 1880 the first American National Championship was held at the Staten Island Cricket Club, leading to the 1881 establishment of the United States Tennis Association to standardize some wayward rules of its own. Ten years later France would hold it’s own Championships and another decade or so behind that the Australians would too and create the framework for the Grand Slam.

Federating Tennis Rules

In 1924 the International Law Tennis Federation, that evolved into the International Tennis Federation, put up a set of unified rules that have been adhered to ever since with a few additions over the years. The biggest of these would be the tie-break rules that have assisted with close matches ever since their invention by James Van Alen. The ending of prolonged sets and matches did much to assist in the further growth in the popularity of the game.

So popular did it become that the first professional tennis tour that had been created as early as 1926 by C. C. Pyle created a real divide between the worlds of pro and amateur tennis. A divide mostly in terms of money gained by the respective players, promoters etc that was eventually to be its downfall. After a prolonged period of rumors that amateur players were being paid under the table, and an increasingly commercialized sports world demanded it, the distinction was dropped and the so called “open era” began in 1968.

The open era ushered in a new wave of talent, the establishment of an international professional tennis circuit and massive financial injections from television rights and merchandizing. It’s media coverage and popularity meant it soon shrugged off its slightly middle-class connotations in practical terms with just the stereotype remaining at country clubs that haven’t changed since before the 1954 opening of the International Tennis Hall Of Fame.

Today tennis is one of the most popular ball games in the world with players from all over the globe competing in the Olympic tennis event, the numerous national championship, the four major Grand Slam events and of course the Davis cup in which national teams have competed since 1900 and is, for the followers of sports betting still big gambling news as sides from around the world are backed online by hoards of supportive wagerers.

Read more about the game of tennis.