The racket sport traditionally named lawn tennis was invented in Edgbaston, Birmingham, England, and is now commonly known simply as tennis. It is the direct descendant of what is now known as real tennis or royal tennis, which continues to be played today as a separate sport with more complex rules.
Most rules of (lawn) tennis derive from this precursor and it is reasonable to see both sports as variations of the same game. Most historians believe that tennis originated in northern France in the 12th century, but the ball was then struck with the palm of the hand, hence the name jeu de paume (). It was not until the 16th century that rackets came into use and the game began to be called 'tennis'. It was popular in the Kingdom of France as well as in England, where Henry VIII of England was a notable enthusiast of the game now referred to as real tennis.Crego, Robert. Sports and Games of the 18th and 19th Centuries, page 115 (2003).
By the late 19th century real tennis had a long history of rule codification, with Marylebone Cricket Club's 1872 Rules of Real Tennis regarded as the most authoritative. There was no such consensus for lawn tennis. As the new game began to spread in the early 1870s, several competing rulebooks emerged, causing confusion among players and clubs. In March 1875, an open meeting at Lord's was organised, resulting in the publication of the 1875 MCC Laws of Lawn Tennis in May. This code provided the foundations for the rules used at the first Wimbledon Championships in 1877.
The Davis Cup, an annual competition between men's national teams, dates to 1900. The analogous competition for women's national teams, the Fed Cup, was founded as the Federation Cup in 1963 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the founding of the International Tennis Federation, also known as the ITF. Promoter C. C. Pyle created the first modern professional tennis tour in 1926, with a group of American and French tennis players playing exhibition matches to paying audiences. The most notable of these early professionals were the American Vinnie Richards and the Frenchwoman Suzanne Lenglen.Open Minded – Bruce Goldman Players turning pro could not compete in the major (amateur) tournaments.
In the 1930s, a tennis‑like game called Miniten was developed within the naturist movement, played with a wooden bat on a smaller court.
In 1968 commercial pressures and rumours of some amateurs taking money under the table led to the abandonment of this distinction, inaugurating the Open Era, in which all players could compete in all tournaments and top players were able to make their living from tennis. With the beginning of the Open Era, the establishment of an international professional tennis circuit, and revenues from the sale of television rights, tennis's popularity has spread worldwide, and the sport has shed its upper/middle-class Anglophone image (although it is acknowledged that this stereotype still exists).
Etymology The word tennis came into use in English in the mid-14th century from French, via the Anglo-Norman term Tenez, which can be translated as 'hold!', 'receive!' or 'take!', a call from the server to his opponent indicating that he is about to serve. The first known appearance of the word in English literature is by poet John Gower in his poem titled 'In Praise of Peace' dedicated to King Henry IV and composed in 1400; "Of the tenetz to winne or lese a chase, Mai no lif wite er that the bal be ronne". (Whether a chase is won or lost at tennis, Nobody can know until the ball is run).
Origin
References to tennis are found in literature dating back to the Middle Ages. In The Second Shepherds' Play (c. 1500), a tennis ball is listed among the three gifts which the shepherds give to the newborn Christ. In The Turke and Gowin (c. 1500) Sir Gawain, a knight of King Arthur's round table, plays tennis against a group of 17 giants.Hahn, Thomas(1995). Sir Gawain: Eleven Romances and Tales. Medieval Institute Publications
Jeu de paume Most historians believe that tennis originated in northern France in the 12th century, but the ball was then struck with the palm of the hand, hence the name jeu de paume (). Originally it was played with a bare hand, and later with a glove. This game may have been played by monks in monastery cloisters, but the construction and appearance of courts more resemble medieval courtyards and streets than religious buildings.
Real tennis By the 16th century the glove had become a racquet, the game had moved to an enclosed playing area and the rules had stabilised. This version of the game is known today as real tennis.
Real tennis quickly became a popular leisure pursuit for European royalty. In 1437 at the Blackfriars, Perth, the playing of tennis indirectly led to the death of King James I of Scotland, when the drain outlet, through which he hoped to escape assassins, had been blocked to prevent the loss of tennis balls. James was trapped and killed.McGladdery, The Kings & Queens of Scotland: James I, p. 143 Francis I of France (1515–1547) was an enthusiastic player and promoter of real tennis, building courts and encouraging play among the courtiers and commoners. His successor, Henry II (1547–59), was also an excellent player and continued the tradition. The deaths of two French kings can be linked to tennis—Louis X died of a severe chill after playing, while Charles VIII died after hitting his head either en route to a game, or, according to a tertiary source, during one. King Charles IX granted a constitution to the Corporation of Tennis Professionals in 1571, creating the first pro tennis 'tour', establishing three professional levels: apprentice, associate, and master. A professional named Forbet wrote and published the first codification of the rules in 1599.The Encyclopedia of Tennisp. 17
In England, royal interest in the game began with Henry V (1413–22), but it was Henry VIII (1509–47) who made the biggest impact. As a young monarch he played the game with gusto at Hampton Court on a court he had built in 1530. It is believed that his second wife, Anne Boleyn, was watching a game of real tennis when she was arrested, and that Henry was playing when news was brought to him of her execution. By the reign of James I (1603–25), London had fourteen tennis courts.The Encyclopedia of Tennis, p. 18
In 1555 an Italian priest, Antonio Scaino da Salothe, wrote the first known book about tennis, Trattato del Giuoco della Palla. More references to tennis are found in the literature of this period. Perhaps most famously, a basket of "tennis balles" is given to King Henry in William Shakespeare's Henry V (1599), in mockery of his youth and playfulness. Shakespeare appears to have read about this incident from some earlier chronicles and ballads.Shakespeare, William (Early 1600s). The Chronicle History of King Henry the Fifth. Act 1, Scene 2 One of the earliest paintings to feature tennis is Giambattista Tiepolo's The Death of Hyacinth (1752–1753), which includes a strung racquet and three tennis balls. The theme of the painting is the mythological story of Apollo and Hyacinth as recounted in Ovid's Metamorphoses. Giovanni Andrea dell'Anguillara translated the Metamorphoses into Italian in 1561, and replaced the original text's references to ancient discus with the more contemporary game of tennis (Italian: pallacorda). Tiepolo's painting had been commissioned in 1752 by German count Wilhelm Friedrich Schaumburg Lippe, who was an avid tennis player.
The game thrived among seventeenth century nobility in France, Spain, Italy and the Austro-Hungarian Empire but suffered under English Puritanism. By the Age of Napoleon the royal families of Europe were besieged and real tennis was largely abandoned.The Encyclopedia of Tennis, p. 21 Real tennis played a minor role in the history of the French Revolution, through the Tennis Court Oath (Serment du Jeu de Paume). On 20 June 1789, members of the Third Estate found themselves locked out of a meeting of the Estates-General and convened at a real tennis court near Versailles to sign this pledge, which formed a decisive early step in starting the revolution. The French Revolution also led to the decommissioning of many real tennis courts in France, as tennis fell out of vogue due to its aristocratic associations.
An epitaph in St Michael's Church, Coventry, written circa 1705 read, in part:
In England, during the 18th and early 19th centuries as real tennis declined, three other racquet sports emerged: racquets, squash racquets and lawn tennis (the modern game). Many historic tennis courts have been preserved in the British Isles, including courts at Oxford, Cambridge, Falkland Palace in Fife where Mary Queen of Scots regularly played, and Hampton Court Palace.
Birth of lawn tennis
The lawyer and memoirist William Hickey recalled that in 1767 "in the summer we had another club, which met at the Red House in Battersea fields, nearly opposite Ranelagh.... The game we played was an invention of our own, and called field tennis, which afforded noble exercise.... The field, which was of sixteen acres in extent, was kept in as high an order, and smooth as a bowling green."Quennell, Peter, ed. The Prodigal Rake: the Memoirs of William Hickey (1962) p.58.
The modern sport is tied to two separate inventions.
Between 1859 and 1865, in Birmingham, England, Major Harry Gem, a solicitor, and his friend Augurio Perera, a Spanish merchant, combined elements of the game of racquets and a ball of wind and played it on a croquet lawn in Edgbaston.Tyzack, Anna, The True Home of Tennis Country Life, 22 June 2005Lawn Tennis and Major T. H. Gem Birmingham Civic Society In 1872, both men moved to Leamington Spa and in 1874, with two doctors from the Warneford Hospital, founded the world's first tennis club, the Leamington Tennis Club.
In December 1873 Major Walter Clopton Wingfield designed an hourglass-shaped tennis court in order to obtain a patent on his court (as the rectangular court was already in use and was unpatentable). A temporary patent on this hourglass-shaped court was granted to him in February, 1874, which he never renewed when it expired in 1877. It is commonly believed, mistakenly, that Wingfield obtained a patent on the game he devised to be played on that type of court, but in fact Wingfield never applied for nor received a patent on his game, although he did obtain a copyright — but not a patent — on his rules for playing it. And, after a running series of articles and letters in the British sporting magazine The Field, and a meeting at London's Marylebone Cricket Club, the official rules of lawn tennis were promulgated by that Club in 1875, which preserved none of the aspects of the variations that Wingfield had dreamed up and named Sphaeristikè (, that is, "sphere-istic", an ancient Greek adjective meaning "of or pertaining to use of a ball, globe or sphere"), which was soon corrupted to "sticky". Wingfield claimed that he had invented his version of the game for the amusement of his guests at a weekend garden party on his estate of Nantclwyd, in Llanelidan, Wales in 1874, but research has demonstrated that even his game was not likely played during that country weekend in Wales. – Mary Bellis He had likely based his game on both the evolving sport of outdoor tennis and on real tennis. Much of modern tennis terminology also derives from this period, for Wingfield and others borrowed both the name and much of the French vocabulary of real tennis, and applied them to their variations of real tennis. In the scholarly work Tennis: A Cultural History, Heiner Gillmeister reveals that on 8 December 1874, Wingfield had written to Harry Gem, commenting that he had been experimenting with his version of lawn tennis for a year and a half.Leamington Tennis Court Club Gem himself had largely credited Perera with the invention of the game.