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Ancient Beginnings
Ball games can be traced back to ancient times and the earliest representations can be found in carvings in Egyptian temples dating from 1500BC. The Ancient Egyptians and the people that followed actually played ball games as part of their religious ceremonies. These traditions and the whole concept of the ball game spread into Europe in the 8th century, the influence spread by the Moors whose Empire reached into Southern France. As strange as it may seem, it was the meeting of this eastern culture with Christianity which eventually gave rise to tennis!
Christian Monks became interested in the religious rites of the Moors and were the first Europeans to play the ball game that was to become tennis. The earliest version of the game was called ’La Soule’ where players would hit a ball to each other using either their hands or a stick. The game became very popular in Monasteries all over Europe, so much so that the Church of the day even considered prohibiting the game!
This very early version of tennis, where the ball was often hit against courtyard walls, soon made it out of the monasteries and during the 12th and 13th centuries it was to develop further. Players found that they had more control over the ball using just their hands, so the natural development was to create a leather glove. It was only a matter of time before the glove was supplemented with a wooden handle - creating the very first tennis racket! The balls were refined too, moving from solid wood to much softer designs made of leather stuffed with bran. The game soon became very popular, particularly in France where it was adopted by Royalty.
Real Tennis
It was in France that the game as we know it today really came into being. During the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries it became the highly fashionable sport of kings and noblemen and was called ’ Jeu de paumme’ - the game of the palm. Early French players would begin a game by shouting ’tenez’ i.e. ’Play!’ and the game soon became known as Royal, or Real Tennis.
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Real tennis was actually very different to the game that we know today. It was played indoors, in large galleries with jutting roofs and points were won according to how the ball was played off of the gallery walls. This is very different to today’s Lawn Tennis, where the rectangular court is laid out on a grass surface and the play is within marked boundaries, not off of the walls. Another key difference is that Real tennis used a system of chases. In today’s game if a ball bounces twice it is dead. In Real Tennis however, a marker would mark the point of the second bounce. This was known as the chase. In addition to playing for points, opponents would compete by trying to put their chase as close as possible to their opponents back wall. A player who had lagged behind in the points could come from behind to win the match by being more skilful at the chase.
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After its initial rise in popularity with the French nobility, tennis spread throughout Europe, becoming particularly popular in England. As in France the game became recognised as the sport of kings. Henry VIII was a very keen player and built a court at his palace in Hampton Court, still used today by Real Tennis enthusiasts. Tennis wasn’t just confined to France and England though, and the game also spread to Spain, Italy, Holland, Switzerland and Germany. In the 18th century however, the game went into decline, the French revolution and the Napoleonic wars virtually eliminating it across most of Europe.
Lawn Tennis
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This was to change in the 19th century when Victorian prosperity in England prompted a significant revival. Courts were built in many famous country houses and the first tennis clubs providing facilities for members began to appear. In was during this period that the game of Lawn Tennis began to emerge. Enthusiasts had been trying for some time to adapt the game into an open-air sport and as strange as it may seem this was largely brought about by the development of vulcanized rubber. This enabled the production of balls that were soft enough so as not to damage the grass, but which still retained the elasticity and liveliness of rubber.
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Another important factor was the ease and simplicity of Lawn Tennis. All that was needed was a flat grass surface and Lawn Tennis courts became commonplace in the rolling estates of the wealthy. Real Tennis had always been the domain of royalty and nobility but in Victorian England the sport was soon embraced by the upper classes.
The term Lawn Tennis was coined by Arthur Balfour, a British Statesman and it didn’t take long before lawn surfaces were replaced with various turf derivatives and eventually clay and concrete. Within a very short time Lawn Tennis began to replace croquet as the summer sport. The biggest boost for tennis however came in 1875. The All England Croquet Club, formed in 1869 had failed to attract enough visitors and in 1875 they decided to offer Lawn Tennis as an added attraction. The new game was an instant success, so much so that in 1877 the name of the club was changed to the All England Croquet and Lawn Tennis Club. Rising rents at their four-acre site in the London suburb of Wimbledon however, meant that the club had to raise additional funds. Later that year the first ever Lawn Tennis tournament was organised. A committee was established to draw up a set of rules the first tournament went ahead with 22 players, watched by some 200 spectators. The Wimbledon Championship was born.
Wimbledon - The World’s Favourite Tournament
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The Wimbledon Championship was one of the most significant developments in the history of tennis. The game captured the imagination of the public and it didn’t take long before the first champions emerged. The first of these was William Renshaw who won the championship title 8 times between 1881 and 1889 (he was runner-up in 1887) - a record that remains unbeaten today.
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Over the next few years the sport gained tremendous popularity, not just in England but all over the world and in 1905 May Sutton from the USA became the first international player. In this year the tournament attracted 71 players. A few years later in 1909 the now titled All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club adopted the purple and green colours still used today.
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