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Tennis And Its History

The history of tennis - Tennis is a sport that has been around for hundreds of years and it would be fruitless to try to tell you all. Therefore I decided to make a short resume. It is believed that the game was invented by Royalty in France that went by the name of - Jeu de Paume - or a game that was played with the palms of your hands.

Through the years the game evolved and started to be played with gloves and finally with rackets, but the name in France did not change. It became known as "tennis" in English and later "real tennis" after lawn tennis became more popular than the parent game.

However, it was Englishman Major Walter C Wingfield, who patented nets for the new sport in 1873 and the rules for the game.

In essence these rules were very similar to the rules of the game of tennis today. Major Winfield patenting coincided with the year when tennis courts started to appear in the United States of America.

Short there after tennis nets and other equipment started making an appearance in other countries outside the US.

Croquet was the most popular game of the time and was played on large manicured lawns. Taking advantage of an already existing surface, people started making use of croquet fields to play tennis and set up tennis courts on those fields.

Wimbledon, is the oldest tennis tournament and was first held in 1877. The tennis courts used in Wimbledon then were slightly different from the courts in play today, although, the rules were generally the same as today.

With the exception for the adoption of the tiebreaker in the 1970s, the rules of tennis have changed very little since the 1890s. A recent addition to professional tennis has been the adoption of -instant replay- technology nicknamed Hawk-Eye that coupled with a point challenge system, that allows a player to challenge the official call of a point.

The 1930s saw tennis being evolved into a high society chic sport with outfits specially tailored and designed by famous clothing wizards, such as Jean Patou, Ted Tingling tennis being introduced. These outfits were different from the ones players wear today, as you can in the photo of Suzanne Lenglen, dressed to impress by Jean Patou.

Men tennis outfits in those days were mainly long and constricting pants.

Shorts made an appearance in tennis in 1933 with Bunny Austin who was the first tennis player to wear one.

Since 1970 tennis has gained enormous popularity across the globe, along with its millions of players, millions of people worldwide follow tennis as a spectator sport, especially the four Grand Slam tournaments (sometimes referred to as the "majors"): the Australian Open, the French Open, Wimbledon, and the US Open.

This popularity has influenced tennis so much that in 1986, the international lawn tennis association (ITF) was forced to introduce yellow balls to ensure that viewers sitting at home watching a tennis match could see it easily on television. That is the power of tennis today!

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