History of tennis

The racket sport now called tennis started in Edgbaston, Birmingham, England. It comes from a game called real tennis or royal tennis, which is still played today but has more complex rules.

Most tennis rules come from real tennis. Many experts think tennis began in northern France in the 12th century. At first, players hit the ball with their hands, which is why the game was called jeu de paume. In the 16th century, people started using rackets, and the game became known as 'tennis'. It was enjoyed in France and England. Henry VIII of England loved to play real tennis.

By the late 1800s, there were many different rules for the game. In 1875, a meeting was held at Lord's, and new rules were made called the 1875 MCC Laws of Lawn Tennis. These rules were used in the first Wimbledon Championships in 1877.

The Davis Cup, a yearly competition for men's teams, began in 1900. The Fed Cup for women's teams started in 1963. In 1968, the rules changed so that both amateur and professional players could compete together. This started the Open Era, and tennis became more popular all over the world.

Etymology

The word tennis started being used in English in the 1300s. It came from French, from an old word called Tenez. This word means things like “hold!”, “receive!”, or “take!”. It was what a player would say to their opponent when they were about to serve the ball. The first time we see the word tennis in English writing is in a poem by John Gower. He wrote it in 1400 for King Henry IV.

Origin

References to tennis appear in stories from the Middle Ages. In The Second Shepherds' Play (around 1500), a tennis ball is listed among gifts given to the newborn Christ. In The Turke and Gowin (around 1500), Sir Gawain, a knight of King Arthur's round table, plays tennis against 17 giants.

Most historians believe tennis began in northern France in the 1200s. At first, players used their hands to hit the ball, which is why the game was called jeu de paume (meaning 'game of the palm'). Later, players used gloves. This game may have been played by monks in monastery cloisters, but the courts looked more like old courtyards and streets.

By the 1500s, the glove became a racquet, and the game moved to enclosed courts with set rules. This version is now called real tennis.

Real tennis became popular with European royalty. Francis I of France enjoyed the game and built courts. Henry VIII of England also loved real tennis and built a court at Hampton Court in 1530.

In 1555, an Italian priest wrote the first known book about tennis. More stories and paintings about tennis appeared over time. The game was enjoyed by noble families in France, Spain, Italy, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. By the time of Napoleon, real tennis was mostly forgotten. It played a small part in the French Revolution when people met at a tennis court near Versailles.

As real tennis declined in England during the 1700s and early 1800s, new racquet games appeared: racquets, squash racquets, and lawn tennis (the modern game). Many old tennis courts remain in the British Isles, such as those at Oxford, Cambridge, Falkland Palace, and Hampton Court Palace.

Birth of lawn tennis

The modern game of tennis began in England in the 1860s. Two men, Harry Gem and Augurio Perera, created a new game by mixing parts of racquets and croquet. They played this game on a lawn in Birmingham and later started the first tennis club in Leamington Spa.

Another man, Walter Wingfield, designed a special court shape and helped create tennis rules. His ideas helped spread the game, and soon tennis became very popular in Britain. Around the same time, tennis was brought to the United States, where it grew as a favorite outdoor sport.

Terminology

Wingfield took the name and many French words from real tennis. The word "tennis" comes from the French tenez, meaning "hold!" or "take!", which players used to warn their opponent about to serve.

Other words also have interesting origins. "Racket" comes from an Arabic word meaning the palm of the hand. "Deuce" means two points away from winning a game. The word "love" for zero may come from the French word for "egg", which looks like a zero, or from a Dutch phrase meaning to do something for praise with no money involved.

We do not know why tennis scores are called "15", "30", and "40". One idea is that these numbers came from clock quarters, or from old gambling rules, or even a trick by royal families to keep servants from understanding the scoring.

Tournaments and tours of the Amateur Era

Amateur tournaments

The Four Majors

The four majors or Grand Slam tournaments are Wimbledon, the US Open, the French Open, and the Australian Open. Since the mid-1920s, they have been the most important events in tennis. Winning all four in one year is called the Calendar Grand Slam (a term from bridge).

1877: Wimbledon

Main article: Wimbledon, The Beginning

The Championships, Wimbledon began in 1877, started by the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club. The first event had 22 men, and the winner got a Silver Gilt Cup. The first event helped decide the official rules of tennis. The next year, it became the official British Championships, open to players from all countries. In 1884, Ladies Singles and Gentlemen's Doubles began, and Ladies and Mixed Doubles started in 1913.

1881: U.S. Open

Main article: History of U.S. Open

Tennis started in the U.S. in 1874 on a grass court set up by James Dwight, Richard Dudley Sears and Fred Sears in Nahant, Massachusetts. In 1881, tennis clubs began forming.

The first American National tournament was in 1880 in New York. An Englishman named Otway Woodhouse won the singles match. There was also a doubles match won by a local pair. Rules were different at each club. In 1881, the United States National Lawn Tennis Association (now the United States Tennis Association) formed to make rules and organize competitions.

The U.S. National Men's Singles Championship, now the US Open, started in 1881 in Newport, Rhode Island. The U.S. National Women's Singles Championships began in 1887 in Philadelphia.

The tournament became one of the tennis 'Majors' in 1924 by the International Lawn Tennis Federation (ILTF).

1891/1925: French Open

Main article: History of French Open

Tennis was popular in France, where the French Open started in 1891 as the Championat de France International de Tennis. This tournament became a Major or Grand Slam tournament in 1925 when it opened to all nationalities.

1905: Australian Open

Main article: History of Australian Open

The Australian Open began in 1905 as The Australasian (Australia and New Zealand) Championships. Because it was far away, top players did not always attend. It became a major tournament in 1924 (designated by the ILTF). In 1927, it was called the Australian Championships. For much of the 1970s and early 1980s, top players did not often play there. Since moving to Melbourne Park in 1988, the Australian Open has grown in popularity.

The Davis Cup

Main article: Davis Cup

In 1898, Dwight F. Davis of the Harvard University tennis team created a tournament to challenge the British to a tennis match. The first match was between the United States and Great Britain in Boston, Massachusetts. The American team, including Dwight Davis, surprised the British by winning the first three matches. By the tournament had expanded to include Belgium, Austria, France, and Australasia, a combined team from Australia and New Zealand.

The tournament was first called the International Lawn Tennis Challenge. It was renamed the Davis Cup after Dwight Davis died in 1945. The tournament grew, and in 1999, 130 nations competed.

International Tennis Federation

In 1913, 12 national tennis groups met in Paris and formed the International Lawn Tennis Federation (ILTF), renamed in 1977 as the International Tennis Federation (ITF). The rules they made in 1924 stayed mostly the same for over 100 years, with the biggest change being the tie-break system created by James Van Alen.

Tennis left the Olympics after the 1924 Games but returned in 1984 as a demonstration event for players aged 21 and under. This was thanks to efforts by ITF President Philippe Chatrier, ITF General Secretary David Gray and ITF Vice President Pablo Llorens, and support from IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch. The event was very popular, and tennis became a full Olympic sport again in 1988.

The Fed Cup

Main article: Fed Cup

The idea of a Davis Cup-style tournament for women's national teams started in 1919 by Hazel Hotchkiss Wightman. She was not allowed to start it, but she gave a trophy in 1923 for an annual match between the United States and Great Britain, called the Wightman Cup.

Wightman's idea for a worldwide women's team tournament happened more than 40 years later in 1962, when Nell Hopman asked the ITF to start it. The first Federation Cup was played as part of the ITF's 50th anniversary; it had 16 countries and lasted one week. By the 1990s, over 70 nations competed each year, and regional qualifiers were added. In the ITF changed the format to be like the Davis Cup and renamed it the Fed Cup.

The professional circuit

In 1926, promoter C.C. Pyle started the first professional tour with American and French players playing exhibition matches for paying crowds. The most famous early professionals were American Vinnie Richards and Frenchwoman Suzanne Lenglen. Players who turned professional could not play in the major (amateur) tournaments.

Before the Open Era, top professional players were signed by a promoter who decided where they played. For example, in 1926, Lenglen and Richards toured North America with Paul Féret and Mary K. Browne under contract to Charles C. Pyle. The main events for professional players were head-to-head matches and Pro Championships, which were like the Grand Slam tournaments for professionals.

Suzanne Lenglen was the top player in the first year of the professional circuit, and after she retired in 1927, few women played professionally before the Open Era.

Pro tours

Main article: Tennis Pro Tours

Before the Open Era, professionals often played more head-to-head tours than tournaments because tours paid better and there were few professional tournaments. For example, Fred Perry earned a lot of money in a 1937 tour against Ellsworth Vines but won less for his 1938 victory at the U.S. Pro Tennis Championships. Vines mostly played tours and not tournaments in 1937 and 1938. In 1937, Vines played 70 matches on tours and no tournament matches. Even in the 1950s, some professionals still played tour matches. In early 1957, Ken Rosewall played 76 matches on a tour against Pancho Gonzales but only 9 tournament matches. It was not until the 1960s that professional tournaments became more important than tours.

Pro Championships (Pro Slams)

Main article: Major professional tennis tournaments before the Open Era

Besides head-to-head events, several yearly professional tournaments were called championship tournaments. The most famous was usually the Wembley Championship, held at the Wembley Arena in England from 1934 to 1990. The oldest was the U.S. Pro Tennis Championships, played from 1927 to 1999. Between 1954 and 1962, it was played indoors in Cleveland and called the World Professional Championships. The third major tournament was the French Pro Championship, played from 1930 to 1968. The British and American championships continued after the Open Era but became less important after the late 1960s.

The Tournament of Champions was held from 1957 to 1959, with the 1957 Australian versions in Sydney White City and Melbourne Kooyong, and the U.S. versions in 1957, 1958 and 1959 at Forest Hills, Queens. There was also the Wimbledon Pro tournament in August 1967, the first time professional players could play at Wimbledon.

Open Era

See also: Open Era tennis records – Women's singles

The Open Era began in 1968 when Grand Slam tournaments allowed professional players to compete against amateur players.

Before 1968, only amateur players could play in Grand Slam tournaments and other events organized by the ILTF, including the Davis Cup.

In the early years of the Open Era, some players boycotted Grand Slam events due to disagreements. The first Open Era event was the 1968 British Hard Court Championships in April at The West Hants Club in Bournemouth, England, and the first open Grand Slam tournament was the 1968 French Open in May. Both tournaments were won by Ken Rosewall. The Open Era allowed all tennis players to earn money by playing tennis.

National Tennis League (NTL) and World Championship Tennis (WCT)

In 1968, some professional players were independent, including Lew Hoad, Mal Anderson, Luis Ayala, and Owen Davidson, but most top players were under contract. George McCall managed the National Tennis League (NTL) and players like Rod Laver, Ken Rosewall, Andrés Gimeno, Pancho Gonzales, Fred Stolle and Roy Emerson. Meanwhile, Dave Dixon, later succeeded by Lamar Hunt, ran the World Championship Tennis (WCT) and managed the "Handsome Eight": John Newcombe, Tony Roche, Nikola Pilić, Roger Taylor, Pierre Barthès, Earl "Butch" Buchholz, Cliff Drysdale and Dennis Ralston. In 1968, none of the original Handsome Eight WCT players took part in the French Open. In 1970, NTL players did not play in the Australian Open because their organization did not receive a guarantee. In 1970, neither WCT nor NTL players played in the French Open.

Grand Prix circuit

Main article: Grand Prix tennis circuit

In the first two years of the Open Era, the National Tennis League and WCT promoters began to control the sport. To counter them, Jack Kramer, a top player from the late 1940s and early 1950s and then a promoter, created the Grand Prix tennis circuit in late 1969. He described it as a series of tournaments with a money bonus pool that would be shared based on a points system. This would encourage top players to compete regularly.

In 1970, no contract players took part in the French Open. The International Lawn Tennis Federation, worried about promoters' control, approved Kramer's Grand Prix. Twenty-seven tournaments, including the three Grand Slams (French Open, Wimbledon and US Open), were held that year, with the Stockholm tournament ending on 1 November. Independent professional players and some contract players joined the Grand Prix circuit. Contract players could play Grand Prix events if their contracts allowed it and they had enough time apart from their own circuit.

Tour rivalries and the creation of the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP)

The first WCT tournaments were held in February 1968 and the first NTL tournaments in March 1969. In July 1970, the WCT took over the NTL. At the end of 1970, journalists ranked the players, leading the WCT to invite the top 32 men to play the 1971 WCT circuit. In 1971, the WCT held 20 tournaments and ended the year with the WCT Finals. In 1971, most top players still mainly played the WCT circuit. As a result, the 1971 Australian Open was a WCT competition, while the French Open, Wimbledon and U.S. Open were ILTF Grand Prix events.^{[citation needed]}

By then, the rivalry between the two groups became so intense that Rosewall, Gimeno, Laver, Emerson and some other WCT players boycotted the 1971 US Open. Bill Riordan, the future manager of Jimmy Connors, made matters more complicated with a third professional tour, the U.S. Indoor Circuit. In 1972, the conflict between the ILTF and the WCT reached its peak when the ILTF banned contract professional players from all ILTF Grand Prix events between January and July, including the 1972 French Open and 1972 Wimbledon.^{[citation needed]}

At the 1972 US Open in September, all players attended and agreed to form a player group to protect themselves from promoters and organizations, leading to the creation of the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) in 1973. In 1973, there were four professional circuits: the WCT circuit, the Grand Prix circuit, the U.S. Indoor Circuit with Connors and Ilie Năstase and the European Spring Circuit with Năstase as their star. During the year, the ILTF banned Nikola Pilić from 1973 Wimbledon for refusing to play in Yugoslavia's Davis Cup match against New Zealand. In response, 81 of Pilic's fellow ATP players boycotted 1973 Wimbledon. The only ATP players who did not boycott 1973 Wimbledon were Ilie Năstase, Roger Taylor and Ray Keldie. They were later fined by the ATP for playing in the tournament.

Between 1974 and 1978, any tennis player who participated in the new World TeamTennis, which clashed with the European part of the Grand Prix circuit, was banned by the French Tennis Federation from playing in the French Open that year. ^[why?]

Integration

In 1978 the ILTF Grand Prix and WCT circuits merged. However, In 1982, the WCT circuit separated again and created a more complex WCT ranking, similar to the ATP ranking. The WCT was not as successful in the 1980s, and the Grand Prix circuit became the main circuit. The Grand Prix's governance was led by the Men's International Professional Tennis Council (also called the Men's Tennis Council). The WCT Finals in Dallas continued until the end of the 1980s, and then ended with the creation of the ATP Tour in 1990.^{[citation needed]}

The Open Era, the global professional circuit, and television helped tennis grow worldwide. In the United States, since the 1970s, tennis courts have been common in public parks. Around the same time, the U.S. Open moved from the private West Side Tennis Club to a public park (the USTA National Tennis Center, Flushing Meadows Park) that anyone could visit by buying a ticket. About the same time, the organization's name changed from the United States Lawn Tennis Association to the United States Tennis Association.

ATP Tour

In 1990, the Association of Tennis Professionals, led by Hamilton Jordan, replaced the MTC as the governing body for men's professional tennis. They created the ATP Tour, and grouped the nine most important events as the "Championship Series – Single Tournament Week", and beginning in 1996, as the "Super Nine". Twelve of the Grand Prix events, which were slightly less important than the first nine, were called the "Championship Series – Double Week" (meaning in most cases, 2 of those tournaments happened the same week). Winning a Super Nine tournament was worth about half the points (370) of winning a Grand Slam tournament (750), while Championship Series tournaments were worth up to 360 points depending on the prize money. This system continued until 2000, when the Super Nine were renamed the Masters Series (winners earning 500 points), placed below the Grand Slams (1000 points for winners), and the Championship Series was renamed the International Series Gold (winners earning 250 to 300 points). In 2000, the Grand Slam tournaments and the Masters Series tournaments became required events for players who qualified. Players were automatically entered, and Masters and Slam events became the main basis for player rankings, with up to five more tournaments also counted (18 in all plus the ATP Finals if they qualified). Before 2000, a player's best 14 tournaments counted towards the ATP Point Rankings.^{[citation needed]}

In 2009, the Masters events were renamed the ATP World Tour Masters 1000 with the Monte-Carlo Masters becoming a non-mandatory event, meaning a player could use results from a lower-level tournament instead of it. International Series Gold became the ATP World Tour 500 and the remaining events became the ATP World Tour 250. The numbers in the tournament type name show the points for the winners. For comparison, a winner of one of the four Grand Slam tournaments earns 2000 points. In 2009, more importance was placed on winning a tournament, as the points for the runner-up dropped from 70% of the champion's points to 60% (from 700 points to 600 points in a Masters 1000 event). Points also began to be awarded for Davis Cup singles matches.

Women's professional tennis

Women's professional tennis started in 1926 when a top player, Suzanne Lenglen, agreed to play matches for money. After a short time, women didn’t play professionally again until 1941. World War II made it hard to hold many competitions during those years.

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, a few women played exhibition matches and tours. By 1958, Althea Gibson turned professional and even performed with a famous team for a season. It wasn’t until 1967 that women began playing more regularly on professional tours.

In 1970, women were offered much less prize money than men, which led to protests. A new tour was created in 1971, offering better rewards. By 1973, the U.S. Open started giving equal prize money to men and women. That same year, the Women's Tennis Association was formed to organize women’s professional tennis worldwide.

Mens Professional Tennis

Mens professional tennis has grown a lot over time, with many important players shaping the sport. Some key players from different decades include Jimmy Connors, who became famous in the 1970s. Ivan Lendl was a top player in the 1980s. The 1990s were led by Pete Sampras. More recently, Roger Federer became a major star in the early 2000s.

International Tennis Hall of Fame

In 1954, James Van Alen created the International Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, Rhode Island. The museum holds special items and celebrates important tennis players. Each year, a grass-court tennis match is held there, and new members are welcomed at a special ceremony.