History of tennis

 

This article describes the history of Tennis from ancient times to the evolution as the modern day international sport.

Ancient influences

Tennis can be traced as far back as the ancient Greek game of sphairistike (Greek: Σφαιριστική), and is mentioned in literature as far back as the Middle Ages in The Second Shepherds' Play, in which shepherds gave three gifts, including a tennis ball, to the newborn Christ.^[1] Sir Gawain, a knight of King Arthur's round table, plays tennis with a group of giants in The Turke and Gowin.^[2] Another mention came in the late 16th century, when William Shakespeare mentions "tennis balles" in his play Henry V, when a basket of them is given to King Henry as a mockery of his youth and playfulness.^[3]. Perhaps the most striking early reference to the game of tennis appears in a painting by Giambattista Tiepolo entitled The Death of Hyacinth (1752-1753)in which a stringed raquet and three tennis balls are depicted. The theme of the painting is the mythological story of Apollo and Hyacinth, written by Ovid and translated into italian in 1561 by Giovanni Andrea dell'Anguillara who replaced the ancient game of discus throwing of the original text by that of pallacorda or tennis, which had achieved a high status as a form of physical exercise at the courts in the middle of the sixteenth century. Tiepolo's painting, displayed at the Museo Thyssen Bornemisza in Madrid, was ordered in 1752 by a German count Wilhelm Friedrich Schaumburg Lippe, who was known to be an avid tennis player.

Birth of modern game

Its establishment as the modern sport can be dated 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 rackets and the Spanish ball game Pelota and played it on a croquet lawn in Edgbaston.^[4][5] 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.^[6] The Courier of 23 July 1884 recorded one of the first tennis tournaments, held in the grounds of Shrubland Hall.^[7]

In December 1873, Major Walter Clopton Wingfield devised a similar game for the amusement of his guests at a garden party on his estate of Nantclwyd, in Llanelidan, Wales.^[8] He based the game on the older Real tennis. At the suggestion of Arthur Balfour, Wingfield named it "lawn tennis,"^[9] and patented the game ^[10] in 1874 with an eight-page rule book, titled “Sphairistike or Lawn Ten-nis,”.^[11] But he failed to succeed in enforcing his patent.^[12]

Wingfield borrowed both the name and much of the French vocabulary of Real tennis:

• Tennis comes from the French tenez, the imperative form of the verb tenir, to hold: This was a cry used by the player serving in royal tennis, meaning "I am about to serve!" (rather like the cry "Fore!" in golf).^[13]
• Racquet comes from raquette, which derives from the Arabic rakhat, meaning the palm of the hand.^[14]
• Deuce comes from à deux le jeu, meaning "to both is the game" (that is, the two players have equal scores).^[15]
• Love originates from "l'oeuf", the French word for "egg", representing the shape of a zero.
• The convention of numbering scores "15", "30" and "40" comes from quinze, trente and quarante, which to French ears makes a euphonious sequence, or from the quarters of a clock (15, 30, 45) with 45 simplified to 40.^[15]

Formation of Grand Slams

Tennis spread rapidly among the leisured classes in Britain and the United States.^{[citation needed]} It was first played in the U.S. at the home of Mary Ewing Outerbridge on Staten Island, New York in 1874.^[16] In 1881, the desire to play tennis competitively led to the establishment of tennis clubs, which led to the four Grand Slams, which are regarded as the most prestigious events in tennis circuit. The Wimbledon, the U.S. Open, the French Open, and the Australian Open became and have remained the most prestigious events in tennis.^[17][18] Together these four events are called the Grand Slam (a term borrowed from bridge).^[19]

1877: Wimbledon

Main article: History of Wimbledon

The first championships at Wimbledon, in London were played in 1877 on a Grass.^[20] The oldest and most prestigious tennis event remained remarkably stable over the years at the same venue with grass courts and is still played in whites. From 1922, the title holders played through from the start of the championships with the elimination of challenge round.

1881: U.S. Open

Main article: History of U.S. Open

The U.S. National Men's Singles Championship, now the U.S. Open, was first held in 1881 at Newport, Rhode Island.^[21] The U.S. National Women's Singles Championships were first held in 1887.^[22] On May 21, 1881, the United States National Lawn Tennis Association (now the United States Tennis Association) was formed to standardize the rules and organize competitions.^[23]

1891: French Open

Main article: History of French Open

Tennis was predominantly a sport of the English-speaking world, dominated by the United States and Britain.^[24] It was also popular in France, where the French Open dates to 1891 as the Championat de France International de Tennis..^[25]

1905: Australian Open

Main article: History of Australian Open

The Australian Open was first played in 1905 as The Australasian Championships. Because of its geographic remoteness, historically, the event did not gain attendence from the top tennis players consistently. As late as 1980s, the event lacked participating from top ranked tennis professionals. Since its move to Melbourne Park in 1988, the Australian Open has been widely regarded as a Grand Slam.

History of Davis Cup

Main article: Davis cup

In 1899, Dwight F. Davis of the Harvard University tennis team designed a tournament format with the idea of challenging the British to a tennis showdown.^[26] The first match, between the United States and Great Britain was held in Boston, Massachusetts in 1900.^[27] The American team, of which Dwight Davis was a part, surprised the British by winning the first three matches. By 1905 the tournament expanded to include Belgium, Austria, France, and Australasia, a combined team from Australia and New Zealand that competed together until 1913.

The tournament was initially known as the International Lawn Tennis Challenge. It was renamed the Davis Cup following the death of Dwight Davis in 1945. The tournament has vast expanded and on its 100th anniversary in 1999, 129 nations competed for the prestigious Davis Cup.

Formation of ITF

From the roots of Davis Cup and the need to establish an international tennis federation, in 1913, twelve National Tennis Associations agreed at a Paris Conference to form the International Lawn Tennis Federation, which was renamed in 1977 as the current International Tennis Federation (ITF).^[28] The comprehensive International Lawn Tennis Federation rules promulgated in 1924 have remained remarkably stable in the ensuing eighty years, the one major change being the addition of the tie-breaker system designed by James Van Alen.^[29]

Tennis Hall of fame

In 1954, James Van Alen founded the International Tennis Hall of Fame, a non-profit museum in Newport, Rhode Island.^[30] The building contains a large collection of tennis memorabilia as well as a hall of fame honoring prominent members and tennis players from all over the world. Each year, a grass-court tournament is hosted on its grounds, as well as an induction ceremony honoring new Hall of Fame members.

Pro Tournaments

Main article: Tennis, professional tournaments before the open era

The main events of professional circuit comprised on Pro tours with head-to-head competition and Pro Championships, which are regarded as Grand Slam tournaments till Open Era in 1968.

The popular tennis professional players were under contract with a professional promoter during the pre-Open Era. Popular players like Suzanne Lenglen and Vincent Richards were engaged by Charles C. Pyle to tour in North America. The professionals under contract were controlled by their promoters and could not play the tournaments they want while the amateur players followed their national (and international) federation. For example, In 1939, Norman Brookes, president of the Australian Federation decided not to send Australian players at Wimbledon for the preparation for the Davis Cup, great Aussie players as John Bromwich or Adrian Quist went to the USA to capture the Cup but didn't play Wimbledon. Consequently during the first century of tennis the players had absolutely no power.

Pro tours

Most professionals played in separate professional events, mostly on tours in head-to-head competition referred as 'pro tours. In 1926, promoter C.C. Pyle established the first professional tennis tour with a group of American and French tennis players playing exhibition matches to paying audiences.^[18][31] The most notable of these early professionals were the American Vinnie Richards and the Frenchwoman Suzanne Lenglen.^[18][32] Once a player turned pro he or she could not compete in the major (amateur) tournaments.^[18] In the years before the open era, male professionals often played more frequently in tours than in tournaments because a head-to-head tour between two tennis stars was much more remunerative than a circuit of pro tournaments and the number of professional tournaments was small. For example, Fred Perry earned U.S. $91,000 in a 1937 North American tour against Ellsworth Vines but won only U.S. $450 for his 1938 victory at the U.S. Pro Tennis Championships. Vines probably never entered a tournament between the London Indoor Professional Championship in October 1935, which he won, and the May 1939 edition of that tournament, which he lost. In 1937, Vines played 70 matches on two tours and no matches in tournaments. Even in the 1950s, some professionals continued to play numerous tour matches. During his first five months as a professional (January through May 1957), Ken Rosewall played 76 matches on a tour against Pancho Gonzales but only 9 matches in tournaments. As an example of the small number of professional tournaments held before the open era, Joe McCauley has determined that for 1952, only 7 professional tournaments were played by the top international players, and 2 other professional tournaments (the British Pro and the German Pro) were reserved for domestic players. It was only during the 1960s that professional tournaments became more significant than tours.

Pro Championships

In addition to head-to-head events there were several annual professional tournaments that were called championship tournaments. The most prestigious was the Wembley Professional Championship at Wembley in England, played between 1934 and 1990, that was unofficially considered the world's championship through 1967. The oldest was the United States Professional Championship, played between 1927 and 1999. Between 1955 and 1962, it was played indoors in Cleveland and was called the World Professional Championships. The third major tournament was the French Professional Championship, played between 1930 and 1968. The British and American championships continued into the Open era but devolved to the status of minor tournaments.

These three tournaments until 1967 are referred as the professional Grand Slam tournaments by tennis historians such as Robert Geist and Raymond Lee [1].

Open Era

See also: World Championship Tennis and Grand Prix tennis tournaments

In 1968, commercial pressures led to the abandonment of the distinction between professionals and amateurs, inaugurating the open era, in which all players could compete in all tournaments, and top players were able to make their living from tennis.^[33]Thus, the open era in tennis began in 1968, when the Grand Slam tournaments, such as Wimbledon, abandoned the longstanding rules of amateurism and allowed professionals to compete. The first Grand Slam tournament to go "open" was the French Open (Roland Garros).

Formation of WCT & NTL

In 1967, some professionals were independent including Lewis Hoad, Luis Ayala, and Owen Davidson but, most of the best players were under contract.

• National Tennis League (NTL) by George McCall
  • Rod Laver, Roy Emerson, Ken Rosewall, Andres Gimeno, Pancho Gonzales and Fred Stolle
• World Championship Tennis (WCT) by Dave Dixon (succeeded by Lamar Hunt)
  • Handsome Eight: John Newcombe, Tony Roche, Nikki Pilic, Roger Taylor, Pierre Barthès, Earl "Butch" Buchholz, Cliff Drysdale and Dennis Ralston

So the professionals under contract were controlled by their promoters and could not play the tournaments they want. In 1968, the WCT players weren't allowed to participate by their own boss in French Open. In 1970, the NTL players didn't play the Australian Open because their organization didn't receive a guarantee. In 1970, neither WCT nor NTL players played in the French Open.

Formation of Grand Prix

In Open era, promoters of NTL and WCT began to control the whole game. For example, if Wimbledon didn't want to pay their price, the promoters held their players out of the event. To prevent such a control, Jack Kramer, the best player in the world in the 1940s and 1950s and a promoter himself, conceived the Grand Prix in 1969. He described it as "a series of tournaments with a money bonus pool that would be split up on the basis of a cumulative point system. This would encourage the best players to compete regularly in the series, so that they could share in the bonus at the end and qualify for a special championship tournament that would climax the year".^[34].

In 1970, only a few contract players showed up for the French Open. The International Lawn Tennis Federation (ILTF), predecessor of International Tennis Federation (ITF), alarmed by the control of the promoters, approved Kramer's proposition of Grand Prix. The first Grand Prix tournament was the British Hard Court Championships played on clay at Bournemouth on April 28. Twenty seven tournaments including the three Grand Slams, French Open, Wimbledon and US Open were played that year with Stockholm tournament ended on November 1. The independent professionals along with a few contract players entered the Grand Prix circuit. The contract players could play the Grand Prix events if they were allowed and had time left apart from their own circuit.

ILTF & WCT rivalry

The first WCT tournaments were held in February 1968 and the first NTL tournaments in March 1968. In spring 1970, the WCT absorbed the NTL.

In 1971, the WCT run its circuit with 20 tournaments and the year-ending WCT Finals held in November. At the end of 1970, a panel of journalists ranked the best players in the world. This ranking served to the WCT organization to sent invitations to the 32 best men to play the 1971 WCT circuit: among these 32 players, those who declined the invitation and stayed independent professionals (as opposed to the WCT contract pros) were Ilie Năstase, Stan Smith, Jan Kodeš, Željko Franulović and Clark Graebner. So in 1971, the majority of the best players in the world played mainly the WCT circuit and not the Grand Prix circuit, which principally consisted of the independent professionals.

The Australian Open was a WCT competition whereas Roland Garros, Wimbledon and Forest Hills were Grand Prix events. The conflict between the ILTF running the Grand Prix and the WCT was so strong that Rosewall, Gimeno, Laver, Emerson and other WCT players didn't enter the U.S. Open. There was a third professional circuit that year with the U.S Indoor Circuit run by Bill Riordan, future manager of Jimmy Connors.

In 1972, the struggle between ILTF and WCT ended with ILTF's ban of the contract pro players from January to July and consequently the WCT contract pros were strictly forbidden to play the Grand Prix circuit including Roland Garros and Wimbledon.

In 1973, there were four rival pro circuits: the WCT circuit, the Grand Prix circuit, the U.S. indoor circuit with Connors and Ilie Nastase and the European Spring Circuit with Nastase as their star.

Integration

Until 1977, the WCT and Grand Prix circuits were separate and in 1978 the Grand Prix circuit integrated the WCT circuit with its eight tournaments. In 1982, the WCT circuit came out independent again and created a more complex WCT ranking, similar to the ATP ranking. Because of WCT's failure in the 1980s, the Grand Prix circuit then became the main professional circuit. The governance of the Grand Prix was led by the Men's International Professional Tennis Council (MIPTC), later renamed to Men's Tennis Council (MTC).

With the beginning of the open era, the establishment of an international professional tennis circuit, and revenues from the sale of television rights, tennis has spread all over the world and shed its upper-class English-speaking image. In America, the game has seen a seismic shift from a sport that the "country-club set" played to one that is an activity for anyone. This is perhaps best embodied in the fact that in the 1970s, when popularity of the game was at a peak, the USTA decided to move the U.S. Open from the posh West Side Tennis Club to a public park (the USTA National Tennis Center, Flushing Meadows Park) that is accessible to anyone with the "greens fees."^[35] About the same time, the ruling body's name was also changed from the United States Lawn Tennis Association to the United States Tennis Association.^[36]

Formation of ATP and WTA

In 1990, the Association of Tennis Professionals, led by Hamilton Jordan, replaced the MTC as the governing body of men's professional tennis, and the ATP Tour was born. With the beginning of the ATP Tour in 1990, the nine most prestigious events on the Tour became known as Super Nine events. The label 'Grand Prix' was done away with by the ATP Tour at the beginning of 1990. Twelve of the more prestigious Grand Prix events became International Series Gold tournaments, while the remaining ones (approximately 50) became known as International Series events. The format has been continued from the 1998 season to the present. The Super Nine events was later recalled the Masters Series tournaments and offered the best fields, the best facilities and the most prize money after the Grand Slam tournaments. In 2000, the Grand Slam tournaments and the Masters Series tournaments became the only mandatory events in tennis. Players were automatically entered and the Masters Series and the Slams became the baseline for player rankings.

Women's Tennis

smörebröd

Doubles Tennis

Modern Tennis

Influence of Racquet Technology

References

1. ^ Anonymous (Late 1300s). The Second Shepherd's Play Scene VIII.
2. ^ Hahn, Thomas(1995). Sir Gawain: Eleven Romances and Tales. Medieval Institute Publications
3. ^ Shakespeare, William (Early 1600s). The Famous History of the Life of King Henry the Eighth. Act 1, Scene 2
4. ^ Tyzack, Anna, The True Home of Tennis Country Life, 22 June 2005
5. ^ "Lawn Tennis and Major T. H. Gem" Birmingham Civic Society
6. ^ Leamington Tennis Club. Retrieved on 2007-05-29.
7. ^ Introduction to Tennis. Retrieved on 2007-05-29.
8. ^ The History of Tennis - Mary Bellis
9. ^ The History of Tennis. Retrieved on 2007-05-29.
10. ^ February 23, 1874 in History. Retrieved on 2007-05-29.
11. ^ When the Girls Came Out to Play: The Birth of American Sportswear. Retrieved on 2007-05-29.
12. ^ The Beginnings Of Lawn Tennis - University of South Carolina Libraries
13. ^ St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Culture - Lloyd Chiasson Jr
14. ^ Tennis from Beijing Olympics 2008. Retrieved on 2007-05-29.
15. ^ ^{a b} The Online Guide to Traditional Games. Retrieved on 2007-05-29.
16. ^ Women In Sport. Retrieved on 2007-05-29.
17. ^ Grand Slam - Australian Open
18. ^ ^{a b c d} Suzanne Lenglen and the First Pro Tour. Retrieved on 2007-05-29.
19. ^ Originality of the phrase "Grand Slam". Retrieved on 2007-05-29.
20. ^ The Start of Something Special - BBC Sport
21. ^ Fact & History of Rhodes Island. Retrieved on 2007-05-29.
22. ^ Leading The Way - BBC Sport
23. ^ History of United States Tennis Association. Retrieved on 2007-05-29.
24. ^ Tennis: Britain Misses Out on World Party That Once Roused Fury of the Fuhrer. Retrieved on 2007-05-29.
25. ^ History of the French Open. Retrieved on 2007-05-29.
26. ^ Evans, R.: The Davis Cup: Celebrating 100 Years of International Tennis, ITF, 1999. URL last accessed 2007-09-05.
27. ^ Davis Cup by BNP Paribas. Retrieved on 2007-05-29.
28. ^ History of The Davis Cup. URL last accessed 2007-09-10.
29. ^ James Henry Van Alen in the Tennis Hall of Fame. Retrieved on 2007-05-29.
30. ^ International Tennis Hall of Fame Information. Retrieved on 2007-05-29.
31. ^ History of the Pro Tennis Wars Chapter 2, part 1 1927-1928. Retrieved on 2007-05-29.
32. ^ Open Minded - Bruce Goldman
33. ^ Tennis, professional tournaments before the open era
34. ^ THE GAME My 40 Years in Tennis, by Jack Kramer with Frank Deford, pages 275-276
35. ^ History of the West Side Tennis Club. Retrieved on 2007-05-29.
36. ^ History of USTA. Retrieved on 2007-05-29.

Donate to Wikimedia