How old is the game of tennis, and how did it originate?

Answer 1

An older form of the game originated in France in the Middle Ages and is played indoors on a very different court. Originating in England in the late 19th century, lawn tennis spread first throughout the English-speaking world, particularly among the upper classes.

Answer 2

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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Answer 3

It originates from the game of REAL TENNIS. There is info and pictures of an old original REALTENNIS court on the website for Hampton Court Palace. I believe the court is still played on at times. xx

Answer 4

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Answer 5

I heard that King Henry VIII started a form of tennis.

Answer 6

Henry V111 played what is known as real tennis

Answer 7

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Answer 8

Tennis can be traced as far back as the ancient Greek game of sphairistike. Major Walter Wingfield borrowed the name of this Greek game, in order to name the recreation he patented in 1874. It was soon converted into a three-syllable word rhyming with “pike” and afterwards abbreviated either to sticky or the mock-French stické, before being finally called "lawn tennis", which was a second name patented by Wingfield for the game.

Its establishment as the modern sport can be dated to two separate roots. In 1856, Alex Ryden, a solicitor, and his friend Batista Pereira, a Portuguese merchant, who both lived in Birmingham, England played a game they named "pelota", after a Spanish ball game. The game was played on a lawn in Edgbaston. In 1872 both men moved to Leamington Spa, and with two doctors from the Warneford Hospital, played pelota on the lawn behind the Manor House Hotel (now residential apartments). Pereira joined with Dr. Frederick Haynes and Dr. A. Wellesley Tomkins to found the first lawn tennis club in the world, and played the game on nearby lawns. In 1874 they formed the Leamington Tennis Club, setting out the original rules of the game. The Courier of 23 July 1884 recorded one of the first tennis tournaments, held in the grounds of Shrubland Hall (demolished 1948).

In December 1873, Major Walter Clopton Wingfield devised a similar game for the amusement of his guests at a garden party on his estate at Nantclwyd, Wales. He based the game on the older sport of indoor tennis or real tennis ("royal tennis"), which had been invented in 12th century France and was played by French aristocrats down to the time of the French Revolution
According to most tennis historians, modern tennis terminology also derives from this period, as Wingfield borrowed both the name and much of the French vocabulary of royal tennis and applied them to his new game:

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).
Racquet comes from raquette, which derives from the Arabic rakhat, meaning the palm of the hand.
Deuce comes from à deux le jeu, meaning "to both is the game" (that is, the two players have equal scores).
Love may come from l'œuf, the egg, a reference to the egg-shaped zero symbol; however, since "un œuf" is more commonly used, the etymology remains in question.
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.

Answer 9

two cave men strung up the first rackets played on a clay court with a net made of spiderwebs . lol i think it goes back to early 1700. it was for royalty only then its a english sport and unlike us americans there they play on a clay court

Answer 10

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.

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.
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

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.
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.