Tennis
Tennis is an English adaptation of the tennis court. The first game is made fifteen steps, then thirty, then forty, hence the special way of counting points in modern tennis. Following the Battle of Agincourt (1415), the Duke of Orleans was imprisoned for two decades in England. During this captivity in Wingfield in Norfolk County, the duke introduced to England the tennis game he practiced almost daily2.
Tennis was born according to sources between 1850 and 1870, more than four centuries later. In 1858 Major Harry Gem sketched a kind of tennis court on the lawn of his property: he played a game quite similar to today's tennis. Around 1863, Major Walter Clopton Wingfield, also practices a kind of tennis in his residence in London. Around 1869, in Warwickshire, Harry Gem and his Spanish friend Augurio Perera experimented with a new version of the game which they first called pelota and later lawn rackets. Gem, Perera, Frederic Haynes and Arthur Tomkin form a club in Leamington: it is the first lawn tennis club in the world. It is therefore probably Harry Gem who invented “modern tennis” (from the French tennis court) but it was Wingfield which went down in history because he marketed this sport under the name of “sphairistike” on February 23 1874 but he did not invent it as legend claims. The sphairistike is the result of the game of palm and the invention of rubber which allows balls to be bounced on the grass. It is the missing link between tennis and tennis3. Tennis in England is also known as lawn tennis (“tennis on grass” in English) while tennis is known as real tennis (“true tennis”). The word "tennis" comes from the French "tenez", a word that was addressed to the opponent when serving. The word, distorted in Middle English into "tenetz", "teneys" or "tenes", will eventually become "tennis" 2,3.
It seems that the first tennis tournament took place in August 1876 on a court on the property of Mr. William Appleton in Nahant, Massachusetts and won by James Dwight4. Follows the Wimbledon Tournament in 1877 from July 9 to 16 (or 19), future Amateur Internationals of Great Britain, which is therefore the oldest tournament still in existence. The final of the first edition is played in front of 200 spectators. The Englishman Spencer Gore won the men's singles (24 participants). During this tournament, the rules of Wingfield sphairistike are changed by the organizers who become, in fact, and for a decade, the sole authority in tennis.
Tennis player in 1881
France, once a land of choice par excellence for the tennis court, does not wait long to succumb to the charms of tennis promoted by Wimbledon. In 1878, the first tennis club was founded in France in Dinard, in Brittany5. At the same time, the first parts take place in Australia.
Other tournaments follow very quickly: in 1878 a tournament would have been organized at the Marylebone Cricket Club, and the first amateur championships of Scotland took place in indoor on wood this same year, the Irish Amateur Championships started in 1879 at the Fitzwilliam Club from Dublin, those from Bohemia the same year and those from the Australian colony from Victoria to Melbourne in 1880, each Australian colony also creates its tournament well before the 1st Australian national championship, organized in 1905 and entitled "Australasia Internationals" , future Australian Open. The championships of the United States are organized for the first time in Newport in 1881 (the 1st edition reserved for the citizens of the country is the ancestor of the US Open, etc.). Tennis was therefore born in the Victorian era with Victorian rules: sport in these conditions can only be practiced as a hobby by wealthy aristocrats, therefore without the need for money to live, and therefore cannot be the object of a paid profession. This explains why tennis professionals have long been banned from the traditional circuit and considered as plague victims. In addition tennis officials, very jealous of their authority, another heritage of the Victorian era, absolutely do not wish to deal with professional players independent of their will: this is another reason to dismiss the "pros" of the traditional circuit. Later, in 1891, the French Tennis Championship was created, which became truly international in 1925 under the name "French Tennis Open".
In 1933, when Australian Jack Crawford, who won the Australian Amateur Internationals, from France at Roland Garros, from Great Britain at Wimbledon, also reached the final of the United States Amateur International at Forest Hills, journalists John Kieran and Allison Danzig use for the first time