Tennis balls. Photo from Wikimedia.
Tennis is a loved sport by several student athletes here at Malden High. It’s available as a sport during the spring. There’s boys and girls tennis available. The history of tennis is pretty interesting, and it’s always nice to know about the origins of a sport before you play it.
The first origins of the game are credited by most historians to the 11 to 12th century French monks, they played a hand ball against the walls or over a strung rope. The game got called “Jeu de Paume” translating to game of the hand. But there is controversy about the actual origins of the game, going from the Egyptians, to Greeks, to Romans, to of course, the French.
The game got popular quick. The gain in popularity got outdoor courtyard areas converted into indoor facility courts, but the ball still got played off of walls.
At this point, players were still using their bare hands to hit the ball back and forth, which resulted in discomfort in many people. This caused people to begin wearing a glove. There were different types of gloves: a glove with webbing in between the fingers to catch the ball, or a glove with a solid paddle attached to it, which then led up to webbing attached to a handle, which is basically a racquet. Rubber balls weren’t a thing back then, so they usually used a ball of hair or wool or cork wrapped within something. Years later, these “balls” would be hand stitched, like how a baseball or football these days are stitched.
The popularity of the game grew rapidly back then, especially in France. It grew so much that the pope and Louis IV tried to ban it because of how it was such a distraction, but failed. It spread quickly to England, where the the King and Prince Henry’s loved the game and wanted more courts built
A wooden frame of a racquet and a ball with cork in the center of it were in common use by the 1500’s. Back then, tennis courts were indoor and narrow, where there were holes in the walls and queerly angled surfaces that the players were supposed to aim for for strategic purposes. The net was higher on the sides and shorter in the middle for a purposeful droop in the net.
People got tired of the game in the 1700’s, but when rubber was invented in the 1800’s, former players started to experiment with the bouncy ball, and started to use it on grass outdoors, which brought entirely different rules since it was no longer indoors.
In 1874 the first tennis courts were made in the United States. In 1875 equipment sets were being sold around the world. Around this time, croquet courses could also be used for the game of tennis.
Tennis is a nice sport that’s fun to play, with unique rules, and an interesting history. Check out the boys and girls tennis teams at Malden High!
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