Tennis is among the most thoroughly international of
competitive sports. Played on a hard court by two or
four players, this sport is played in situations that range
from the most casual to the most intense—no stakes to
very high stakes indeed.
History
The origins of the modern game of tennis are usually
traced back to 23 February 1874, when the British
patent office issued a provisional license to Major Walter Wingfield for “A Portable Court of Playing Tennis.”
Wingfield’s game of lawn tennis was a descendant of
the much older game of court tennis, as well as other
racket games, but Wingfield was the first to codify the
outdoor game and market it commercially. The game
immediately achieved considerable success game, became popular at English country houses, and also soon
came to be played at London’s sports clubs.
In the spring of 1877 the All England Croquet Club,
in the London suburb of Wimbledon, decided to hold a
tennis tournament and drew up new revised rules for
the game. These rules became the basis for the modern
game. Over time Wimbledon became the most important tennis tournament in the world, and its innovations
often led the way for other competitions. Wimbledon
added a women’s singles competition to the championships in 1884, as well as a men’s doubles event; the
other two major events of the tournament, women’s
doubles and mixed doubles, were added in 1913.
Seeding, the deliberate placing of designated strong
players so they would not meet in the early rounds of a
tournament, was introduced into competitive tennis at
Wimbledon in 1924, and soon became standard in all
tournaments.
Power diffused, however, in 1884 with the founding
of the Lawn Tennis Association, which would share the
profits produced by the championships. The sport’s
spread to other countries was also a factor.
Tennis arrived in the United States within months
of Major Wingfield’s patent. A first tournament was
held in Nahant, Massachusetts, in 1876, and in 1880 a
national tournament was played at the Staten Island
Cricket and Baseball Club. Disputes over proper procedures led to the formation in 1881 of the U.S. National
Lawn Tennis Association (USLTA, later simply the
USTA), which became the country’s governing tennis
body. The first official national championship tournament for men was held at the elegant Casino in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1881; a women’s tournament was
added in 1887.As in England, private clubs became the
major venues for tennis in the United States.
Lawn tennis also spread quickly to many other
countries. Clubs were founded in Scotland, Brazil, and
India in 1875, and in 1877 the first clubs were founded
in Ireland and France. The first tournament in Australia was played in 1879, and South Africa had a championship in 1891. The game was also played in Denmark, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Greece, Turkey,
Lebanon, Egypt, and Finland by 1890.
Despite its international spread, tennis was dominated by a few countries, notably England, the United
States, France, Australia, and New Zealand. The early
domination of tennis by several countries is also apparent in the history of the Davis Cup, the sport’s major international team competition. From the first competi-tion in 1900 through 1973, only four entrants won the
cup: the United States, England, France, and Australia/New Zealand (the latter two competed as one team
to 1923). Remarkably, for one stretch from 1937 through
1973, only Australia and the United States won the cup.
Rules and Play
Tennis is a game played by two people (singles) or by
two teams of two people (doubles), outdoors on surfaces of grass, clay, or asphalt, and indoors on a variety
of surfaces, including asphalt and carpet.
The player’s goal is to hit the ball into the prescribed
area of the court in such a way that it cannot be returned. A player serves an entire game and is allowed
two service attempts for each point. The point is lost by
the first player who hits the ball into the net, out of
bounds, or who allows the ball to bounce more than
once in his own court. A set is won by the first player to
win six games while leading by at least two games; if
neither player gains a winning margin, today a tiebreaker is normally played at 6–6. The tie-breaker (and
the set) is won by the first player to win 7 points while
leading by at least 2. In championship play, women’s
matches are normally won by taking two of three sets,
and men’s either two of three or three of five sets.
The competitive game has never been restricted to
a single type of surface. Grass was originally the most
important surface. The French championships have always been played on clay, as have most tournaments in
continental Europe and South America. Grass has declined sharply in popularity over time: although it remains in use at Wimbledon, it was abandoned in the
United States for championships in 1975, and in Australia in 1988. The U.S. nationals briefly switched to
clay, but since 1978 the tournament has been held on
asphalt courts, as are the Australian championships.
The great majority of professional tournaments, indoor
as well as outdoor, are now held on hard courts.
Perhaps the most important recent change in the
basic rules of tennis competition came with the adoption of the tie-breaker. First used in a major tournament at the U.S. national championships in 1970, and
soon thereafter throughout competitive tennis, the tiebreaker was invented by Jimmy Van Alen, founder of
the Tennis Hall of Fame. Played when the score reached
6 games all, in its original version the tie-breaker was
won by the first player to win 5 points, who thereby
won the set by a score of 7–6. Many players objected to
the sudden death nature of this version, in which a single point could determine the outcome of a set in favor
of whichever player won it when the tie-breaker score
stood at 4–4, and it was subsequently changed. The
version in use today awards the set to the first player to
win 7 points, while leading by at least two.
The Spread of Tennis
Prominence in competitive tennis has become much
more widely diffused geographically, and the oncedominant countries are dominant no more.Wimbledon
has had men’s singles champions from seven different
countries since 1950, and men from nine different
countries have won the U.S. title in the same period.
Similar trends are visible in the French men’s championship and the Davis Cup. Of the early tennis powers,
only the United States has remained an important
source of champions throughout the sport’s history
with Czechoslovakia, Sweden, Russia, the former Yugoslavia, and Spain now major sources of top players.
One important factor in this geographical diffusion has been fundamental changes in the organization of
the sport. From the origins of tennis through the 1960s,
the sport’s major competitions were organized by national associations, as well as by the International
Lawn Tennis Federation, which included the national
associations as its members.Very early in the history of
tennis, the sport’s governing associations decided that
their competitions would be open exclusively to amateurs. Players won no money for playing or any other
activities related to the game. This amateur regime was
challenged periodically by professional promoters and
by players who wished to earn money from the game.
As early as 1926 a small group of players left amateur
tennis to tour as professionals, and over the next four
decades many of the sport’s greatest champions followed their lead, turning professional and traveling in
small groups. Some of these players earned respectable
incomes for their efforts, but their matches were often
regarded as exhibitions rather than genuine competitions, and they did not generate sustained public interest comparable to that produced by Wimbledon, the
U.S. championships, the Davis Cup, and the other major amateur competitions.
The Open Era
This situation changed dramatically during the 1960s.
Faced by a new challenge from World Championship
Tennis, a venture funded by Texas oil millionaire Lamar
Hunt, that threatened to lure more and more of the top
amateurs into professional competition, English tennis
officials announced that in 1968 Wimbledon would be
open to all players regardless of their status. The other
national associations quickly followed, and 1968 initiated the era of Open tennis. Men began to compete for
prize money at Wimbledon and elsewhere in that year.
In 1970, under the leadership of Gladys Heldman,
founder and editor of World Tennis magazine, and of
former Wimbledon and U.S. champion Billie Jean King,
the women organized their own professional tour. Once
Open tennis was established, the prize money grew
rapidly. And prize money is of course only part of the
earnings of today’s professional tennis players.
The rising earnings of players have produced considerable changes in the balance of power in the control
of the game. In 1972 the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) was founded as a union for male professionals, and the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA)
was founded in 1973 as a union for women pros. By
1990, the ATP had succeeded in bringing all men’s professional tournaments (except the Davis Cup and the
national championships of England, the United States,
France, and Australia) under their control, and the
WTA had done the same for women’s professional tournaments. Professionals have joined the ranks of the
highest-paid professional athletes in the world and
have a substantial voice in governing their sport.
The economic rewards of the Open era have clearly
been an important factor in the spread of competitive
tennis around the world, for tennis is one of the few
sports played professionally in virtually every country.
Tennis in the United States
The general outlines of the sport’s evolution are
broadly reflected in the its history in the United States.
From early in the game’s history, the United States has
not only been the largest single producer of world-class
players, but it has also been the largest commercial
market for the sport and has had many more recreational players than any other country.
From its precious New England origins, American
tennis gradually spread more widely, both geographically and socially. The geographic shift has been the
more thorough, as the temperate parts of the country—most notably Florida, Texas, and California—
have become the centers of the sport. The same trend is
visible in intercollegiate tennis.
The social shifts are reflected in the national championships’ move from Newport to the public National
Tennis Center in New York. The social shift in tennis’s
orientation has been more limited. Although tennis is
no longer dominated by the wealthy, and public courts
have gained importance relative to private clubs as
training grounds for young players, tennis remains an
expensive game to learn and play, and most competitive players come from middle-class families. Some social barriers that existed in the past have disappeared.
Jewish players, for example, rarely played competitive
tennis before the 1960s. Such discrimination has
greatly diminished, and there have been a number of
successful Jewish players in the United States since the
1960s. Yet other barriers have been more persistent.
Poverty is a clear example. Occasional champions from
poor families have appeared in American tennis, including several cases in which children from impoverished immigrant backgrounds became outstanding
players. The number of competitive U.S. players from
poor or lower-class families has never been great, however, and has not clearly increased over time.
A persistent feature of American tennis has been
the small number of blacks who have become competitive players. For many years this was clearly due in part
to the actions of tennis officials. Racism was a hallmark of the exclusive private clubs that served as the breeding grounds for tennis officials, and the officials carried
this policy of exclusion over to their associations. In
1950, Althea Gibson became the first black allowed to
play in the U.S. championships, but the color line did
not simply fall thereafter. Arthur Ashe, who grew up in
Richmond, Virginia, and played there as a junior until
1960, was never allowed to enter junior tournaments
sanctioned by the Mid-Atlantic Tennis Association, the
local subdivision of the USTA. But even later, in an era
of diminishing official racial discrimination, blacks
have not been attracted to tennis in large numbers. The
triumphs of Gibson (U.S. and Wimbledon champion in
1957 and 1958) and Ashe (U.S. champion in 1968 and
Wimbledon champion in 1975), and the success of the
Williams sisters in the 1990s have not served as inspirational examples that would result in the systematic
entry of large numbers of young blacks into competitive tennis. In 1993, for example, there were 5 blacks
among the 45 women nationally ranked by the USTA,
and only 2 blacks among the 75 nationally ranked men.
The Effect of Technology
Perhaps the most systematic change in the way competitive tennis is played has been the recent trend toward the use of greater power. This has been due in
large part to technological change in the design and
construction of tennis rackets. Until the 1960s, the best
rackets were made of wood. This changed with the introduction of the steel racket in 1967, followed by aluminum, graphite, fiberglass, and then composites
made of graphite, fiberglass, and such new materials as
boron and Kevlar. These composites are considerably
stronger than wood or metal, and the rackets can consequently be lighter than traditional rackets.
Another major change in racket design occurred in
1976, when Prince Manufacturing introduced a racket
with a wider and longer face that had a surface area
more than 50 percent larger than conventional designs.
The inventor, Howard Head, had intended only to increase the racket’s effective hitting area, but he discovered that enlarging the head also had the unanticipated
benefit of increasing the power generated by the racket.
By the 1990s, conventional head sizes had disappeared
in favor of oversized and new intermediate, mid-sized
heads; today’s rackets have heads 25 to 60 percent
larger than those of conventional rackets.
The most recent significant innovation in racket design appeared during the late 1980s. Called the “widebody” because of the extreme thickness of the racket
head, the new design is stiffer and generates even
greater power than earlier designs. The widebody,
which quickly became popular among recreational
players, has not yet gained wide acceptance among professional men players, but is almost universally used by
professional women players.
These changes in racket design and have systematically rewarded the use of greater power. The twohanded backhand, used sporadically in earlier times,
but popularized during the 1970s by Bjorn Borg,
Jimmy Connors, and Chris Evert, proved to be ideally
suited to the new, larger racket heads. The two-handed
backhand has become a staple of the competitive
game. The serve has also been affected by the new
rackets, as today’s game places an even greater emphasis on power serving than was the case in the past. Although opinions differ enormously on the desirability
of recent changes in competitive tennis, there is virtually unanimous agreement among both defenders and
critics of today’s game that the new racket technology
is responsible for a much greater reliance on power in
all areas of the game than ever before.
These technological changes are also viewed by
some to be related to the success of younger players.
The more powerful rackets available today can compensate for young players’ lack of size and strength,
while the increasing speed of the game rewards the
faster reflexes and greater foot speed of these players.
The increasing popularity of tennis during the 1970s
produced larger numbers of junior competitions and
training programs. The greater financial rewards available in professional tennis have also spurred the establishment of tennis academies, where children can live
and train year-round.
A succession of women players has become successful at very young ages: Tracy Austin reached the world’s
top 10 in 1978 at 16, Andrea Jaeger in 1980 at 15, Steffi
Graf in 1985 at 16, Gabriela Sabatini in 1986 at 16, Monica Seles in 1989 at 16, and Jennifer Capriati in 1990 at
14. In addition, between 1985 and 1990, the three most
important tournaments in men’s tennis, each more
than a century old, all had their youngest singles champions, as Boris Becker won Wimbledon in 1985 at 17,
Michael Chang the French Open in 1989 at 17, and Pete
Sampras the U.S. Open in 1990 at 19. Many observers
have concluded that competitive tennis players are now
maturing earlier, and retiring earlier, than in the past.
However, although this may be true for the top players,
it is not the case for professionals in general. Prior to
Open tennis, competitive players were typically young,
because they were amateurs and had to earn a living.
With the advent of Open tennis, the mean age of competitive players rose sharply, as many found they could
earn more money playing tennis than in other careers.
As these trends imply, the length of competitive players’
careers has increased substantially in the Open era. For
both men and women, the most important long-run
demographic change during recent decades has been
an increase in the mean ages of competitive players,
with lengthening careers that have clearly been produced by the prize money of Open tennis.
—DAVID W. GALENSON
Bibliography: Baltzell, E. Digby. (1995) Sporting Gentlemen:
Men’s Tennis from the Age of Honor to the Cult of the Superstar. New York: Free Press. Collins, Bud, and Zander
Hollander, eds. (1994) Bud Collins’ Modern Encyclopedia
of Tennis. Detroit: Visible Ink Press. Mewshaw, Michael.
(1993) Ladies of the Court: Grace and Disgrace on the
Women’s Tennis Tour. New York: Crown Publishers.