History of tennis
The history of tennis can be traced back to French monasteries in the Middle Ages . The Jeu de Paume , which flourished in the ballrooms of the 16th and 17th centuries, especially in France and England , and was popular with the nobility and bourgeoisie, developed from an early setback game popular among monks . It was played outdoors by the common people, from which other games such as pelota have emerged over time .
In the 1870s, modern lawn tennis was invented in Great Britain , which first spread to Europe , the USA and the colonies of the British Empire . Tennis tournaments with international participation were already being held in Europe at the turn of the century. In 1900, the Davis Cup, the first international tennis competition, took place. In 1923, the International Tennis Association, founded ten years earlier, agreed on the four most important Grand Slam tournaments to date . The restriction to amateurs in club and tournament operations, which had come under increasing criticism in the decades after the Second World War , was largely abolished in 1968. The beginning of the " Open Era " and the commercialization that went with it revolutionized tennis in many areas and helped the sport, which had been exclusive until then, to break through into large parts of society. Today tennis is one of the most important sports in the world.
Concept history
One of the earliest mentions of tennis is found in a Canterbury City document from 1396. It indicts a certain William Terrey for allowing "le Closhe and le Tenesse" to be played on his property. The term also appears in a chronicle written between 1367 and 1370 by the Florentine author Donato Velluti . He mentioned 500 French knights who died in the battle of Altospacio on September 23, 1325 and added that tennis had started at that time ("in quello tempo si cominciò di qua a giucare a tenes").
Various derivations of the term have been suggested over time; for example from a submerged city called Tennis in the Nile Delta , the French cities Tennois or Sennois , from the German term Tenne or from Latin taenia ("band"). Today it is widely believed that tennis is different from the French Tenez! in the sense of "take / hold the ball!" This was probably a warning call in earlier times to announce the service to his opponent, similar to the Fore! in golf . This variant is documented among other things in the dictionary Guide into Tones published in 1617 by the English language teacher John Minsheu . Tennis, he writes, is derived from the French Tenez , "which word the Frenchmen, the onely tennis players, use to speak when they strike the ball, at tennis." In addition, the thesis is supported by the medieval ballad by an unknown author about the Battle of Azincourt (1415), which has been preserved in several versions. In the handwriting that compares the battle to a tennis game, the term “Holde” (hold!) Has been replaced by “Tenys” in another version. The English poet John Audelay († 1426) also wrote in a ballad in praise of the deeds of Henry V : "And taht Franchemen to plai at the ball, with tenes hold he ferd ham halle" ("and taught the French the ball game Tenez! Stop! He scared them all ").
Tennis in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times
Beginnings
The origin of tennis is believed to be found in northern French monasteries of the High Middle Ages. A first mention can be found in the Dialogus miraculorum written by the Cistercian monk Caesarius von Heisterbach between 1219 and 1223 . In it he describes a scene taking place in hell in which two teams of demons bounce the ball, a human soul, with the palm of their hands. Caesarius claims to have heard this story 24 years earlier from Hermann von Marienstatt , the founder abbot of the Heisterbach and Marienstatt monasteries , who in turn referred to an alleged eyewitness of the scene, Pierre, the abbot of the Morimond monastery . Even if the story obviously sprang from the imagination of one of the participants, Hermann and Pierre are historically guaranteed personalities. The theologian Johannes Beleth had previously complained in the Summa de ecclesiasticis officiis, which was written before 1165, about a widespread "bad habit" in French monasteries such as Reims - the ball game that bishops and archbishops would now also indulge in. Beleth does not describe what kind of ball game it was, however.
In the further 13th and 14th centuries, such a ball game (Latin ludus pilae , also stophus ) is documented in monasteries. It was played in the courtyard of the cloister without a bat, only with the flat of the hand or a glove on . Points could probably be scored by playing the ball through an archway in the gallery or against other parts of the monastery walls. For this purpose, one team formed the defenders of the archway, while the second team, the attackers, had to try to play the ball into the "goal". To indicate, the defenders played the ball on a sloping roof of the gallery. A network was still unknown at the time.
The sports historian Heiner Gillmeister is of the opinion that tennis emerged from an early form of football , which was then played by the common people and was accompanied by brutal fights. The origin of football was, in turn, a discipline of knightly tournaments , the so-called pas d'armes , in which a group of knights had to defend a castle gate or a similar bottleneck against an attacking group. Such tournaments were often held as part of weddings. In the case of the people who were not allowed to take part in knight tournaments, the tournament was replaced by a game in which a leather ball had to be kicked and punched through the opposing city gate. Inspired by this, monks have now invented a more peaceful pastime in which one had to play the ball through an archway in their monastery courtyard.
Conjectures going back further into history are doubtful. Ball games such as the trine have been handed down from Roman times , but they are not related to tennis. According to Robert Henderson, tennis, like many other ball sports, goes back to an ancient Egyptian fertility rite. However, the existence of such a ritualized ball game cannot be proven.
Jeu de Paume
The game spread in France under the name Jeu de Paume ("playing with the palm of the hand"; also À la paume for short ) and finally reached the British Isles via Friesland and Flanders , where it was referred to as Tenesse , Tenetz , Tennise or Tenys . In the earliest mentions from northern France it is also called cache (from French chasse , dt Schasse), in Flanders it became the caetsspel . Derived from this, the term caiche or caitche was also used in England and Scotland until around 1600 . In Germany it was described for the first time around 1450 in the area around Cologne by monks as "kaetschen". The terms "Katsspel" or "Katzenspiel" were used in northern Germany until the beginning of the 19th century, while in the south it was simply referred to as "ball (s) game" or "ball hitting".
Over time, the population from the surrounding area also took part in the game in the monastery courtyard and eventually relocated it to the cities. Betting on large amounts of money now became a central component of tennis. The game found its way into aristocratic circles via monastery schools, the training centers for the nobility, where the Jeu de Paume was moved to specially designed halls. In addition to the desired seclusion from the common people, this also had the advantages that the ball could no longer jump away and one was also independent of the weather. By including the walls, a new variant was developed, whereby the development of the game then proceeded in two separate directions.
In the ballroom
history
The nobility initially laid tennis courts in the moats that were no longer needed for defense. Later they set up their own ballrooms in castles. The first ballrooms (Sale della balla) were installed in northern Italian castles such as the Gonzaga near Mantua or the Este near Ferrara . Over time, the halls were equipped with various refinements that increase the fun. A vertical wall protrusion, the tambour , forged the ball unpredictably. Smaller windows such as the grille (also the French name of the craticula , the lattice window of a monastery), the lune (French for "moon") or the ais were allowed in the walls, for which you received additional points. The walls of the tennis courts were painted black so that the ball could be seen better. A mixture of bovine blood, bovine bile and ashes was used for this. The dimensions varied from place to place. On average, they were about 29 m long and 9 m wide. In the case of new palace buildings, such ballrooms were already firmly planned in the second half of the 15th century.
A number of anecdotes have come down to us in connection with the Jeu de Paume at the royal court. The French King Louis X is said to have died in 1316 after drinking a large amount of ice-cold wine after a strenuous game. When the Burgundian Duke Philip III. Traveling to Paris in 1427 , there was a certain Margot from Hainaut who is said to have played better than any Parisian tennis player in his entourage . It is said that Charles VIII (1470–98) hit his head so hard on a lintel on the way to a game that he died shortly afterwards. The game of tennis was also fatal to the Scottish King James I ; three days before his murder on February 21, 1437, he had a small window on his tennis court walled up, which was used to clean the toilet, because balls had repeatedly fallen into it. On the run from his pursuers, he dug up a floorboard in his bedroom and jumped into the toilet, but could no longer escape from there and was finally caught.
In the 16th and 17th centuries, the Jeu de Paume, played in halls, experienced its heyday. The ballrooms built into castles have now been replaced by free-standing ball houses that were built on the castle grounds and later in the cities. These public ballrooms were visited not only by the nobility but also by craftsmen and the bourgeoisie. The administrator, the ball champion (in England Keeper of the Tennis Plays ), was also tennis coaches, referees and innkeeper, and he also provided the equipment ready.
The Jeu de Paume was particularly widespread in the Romance countries and England. In Paris alone, the then "capital of tennis", there are said to have been 1,800 places around 1600. This number is certainly too high, about 120 are occupied. At that time there were about 15 places in London and Antwerp , 18 in Rome and twelve in Florence . The English traveler Robert Dallington reported in 1598 that there was still a tennis court in France's smallest town. In Paris there were specialized craftsmen (paumiers) who first made balls and later also bats and formed the guild of the paumier-raquetier . Ball houses were much rarer in German-speaking countries, the total number is estimated at only around 50 places, most of them in southern Germany. The future German Emperor Ferdinand I had a ballroom built into the Vienna Hofburg around 1520 . Ballhouses for professors and students were also set up at universities, for example in Poitiers , Orléans , at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge and at the Tübingen Collegium illustrious . Tennis players included the French King Franz I (1515–47), who promoted the construction of the ballroom, and his successor Heinrich II (1519–59). In England tennis was played by Henry V (1387–1422) and Henry VIII (1491–1547). At Hampton Court Palace , a tennis court built by Henry VIII between 1526 and 1529 and rebuilt in its current form in 1628 has been preserved. With the advent of the printing press , the Jeu de Paume were also dealt with in several scripts. Erasmus von Rotterdam recommended tennis especially because of its health benefits. The Italian priest Antonio Scaino from Salò advised the practice of Jeu de Paume in his book Trattato del Giuoco della Palla , published in 1555 . He made detailed sketches of tennis courts, including a hall in the Louvre .
In the first decades of the 17th century, ball houses also spread in central and northern Germany and Scandinavia . A ballroom was now part of the necessary infrastructure of a university or residential city. In 1659 a place was also mentioned in New York .
At the beginning of the 16th century, the first rackets appeared in Paris to relieve the stress on the palms of the hands. At first they were made of solid wood (similar to today's beach tennis ) or they were covered with parchment . In 1539, however, gut strings were already being used in Paris. Inspired by the racket covering , Caterina de 'Medici created the hair fashion coiffure en raquette . The use of clubs took a long time to gain acceptance, and at the end of the 16th century people were still playing with the palm. The balls were made of leather and filled with wool or hair.
Around the same time that the first clubs were used, a precursor to the net also appeared. A poem by Jean Molinet from 1492 is the first to mention a string that was stretched between the players. The additional rule now applied was that the ball had to be played over the string. In order to avoid arguments as to whether a ball was played above or below the string, smaller cords that reached to the ground were attached to the string.
For a long time, the game was a team sport that was played with different numbers of participants. In the course of the 15th century, however, a “standard formation” of three players per team seems to have developed.
Tennis is also mentioned in Shakespeare's drama Heinrich V (1599). King Henry receives a basket with tennis balls from the French crown prince, which mocks Henry's claim to the French throne in view of his youthful age. Heinrich's angry response contains a number of allusions to tennis of his day:
- Heinrich V (1st act, 2nd scene)
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- Translation after August Wilhelm von Schlegel (1840)
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Set is the phrase still in use today , the side of the returning team was referred to as hazard and chace was a specialty of the Jeu de Paume, die Schasse (see below).
From the second half of the 17th century, the game lost its importance. In Paris the number of places had already shrunk to ten by 1700, a few years before the French Revolution there were only 54 places in France. What exactly caused the decline is not clear, it seems to have had several reasons. On the one hand, the interest of the nobility in the Rococo era increasingly turned to the theater and masked balls. As a result, many ballrooms were converted into theaters. Furthermore, the game of tennis fell into disrepute, as the ball houses had developed into "gambling dens" in which, in addition to tennis, dice, card and other games of chance were held. The author of the book The Tricks of the Town Laid Open , published in London in the middle of the 18th century, castigated the formerly “noble” pastime of tennis as having now become the ideal activity for crooks and cardsharps. In 1721 the police council of Coburg Georg Paul Hönn warned in his Kurtzeeinstituted Fraud = Lexicon against the tennis game and especially the bale masters. They would hide their skills while traveling and pretend to be beginners in order to then pull the money out of the pockets of the unsuspecting opponents. Its proximity to games of chance made the game in England of the emerging Puritanism to create, in France the remaining places fell after the liquidation of large parts of the nobility during the French Revolution.
Today the game is still played occasionally in France and in Anglo-Saxon countries, where it is known as Real Tennis (Great Britain), Court Tennis (USA), Royal Tennis (Australia) or Courte paume (France). Another offshoot - in addition to modern tennis - is still popular today: In the 18th century in London guilty prisons , the jeu de paume developed into the racket , the forerunner of today's squash .
regulate
The rules of jeu de paume played in ball houses differ in several ways from today's tennis. The impact is always done from the same side of the square (Engl. Service side ). The ball had to indicate on the roof of the gallery side located ( altfrz. Apentis later from English. Penthouse ), in which the audience sat, are played. The returning attacking team now had to try to get the ball past the opponents into the gallery. In addition to the side gallery, there was often a transverse gallery behind the servers , the dédans , which the attacking team could also aim at. In other places, however, this was largely walled up and replaced by several small openings called ais , trou or lune . Occasionally, special points were also awarded if the ball was played through one of these openings. A hit in the mood , for example, could mean winning the game immediately. A distinction was therefore made between the jeu carré (without transverse gallery) and the jeu dédans (with transverse gallery). The presence and position of the small openings in the jeu carré was also not uniform, but differed from place to place: The bale master Johann Georg Bender already established in the 17th century that "no bale = game like the other is made".
The ball could either be played volley (from French à la volée , "in flight") or after the first bounce. If the ball jumped a second time, this was not counted as a fault, unlike today. Instead, a player had to catch the ball - in his own interest as early as possible - and the place called "Schasse" (French chasse , English chase ) where he had caught the ball (later the one where the ball was caught for the second time hit the ground) was marked. Then the sides were changed and now the team that had previously caught the ball had to reach a longer pass; that is, play the ball in such a way that after it has bounced twice on the ground it could only be caught behind the mark from the previous rally. If this succeeded, she won the game, otherwise it went to the opposing team. The previous attackers then had to defend das dédans until another scourge occurred. Later, Schassen was also played on certain occasions, such as a tie. On the real tennis courts, lines parallel to the net are embedded in the ground as marking for shots.
In addition to Schassen, the defending team was able to force a change of sides by moving the ball into the grille , a small, mostly barred window on the wall behind the attackers or the side gallery in half of the attacking team. In the end, the winner of the game was the team that had a certain number of hits in the gallery as well as scores.
Jeu dédans square in Newcastle as seen from the returning team; in the background the transverse gallery
Jeu carré square in the Falkland Palace ; das dédans was replaced by several small openings
View of the side of the returning team, with grille and tambour, on a square in Manchester
View through the dédans, here designed as a large window (France, 1767)
Jeu de bonde and related games
The common people played the game outdoors in public places; this street tennis was also called jeu de bonde ("jumping ball game"). A suitable place for this had to be level and have a sloping roof on which one could serve. Later on, dummy roofs were used, with a grain sieve placed on wooden stakes, which was available on every farm, prevailing. The game was therefore also called jeu de tamis ("game with the grain sieve "). In the south, the game spread to Italy and the Basque Country , where it developed into early forms of pelota such as the bote luzea and the lachoa . Another variety, the pelota mixteca , reached Mexico . In Friesland the fact that developed Frisian handball , on the Swedish island of Gotland , the Pärkspel . Another variant was a Saterland ball game that was played in the region west of Oldenburg until the 19th century.
For the most part, the rules of these early games can only be reconstructed. There is no doubt that the surcharge also had to be made on a sloping roof on the side or on a roof replacement. In Jeu de tamis, the server bounced the ball against the sieve and then played it with a second blow in the direction of the opposing team. In addition to successful shots, you could probably score points by playing the ball past the last player on the opposing team. This rule is common in the jeu de longue paume , which is still played in France today. While the use of rackets at least partly spread here over time, in contrast to the game in ball houses, a net was never introduced.
The practice of Jeu de paume was forbidden to the population several times, including in England under Edward III. and Richard II. and in France under Charles V. The people should instead practice military skills such as archery or sword fighting in their free time. Some game forms have survived to this day; However, apart from the pelota, these are only of regional importance.
Jeu de paume in a French town, ca.1510
Jeu de paume with dummy roof and wooden mallets, France, 16th century
Jeu de tamis in Beaumont Abbey , Belgium, 1598
Jeu de tamis , France, 17th century
Jeu de longue paume with dummy roof, France, 17th century
Modern tennis
Origin of "lawn tennis"
A prerequisite for the development of modern tennis was industrialization and, in particular, the discovery of vulcanization by Charles Goodyear in 1839. Only now was it possible to manufacture small balls that were insensitive to moisture and dirt and generally robust and at the same time had good jumping properties. The mechanization of the work steps and the use of machines allowed production in large numbers. The invention of the lawnmower by Edwin Budding in the 1830s also made it possible to create an evenly short cut lawn with little effort.
Through industrialization and the rise of the Empire , an upper middle and upper class had formed in Victorian Great Britain, which had a relatively large amount of leisure time. As a result, the modern term sport arose there and the foundations of many modern sports were created. Ideas such as creating a standardized set of rules, holding competitions and championships under the same, fair conditions as well as measuring and recording game results and records for an objective comparison of performance seemed insignificant to people in the Middle Ages and Renaissance and are only now gaining ground. From 1851 a boom began in the croquet game , which is considered to be a pioneer of modern tennis, as it led to many families setting up a sufficiently large lawn in their garden. Croquet itself, however, already lost popularity around 1870, as it appeared to many to be too complex after the introduction of an extensive set of rules. Others, however, lacked a serious athletic challenge. The game eventually acquired a reputation for being overly complicated silliness with no serious aspirations and, as such, at best suitable for girls' boarding schools.
Walter Clopton Wingfield is considered the inventor of modern tennis . The British major , a friend of the later Edward VII , registered a patent in February 1874 under the title “A new and improved, portable place to play the traditional tennis game”. He called the associated game Sphairistikè ( Σφαιριστική , from Greek sphairistikos , "belonging to the ball game") - later in particular from mockers to sticky ("sticky, tough", but also based on stick , "stick") shortened -, or lawn tennis (English "lawn tennis"). Wingfield dedicated the game in his rulebook to an evening party that had met in December of the previous year at his friend Major Naylor-Leyland's for the inauguration of his new country estate Nantclwyd in Wales . The Wingfield rules of lawn tennis were already very similar to modern tennis. At 60 by 30 feet, the pitch was slightly smaller than it is today and wider at the baselines than at the net, making the field an hourglass shape. The net, however, was 1 foot (approx. 30 cm) higher than it is today. The serve had to be made from the middle of one half of the pitch. Wingfield took over the counting method from the rackets , that is, the points were simply counted, a set went up to 15 counters, and only the serving team could score points. He also suggested playing Sphairistikè on an ice rink in winter. In later attempts in this direction, however, it turned out that in "ice tennis" the ball only jumped off poorly and the fast, irregular movements required in tennis could hardly be carried out on ice skates.
In the following years tennis sets consisting of rackets, balls, a net and the rule book were sold under Wingfield's license by the London company French and Company for the price of five guineas . They developed into a bestseller, so that soon afterwards competing manufacturers brought imitations onto the market regardless of the patent protection. Tennis courts have now been set up on lawns originally set up for croquet, and the new game almost completely supplanted croquet within a few years. It was advertised several times in magazines such as the Army and Navy Gazette or The Field and thus spread to the British military. The Army and Navy Gazette recommended that each barracks have its own tennis court. In December 1874, John Heathcote , a member of the All England Club , suggested covering the previously "bare" rubber balls with white flannel , as this would improve the jumping properties and make the ball easier to see.
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The game quickly spread to all British colonies, the United States and mainland Europe. The popularity of the new sport was largely due to the fact that, like its predecessor, croquet, the participation of women - even in mixed-gender doubles - was socially accepted from the start. For a long time, tennis was mainly considered a pastime and party fun. The mixed represented one of the rare opportunities to get to know representatives of the opposite sex. In Germany one spoke of “engagement tennis” in this context. Until the early 20th century, the social aspect was in the foreground in many associations.
With regard to tennis clothing, the strict etiquette of that time applied to women in particular . The dress had to reach the floor covering the ankles, underneath were several petticoats and the obligatory lace-up corset . The sleeves also had to reach over the wrists. A wide felt hat protected from the sun, and leather shoes with high heels were also common. The men's clothing consisted of long flannel trousers, optionally also of knickerbockers and a cotton shirt, either all in white or striped. A colored ribbon was used as a belt. In addition, especially in the early days, skull caps, like those worn on croquettes, were popular as headgear.
As tennis grew in popularity, attorney Harry Gem wrote a letter to the editor in November 1875 for The Field magazine . He pointed out that he and his Spanish friend Augurio Perera had been playing a very similar game originally derived from the Spanish pelota , which they called Lawn Pelota, in his garden in Birmingham since around 1860 . In 1872 they both moved to Leamington Spa , where two years later they founded the world's first tennis club, the Leamington Lawn Tennis Club, together with two medical doctors, Frederick Harry Hayes and Arthur Wellesley Tomkins . From 1876, they also held their own tournament every other summer. Although it was initially played according to its own set of rules, over time they took over equipment and rules from Wingfields Lawn Tennis. In addition to Gem and Perera, other people also complained that they had already experimented with a type of tennis on grass before Wingfield. However, these early attempts never spread beyond a limited circle of friends and acquaintances.
In 1877 Wingfield let the patent protection of his invention expire. As early as 1875, in the course of the first rule reform by the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC), he had declared that the further development of the game would be in the hands of the general public. It may also have played a role here that the two special features introduced by Wingfield, on the one hand the designation Sphairistikè and on the other hand the hourglass-shaped square - which Wingfield itself always emphasized as an important part of the new game - ultimately did not prevail and a patent application was submitted the remaining properties had no prospect of success due to their similarity to real tennis.
Unification of the rules, the first Wimbledon tournament
Like Croquet, Lawn Tennis initially had to struggle with the prejudice that it was not a serious sport. It was mocked as “pat-ball” (English to pat , “poke, patting”), an expression that in English today still describes a boring, low-attack match. Traditional real tennis was much more a “real” sport, with cricket also gaining in importance. This only changed when recognized clubs such as Marylebone Cricket Club and All England Club added tennis to their program.
With the spread of tennis, the desire to standardize the rules soon arose. Wingfield himself had published a second edition of his rule book in the fall of 1874, in which he doubled the number of rules from six to twelve and made small changes such as an enlarged seat. In addition, a large number of different rules had long since emerged. With Wingfield's blessing, a MCC commission published a revised version of the rules in May 1875, according to which for the first time the service was made with one foot behind the baseline and the ball had to be played in special fields on the net. In April 1877, the All England Club announced that it would hold a large lawn tennis tournament on its croquet field in July of the same year, and at the same time included the term lawn tennis in its club name. The club, founded in 1868 as a croquet club, was particularly affected by the decline of the sport and got into financial difficulties. He is said to have organized the tournament in order to use the proceeds to repair a lawn roller required for the croquet game. The rules were revised again for the tournament: the tennis court was enlarged to its current dimensions of 27 by 78 feet (single) and 36 by 78 feet (double), the rectangular shape was established and the height of the net was reduced. The racket count was replaced by the traditional one from real tennis.
The first tournament of Wimbledon in July 1877, held exclusively as a men's singles, was won by Spencer Gore , a captain of the Harrow cricket team . Then Henry Jones , who drove the development of tennis at the All England Club, evaluated the tournament statistics and came to the conclusion that the server had too great an advantage. Therefore, the impact fields were reduced to their present size by 1880. Gore's success was based on the novel volley and smash, which were perfected in the 1880s by the twins William and Ernest Renshaw . The game on the net led to a controversy among tennis players, with former real tennis players in particular advocating a ban or at least its strong restriction. The volley is unfair because it simply "kills" the opponent's best baseline strokes. It was also suggested to draw a “volley line” parallel to the service line, between which and the net one should not complete. In the end, these ideas were rejected in favor of two smaller rule changes: On the one hand, it was now forbidden to reach over the net or even to touch it with a club, and on the other hand, the height of the net on the post was gradually reduced to its current level until 1882 3 feet and 6 inches, which made it easier to pass a player standing by the net. While singles and doubles were initially played on different courts, from 1882 the lines necessary for both types of play were combined in one place.
In 1884 the women's competition was added at Wimbledon, which was won by the vicar's daughter Maud Watson . While the English championships in men's doubles , which have been taking place at Oxford University since 1879 , were brought to Wimbledon in the same year , the women’s doubles and mixed competitions were not raised until 1913, when the tournament was temporarily known as the “World Turf Championships” Rank of official championships. In the first few decades the Wimbledon Championships, like most other tournaments, were held in the Challenge Round process . This meant that the previous year's winner automatically qualified for the final and competed there against the player who was able to prevail against the other challengers in the tournament. This procedure was replaced at Wimbledon in 1922 by a simple knockout system , before seeding lists were introduced in 1927 to distribute the strongest players on the tournament schedule. The concept of the seeding list was suggested as early as 1883 by Lewis Carroll , the author of Alice in Wonderland .
Soon after the first tournament at Wimbledon, tennis tournaments sprang up across the UK, including the Scottish (1878) and Irish (1879) championships, as well as tournaments in Exmouth , Birmingham and Manchester . Tennis clubs sprang up all over the country and in 1883 the first demands for an umbrella organization arose. However, the All England Club in particular long resisted such efforts. It was not until January 1888 that the Lawn Tennis Association (LTA) was founded after the All England Club had been granted the right to host the English championships.
Up into the 20th century, as is still the case in golf today , the use of handicaps , in which the better rated player gave the worse a certain number of points. A separate handicap competition was also common in tournaments.
Distribution outside the UK
United States
The later seven-time US champion Richard Sears reported that his brother Fred bought one of Wingfield's tennis sets in August 1874 and played it with his cousin James Dwight at a vacation home in Nahant near Boston . According to the writer Martha Summerhayes , lawn tennis was played in October 1874 at Camp Apache, north of what is now Tucson , Arizona . Mary Outerbridge is often referred to as the "mother of American tennis" . She met Lawn Tennis during a visit to relatives in Bermuda by British soldiers. After her return to the USA, probably in the spring of 1875, she built a tennis court on the grounds of the Staten Island Cricket Club in New York . The club's manager, August Emilius Outerbridge , was her brother.
In September 1880, the first American Championship (Championship of America) was hosted there, which was won by the British Otway Woodhouse . Woodhouse had already played at the tournament at Wimbledon that year and happened to find out about the tournament from the newspaper while on a business trip to the USA. After the tournament there was a dispute about the rules (especially about the size and weight of the ball) and the demand for a supreme authority became loud. As a result, the United States National Lawn Tennis Association (USNLTA) was founded in New York on May 21, 1881 , which later became the United States Tennis Association (USTA). At the same time it was decided that the championships would be held annually at the end of August in the posh seaside resort of Newport in Rhode Island . The first tournament took place in the park of Newport Casino that same year and was won by Richard Sears. In contrast to the first tournament in 1880, however, until 1885 only American citizens were eligible to participate. In particular, the Davis Cup, held from 1900 onwards, made tennis very popular in North America. As early as 1908 there were well over 100 clubs, mainly on the west and east coast. From 1887 championships for women were also held in Philadelphia . Until 1901, like the men, they played over three sets of wins. In 1915, the American men's championships were relocated to Forest Hills in the New York borough of Queens , the women's competition followed in 1935. The American championships were the only Grand Slam tournaments that were held continuously since their founding, including during both World Wars.
France
It is believed that British vacationers brought the first tennis sets to France. In 1877 ten British people founded the first tennis club, the Decimal Club, in Paris . In Dinard on the Channel coast, British vacationers played on the beach and founded a tennis club in 1878. The Le Havre club also claims to be the oldest French tennis club.
The clubs that were important for the following years were formed in Paris in the 1880s. In 1882, a group of young sports enthusiasts founded the Racing Club in Paris . The former students of the Lycée Condorcet had regularly competed in the Saint-Lazare train station from 1880 onwards , which at times had developed into a curious attraction with reports in various tabloid magazines. From 1885 the Lawn Tennis Club began to play tennis, for which the city of Paris made an area available in the Bois de Boulogne a year later . After initially setting up grass pitches, they were soon converted into hard courts, as they required much less maintenance. Another Parisian sports club, Stade Français , was founded in 1883. Initially, the members played indoor tennis from 1889 before setting up several tennis courts near Saint-Cloud in 1899 .
From 1891 the Championnat de France , the national French championships, was held alternately on the grounds of the Racing Club and the Stade Français. The first winner was the Briton H. Briggs . In the first decades, participation in the national championships was reserved exclusively for members of French tennis clubs. With the hard court world championships , however, another international tournament took place in Paris from 1912. In the course of the restructuring of the tournament landscape by the ILTF in 1923, both tournaments were discontinued. After the Olympic Games in Paris in 1924 , the international French championships (now the French Open ) began the following year .
Australia
Tennis quickly spread to what was then the British colony of Australia . In 1880 the first Victoria Championships took place in Melbourne . In 1904, three years after Australia gained independence from the United Kingdom, the Australasian Lawn Tennis Association , the forerunner of Tennis Australia , was founded in preparation for Australia's participation in the Davis Cup . In 1905 the first Australasian Championships took place at Warehouseman's Cricket Ground in Albert Park , Melbourne . In 1922 a women's competition was added. From this year New Zealand gradually broke away from the joint association, so that in 1926 the first purely Australian championships were held at the end of January around the national holiday Australia Day . They were held in different cities in the following years, until they finally concentrated on Sydney and Melbourne as the venues.
Germany
As in France, British vacationers also introduced lawn tennis in Germany. As early as July 1874, Viscount Petersham and the colonial clerk Herbert Hankey built a tennis court in the garden of the Royal Victoria Hotel in Bad Homburg . In a note on a photograph taken in the spa garden of Bad Homburg in 1876, the Scotsman Robert Anstruther is credited with bringing the tennis game to Germany. It is the oldest known photograph of tennis at all.
In June 1881, the established Anglican pastor Thomas Starnes White in Baden-Baden Germany's first tennis club, the Baden-Baden Lawn Tennis Club . A year later the club was renamed the International Lawn Tennis Club , which suggests that non-British people were now also accepted into the club. In addition to the tennis clubs, commercial "playground societies" were established that set up tennis courts for rent.
Similar to the playground companies, "ice rink clubs" were also founded at that time. These clubs rented meadows, which they flooded with water in winter, so that you could skate on the resulting ice surface - for non-members for an entrance fee. Two such clubs, Vor dem Dammtor (1886) and Auf der Uhlenhorst (1888, today Klipper THC ) were founded in Hamburg in the 1880s, and they jointly leased a larger meadow in Hamburg-Rotherbaum . Board member Carl August von der Meden had got to know lawn tennis during a long stay in Great Britain and had the first tennis courts built on the site in the summer.
In the years 1887 and 1888, the first tournaments took place on the tennis facility at Hamburg's Dammtor , but they went largely unnoticed. On August 27, 1892, on the initiative of Medens, the first “Championship of Germany” was held there, in which players from Germany and Austria took part. Before that, von der Meden had tried in vain to get British players to participate. Instead of playing on grass, they played on basalt made from road debris. Due to an outbreak of cholera in Hamburg , almost all foreign participants except for one player from Strasbourg canceled at short notice and the final had to be postponed several times. On September 20, 19-year-old Walter Bonne from Hamburg finally won .
It was not until 1897 that the "International Championships of Germany" - parallel to the national championships - were held with an international field of participants. The significantly better British players now dominated the tournament: George Hillyard won the men's competition and his wife Blanche Bingley won the women's competition . The year before, von der Meden had already opened the women's competition for foreigners, but was unable to win international participants for the tournament, and this year, too, the foreign players were reluctant to register. Charles Adolph Voigt had in the meantime led a tournament to flourish in Bad Homburg, which was firmly anchored in the tournament schedule of foreign players and overtook the Hamburg tournament. The native Californian had studied in several European cities and later worked at the Gruson factory in Magdeburg , but after the publication of a tennis manual on the European continent, he advanced to become a “lawn tennis guru”. He had succeeded in making the Bad Homburg tournament an international social event. The foreign master players lured the European aristocracy to Bad Homburg, so that the tabloid press reported extensively on the tournament. Von der Meden had therefore increased the attractiveness of the Hamburg tournament on the one hand with a new, more valuable winner's cup (donated by the shipowner Carl Laeisz ). On the other hand, he had moved the date of the German championships to autumn, when the foreign players were in Germany anyway to play in Bad Homburg.
After the first international championships were held, German tennis players criticized the supposed better treatment of British players, which culminated in an anonymously published article in the Berlin magazine Sport im Bild . The abuse of the “perfidious Albion” also in sport was in keeping with the spirit of the times, as the following year the gymnastics teacher Karl Planck published a pamphlet against the “foot lolling” of football , which he described as an “English disease”. The anglophile von der Meden, already annoyed by what he considered to be insufficient financial support from the Hamburg clubs, quickly awarded the German championships to Bad Homburg in the following years.
In December 1901, on the initiative of Friedrich Adolf Traun , Hans Oskar Behrens and Otto Nirrnheim, the Hamburg Lawn Tennis Guild was founded, in which representatives of the two Hamburg clubs joined forces to bring the German championships back to Hamburg. As a result, talks took place between representatives of the various tennis clubs, which led to the establishment of the German Lawn Tennis Association (DLTB) in the Berlin Palace Hotel on May 19, 1902 . Meden became the first president of the umbrella organization. The Hamburg Lawn Tennis Gilde has now been granted the right to hold the national championships. From 1902 the international German championships took place again in Hamburg and it was possible, despite efforts by Voigt to poach the British players, to establish the tournament against Bad Homburg as the most important one on German soil. The national championships were relocated to Heiligendamm in 1899 and held in Braunschweig from 1907 .
In the German-speaking area, the English terms were initially used in full. The terms commonly used today (fore and backhand, foot and double faults, serve and return strikes, etc.) go back to Robert Freiherr von Fichard , who presented them to the board of the DLTB in a lecture in May 1903. In 1920 the DLTB deleted the term Lawn from the name.
Tennis at the Olympics
At the first Olympic Games in 1896 , both jeu de paume (in the form of the French jeu de longue paume ) and lawn tennis were on the program. However, since the well-known players from France, Great Britain and the USA did not want to take part, the field of lawn tennis participants consisted mainly of unknown players from Greece . In addition, athletes from other disciplines such as the British hammer thrower George Stuart Robertson or the Hungarian weightlifter Momcsilló Tapavicza were recruited. According to a widespread legend, the athlete Friedrich Adolf Traun is said to have been persuaded by the Irishman John Pius Boland to take part in the tournament when he bought a tennis racket in an Athens shop. According to another story, Boland himself, then a student at Christ College in Oxford , heard about Coubertin's plans from his fellow student Thrasyvoalos Manaos and then traveled to Athens over the Easter holidays to watch the games. It was only there that Manaos, now a member of the organizing committee, persuaded him to take part in the tennis tournament. Both Traun and Boland were already tournament-experienced tennis players, and Traun had also expressed the wish to take part in the Olympic tennis tournament before leaving for Athens. Boland won the singles competition, alongside Traun also the doubles.
At the following games in Paris in 1900 , a tennis tournament for women was held, which Charlotte Cooper won. In 1908 in London , Real Tennis was featured as a competitive sport for the only time . As at the following games in Stockholm in 1912, there was also an indoor competition in addition to the lawn tournament. In preparation for the 1928 Olympic Games , tennis was removed from the Olympic program as a result of a dispute between the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the ILTF. The IOC accused the ILTF of violating the amateur rule with increasing professionalism among tennis players and refused to include a representative of the ILTF on its committee. In 1968 in Mexico City and 1984 in Los Angeles , tennis was still a demonstration sport only at the 1988 Games in Seoul with the abolition of the amateur rule promoted by the IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch .
Foundation of the international umbrella organization
Although Great Britain was the most important tennis nation until the First World War , it initially held back on the formation of an international federation - as it did when the world football association FIFA was founded in 1904. In 1911, the US American Duane Williams, who lives in Geneva, suggested holding a world championship on clay in Paris. After an international organizing commission was formed in Paris for this purpose in November 1911, the first edition of the hard court world championships took place in Paris the following year, however, without the participation of the British LTA . From this commission of representatives from 13 countries emerged the international tennis federation , which was founded on March 1, 1913 under the name Fédération Internationale de Lawn Tennis (FILT) (English International Lawn Tennis Federation , ILTF) in Paris. The first chairman of the ILTF was the representative of the German delegation, Hans Oskar Behrens. Although it was still possible to get the British association on board, the American association refused to join. With the founding of the ITF, it was decided to introduce world championships on the three common surfaces of the time: the "Grass World Championships" in Wimbledon, the "Hard Court World Championships" in Paris and the " Indoor World Championships " in alternating host cities. The Americans did not want their championships to be downgraded to a second class tournament and were also of the opinion that the Davis Cup had been a world championship since 1900.
It was not until 1923 that the USA could be persuaded to join the ILTF. It had been agreed to abolish the system of world championships and instead to regard the championships of England, the USA, Australia and France as the most important tournaments ( major tournaments , or majors for short ) in the future . This was the hour of birth of today's Grand Slam tournaments . In addition, the rules of the LTA were recognized as an official set of rules. Duane Williams, the initiator of the international association, did not live to see it again: he died in April 1912 when the Titanic sank . His son, tennis player Dick Williams , survived the accident in a lifeboat.
Davis Cup and Fed Cup
The Davis Cup goes back to a group of Harvard University students led by Dwight Filley Davis , American doubles champion from 1899 to 1901. Davis went on a tennis tour through North America in 1899 with his doubles partner Holcombe Ward and the American singles champion Malcolm Whitman . This met with such a great response from the audience that Davis then turned to the President of the USNLTA James Dwight to hold an international tournament based on the model of the America's Cup . Dwight had been working on the same idea himself for several years and was already in contact with representatives of the British Association on the matter. After Davis agreed to donate a trophy worth $ 1,000 at the time, a match between teams from the United States and Great Britain was scheduled for the following year. The USA team won the first event. From 1902 the tournament took place annually, from 1904 teams from other European countries and Australasia (a joint team from Australia and New Zealand ) were added. After Davis' death in 1945, the tournament previously known as the International Lawn Tennis Challenge was renamed the Davis Cup. This name was unofficially in use before.
In 1923, American player Hazel Hotchkiss Wightman started a similar tournament for women. The Wightman Cup , however, received little support from the ILTF, which was then fixated on men's sport, and remained a country competition between the USA and Great Britain until it was discontinued in 1989. At the initiative of Mary Hardwick , the ILTF took up the idea of such a competition for women again in the early 1960s and launched the Federation Cup (officially Fed Cup from 1995 ) on its 50th anniversary in 1963 . The USA team won the competition, which was played among 16 nations in the first year. In the first decades, the tournament was held at the same venue within a week, but in 1992, with a growing number of participating nations, rounds were introduced over the entire season.
Time until World War II - the "Golden Age"
By the turn of the century 1900, a tournament circuit had formed in many European countries, with tournaments in Great Britain being particularly important in the traditional holiday resorts on the Côte d'Azur ( Nice , Cannes , Monaco ). The tournaments were dominated by British players such as twin brothers Herbert and Wilfred Baddeley (1890s) and Reginald and Laurence Doherty (around 1900). After the Wimbledon tournament suffered a brief decline in attendance in the 1890s, players from the European continent, the colonies and the USA were invited from 1902 onwards. In the women’s category, the American May Sutton won the first time a non-British woman, who two years later was succeeded by the Australian Norman Brookes in the men’s category. Between 1910 and 1933, the British players were completely ousted from the men's list of winners at Wimbledon, and in the period before the First World War, in addition to Brookes, the New Zealander Anthony Wilding was particularly successful several times. With Otto Froitzheim and Oscar Kreuzer , a German team took part in the Davis Cup for the first time in 1913. In August 1914, shortly after the outbreak of the First World War , her steamer was caught by a British warship on the way back from the Davis Cup semi-finals in Philadelphia off Gibraltar , so that both were imprisoned in Great Britain until the end of the war.
After tournaments in Europe came to a standstill during the First World War, tennis received a boost in public awareness in the 1920s. With Suzanne Lenglen and Helen Wills for the women and Bill Tilden , Henri Cochet and René Lacoste for the men, the first tennis celebrities that have been discussed in detail in the press emerged. The tournaments now also had to do justice to the increased audience interest. The English championships moved to a new area on Church Road in 1922, the center court of which had about 10,000 seats and 3,600 standing places. Two years later, a stadium for 14,000 spectators was opened for the American championships in Forest Hills . In 1925, the French championships opened up to an international field of participants. From 1927 the Australian championships were held in the newly built, 13,000-seat stadium of the Kooyong Lawn Tennis Club in Melbourne . After the victory of the " Four Musketeers " in the Davis Cup , the Stade Roland Garros , named after a world war hero, was inaugurated in Paris in 1928 .
Suzanne Lenglen revolutionized women's tennis clothing. Already in her first Wimbledon final in 1919 , she competed with a one-piece, knee-length dress with short sleeves, which subsequently became fashionable. For the men, the first players such as Brame Hillyard and Bunny Austin played in shorts at the Wimbledon tournament from 1930 . In the winter of 1926/27, Lenglen accepted an offer from the businessman Charles Pyle to play for a fee and went on a highly regarded tour of North America with Mary Browne , Vinnie Richards and other American players. She was received by 13,000 fans at Madison Square Garden , and Lenglen is said to have earned a total of about 75,000 US dollars . According to the then applicable amateur rule, she was then excluded from tournaments of the ILTF, so that she then worked as a tennis trainer until her untimely death in 1937. After the success of the tour, Pyle called the US Pro Championships the following year , in which Tilden in particular, also a professional from 1931, appeared frequently in the 1930s.
Due to the expulsion of the German Tennis Association (DTB) from the ILTF, which lasted until the end of 1926 , German players were not allowed to participate in international tournaments for a long time. In 1931, with Cilly Aussem, a German player won the Wimbledon tournament for the first time. She beat Hilde Krahwinkel in an all-German Wimbledon final . In April 1933, the Board of DTB decreed shortly after the " seizure " of the Nazis in Germany to the exclusion of all "non-Aryan" members and their blocking for international events. Jewish-German top players like Daniel Prenn or Ilse Friedleben fled into exile, Nelly Neppach was driven to suicide.
From 1937 the BBC broadcast the first games of the Wimbledon Championships on television. Important players of the 1930s included Bunny Austin and Fred Perry , who was victorious at Wimbledon from 1934 to 1936. Don Budge won the first Grand Slam in 1937 . Since leaving Lenglen, Americans Helen Wills Moody and later Helen Jacobs have dominated the women's event. The German players were particularly successful in the French championships ( Gottfried von Cramm 1934 and 1936, Henner Henkel 1937). Von Cramm was arrested by the Gestapo immediately after his return from a world tour in 1938 and later sentenced to one year in a camp for alleged homosexuality . Although he was released prematurely after six months, he could not take part in the Wimbledon tournament because the DTB refused him the necessary registration. After von Cramm had contacted the All England Club directly, the latter allowed him to at least play the tournament at the Queen's Club , which he promptly won.
The time up to the Second World War is also known as the Golden Age of tennis. In the decades that followed, a new level was reached in terms of the level of professionalism, competition among players and the technology used.
The amateur rule
Since the early days of tennis, participation in tournaments and membership in clubs was reserved exclusively for so-called "amateurs". This regulation was later also applied at the Olympic Games and was basically valid in tennis until 1968. Originally, the term amateur was associated with the idea of an ideal type of athlete who does his sport not for financial or other considerations, but solely for the love of sport. In fact, the purpose of the division was to exclude members of the lower classes from clubs and tournaments. An amateur was a synonym for a gentleman , a member of the upper middle and upper classes. On the other hand, there was the professional from a lower class who had to make a living through manual work, for example a simple craftsman or worker. It was well known that the professional could beat the amateur, but such a competition was rejected as "ungentlemanly" and therefore unfair. If, on the other hand, one qualified as an "amateur" due to one's social position, one could actually earn as much prize money as one wanted. In 1920 the international tennis federation ILTF introduced a regulation that forbade any income, or generally the acquisition of other advantages, for a player in connection with his sport. From now on, the players could only claim reimbursement for travel expenses and expenses at tournaments, and initially only for eight weeks of a year. Only luxury items such as jewelry or valuable wristwatches or vouchers for them could be advertised as prizes for tournaments. The first individual winner of Wimbledon Maud Watson received a silver flower basket worth 20 guineas in 1884, a significantly more valuable prize than her successor Maria Bueno , who in 1960 had to be content with a jewelry voucher for 15 pounds .
The withdrawal of the amateur status resulted in a complete exclusion from the international tournaments dominated by the ILTF and also an exclusion from the tennis scene. Players without this status were not allowed to participate in any ILTF tournaments, including the prestigious Grand Slam tournaments. Amateur players were also prohibited from competing in tournaments alongside professional players. However, this was controversial. In 1934 the rules were discussed again by the ILTF. The British Lawn Tennis Association (LTA) refused to sanction professional competitions in Great Britain. After his move to the professional camp in 1935, Fred Perry's honorary membership in the All England Club was withdrawn, with the club also insisting on the return of the tie awarded in this context. Pauline Betz described that after her transition to professional players in 1947 she was downright criminalized by the international tennis association. The move to the professional camp was considered the worst offense any player could be guilty of. The fear of losing amateur status was correspondingly great among the players: Kathleen McKane Godfree , Wimbledon winner in 1924, exchanged the jewelry voucher she had won for a car, but kept it a secret for fear of sanctions from the ILTF until her biography was published in 1987.
If the amateur rule was justified when it was first introduced with the idea of an idealized athlete, it later often became a plaything of tactical considerations. In 1912, the DTB pushed a competing tournament organizer out of business, citing a violation of the amateur rule. Once done, the withdrawal of amateur status was basically valid for life and then even applied to all sports with similar regulations (e.g. golf). However, exceptions were often made for popular athletes. In the 1920s, for example, Bill Tilden regularly published tennis articles in newspapers for a fee. The American Tennis Association therefore threatened Tilden's suspension several times, but repeatedly withdrew this under pressure from both Tilden himself and his friends. Hans Nüsslein, on the other hand, was withdrawn from amateur status at the age of 16 after he had been paid by his club to work as a coach - a player from a neighboring club had reported him to the DTB. As a result, he was denied participation in a Grand Slam tournament throughout his life.
Despite the grave consequences, it was known as early as the 1920s that many players classified as amateur, along with tournament organizers, violated the amateur rule. The president of the American tennis association Western Lawn Tennis Association pointed out in 1926 that the "expense allowances" paid out had reached such heights that many players actually lived on the income from their sport. After the Second World War and with the increasing commercialization of sport, the regulation finally turned into a farce. Although the level of play had long been so high that every successful player had to devote a large part of his time to tennis training, the players officially worked full-time as simple employees or salespeople. However, many were secretly awarded prizes at tournaments or paid for product promotion. Pancho Gonzales stated in 1959 that the difference between amateur and professional can best be explained with the help of an imaginary table: the professional receives his money above the table top, the amateur below. The later DTB President Fritz Kütemeyer described the difference in a similarly sarcastic manner : " Some pay taxes, others don't." In gaming circles , the common practice was called backhand - a player who was illegally collecting bonuses a backhander . The tournament organizers and associations benefited primarily from this system and received the majority of the income. Many players, on the other hand, were plagued by financial worries, especially during the non-tournament period, and were heavily dependent on their officials.
Players classified as professional often made their living as tennis coaches. In addition, several private tournaments (such as the US Pro Tennis Championships in the USA, the Wembley Championship in England or the Championnat International de France Professionnel in France) were held from the 1920s, but they remained insignificant from a sporting point of view. A permanent series of tournaments did not exist, so promoters often signed a group of players with whom they then went on tour and held exhibition matches in different cities. Professional games were always suspected of being manipulated, in which spectacular rallies and exciting gameplay were intentionally brought about in order to increase the entertainment value. Many successful players moved to the professional camp towards the end of their careers with several Grand Slam victories in their luggage (such as Bill Tilden, Suzanne Lenglen and Fred Perry, and later Jack Kramer and Pauline Betz , among others ), where they negotiate lucrative bonuses and could silver their sporting success.
1945 to 1967 - "Shamateurism"
After the Second World War , many tennis courts in Europe were destroyed. The Center Court at Wimbledon had been badly damaged by several bomb hits, the area of the Stade Roland Garros in Paris was used as a prison camp by the French government and later by the German occupation. Nevertheless, all Grand Slam tournaments resumed operations in 1946. The DTB was re-established in 1949, until July 1950 German players were excluded from international tournaments.
American players dominated in the early years of the post-war period. Maureen Connolly won the first women's Grand Slam in 1953 . However, during the 1950s a number of top Australian players emerged. In the men's field, players like Frank Sedgman , Ken Rosewall , Ashley Cooper , Roy Emerson and Rod Laver won numerous Grand Slam tournaments and won the Davis Cup 15 times between 1950 and 1967 . In the women's category, the Australian Margaret Smith Court won 24 individual Grand Slam titles from 1960, more than any other player before or after her. With the advent of civil aviation, the Australian championships also received an upgrade thanks to an increasingly international field of participants. While only a few players had traveled to Australia due to the long journey, in 1946 the first American players around Jack Kramer and Ted Schroeder used the plane. This reduced the journey time by ship from around a month to a few days.
In 1959 the ILTF adjusted the foot error rule. Until then, the impact had to be done with both feet on the ground, but the regulation now allowed one foot to be in the air. From 1975 the server was finally allowed to jump off completely, which enabled much more powerful serves.
In 1951, the ILTF had softened the amateur regulation to the effect that players were now allowed to apply for an expense allowance for 210 tournament days a year. Yet it was an open secret that many "amateur" players made a living from their sport. One spoke of "shamateurism" ( suitcase word from sham and amateurism , "sham amateurism"). Over time, the most famous players signed professional contracts, which made the amateur tournament circuit noticeably less of a quality. In 1957, Lew Hoad announced the move to professional camp immediately after his victory at Wimbledon, followed the following year by top players Ashley Cooper, Mervyn Rose and Mal Anderson . In 1960, a vote on the abolition of the amateur rule failed with five votes due to the necessary two-thirds majority. Rod Laver won a Grand Slam in 1962 as the second player after Don Budge and also signed a professional contract at the end of that year. The transfer to professional players also spread among women. For example, Althea Gibson went on tour with Carol Fagoros after several Grand Slam victories in the late 1950s .
Against this background, a change in the situation became apparent in 1967. In the course of the year, two serious competitors emerged for the ILTF: On the one hand, the World Championship Tennis (WCT) sponsored by the Texan oil millionaire Lamar Hunt , which has eight of the ten best players (the Handsome Eightconsisting of Dennis Ralston , John Newcombe , Tony Roche , Cliff Drysdale , Earl Buchholz , Niki Pilić , Roger Taylor and Pierre Barthès ) was to tour the world; on the other hand, the National Tennis League , limited to North America, under the leadership of the former Davis Cup captain George MacCall , which, in addition to well-known players from the men's field, also signed the best women like Billie Jean King , Ann Jones and Françoise Dürr . The All England Club then changed course. One month after the Wimbledon Championships in 1967 , the club held its first tournament for professionals on Church Road. He was able to persuade the BBC to broadcast, which introduced color television with the tournament. The tournament was a great success and made clear to a large audience the difference in quality that now existed between the amateur and the professional field. In December, All England Club chairman Herman David bluntly called the amateur rule a lie and announced that the Wimbledon Championships would include professionals in the field the following year. After the American tennis federation USLTA agreed with this opinion in February 1968, the ILTF called a special meeting in March. As a result, the restriction of tournaments to amateurs was largely abolished, the beginning of the so-called Open Era (English "open era").
Beginning of the "Open Era"
Early phase
For 1968, the ILTF approved nine Open Championships in addition to the three Grand Slams . The first open was the $ 14,000 clay court tournament in Bournemouth, England in April 1968. Virginia Wade , the winner in the women's singles, however, declined her prize money of $ 720, fearing that the ILTF would abolish the amateur rule again cancel. The ILTF did not abolish the amateur rule completely at first, but introduced four categories of players: amateurs who were still not allowed to accept prize money, tennis trainers (teaching professionals). who could only compete in open tournaments against amateurs, next to the ILTF officially registered as a professional player (registered players) and finally the contract professionals (contract professionals). who were not members of the ILTF, but were under contract with a competing organizer. This categorization had a particular influence on admission to the Davis Cup and Federation Cup. For example, the American Tennis Association continued to only allow amateurs to participate in these competitions. As a result, the amateur Arthur Ashe , who still wanted to take part in the Davis Cup, received a medal for his victory at the US Open in 1968 and only 20 dollars per tournament day, while his defeated final opponent, the Dutchman Tom Okker, was awarded the 14,000 dollar prize money. The US Open was also by far the most highly endowed Grand Slam tournament of the first professional season for the women, in which the winner Virginia Wade received $ 6,000 - at Wimbledon, the winners Rod Laver and Billie Jean King received $ 4,800 and 1,800 respectively , at the French Open Ken Rosewall $ 3,000 and Nancy Richey $ 1,000.
The following year there were already 30 open tournaments, which advertised a total of 1.4 million dollars in prize money. Rod Laver dominated the men's field and won his second Grand Slam after 1962, taking in $ 124,000 in prize money.
Consolidation of the Grand Prix, establishment of the ATP
In 1970 the ILTF introduced its own professional tour, the “ Grand Prix ” consisting of 19 tournaments, directed by Jack Kramer . The prize money concept was innovative here: the players received points for each round they reached in a tournament, the sum of which was then used to calculate the income paid out at the end of the year. This concept was intended to flatten the existing difference in prize money, since up until now the winner received a large part of the endowment and all other players had to be satisfied with significantly less. With this, the world association intended, not least, to take the wind out of the sails of the competing WCT, which could offer the players greater financial security with an attractive basic salary and long-term contracts. Together with the Grand Prix, a season-end tournament, the Grand Prix Masters , was introduced for the first time , in which the six best players of the year took part. The WCT, which had already taken over the financially troubled NTL in May 1970 and now had 34 players, responded in 1971 with the introduction of its own series of 20 tournaments, the World Championships of Tennis (with the WCT Finals as the end of the season). This resulted in two separate tournament series, whose players only met at the Grand Slam tournaments. In the course of 1971 the relationship between the ILTF and the WCT worsened when hardly any WCT players competed at both the French Open and the subsequent Wimbledon Championships due to the stressful season. Finally, after the Wimbledon Championships in 1971 , the ILTF announced that it would exclude all WCT players from the Grand Slam tournaments in the coming year. Among other things, this had the consequence that the Australian John Newcombe could not defend his Wimbledon title. The ILTF withdrew the exclusion of WCT players in July 1972 after the USLTA President Walter Elcock announced that all WCT players would be allowed to start. In the following period, both parties managed to agree on a compromise: The time between the Australian Open and the French Open belonged to the WCT, in which they could play tournaments with a contingent of 64 players increased by the ILTF - the WCT tournaments took place mainly in the hall anyway - while the rest of the year the ILTF was available. In 1978 both series were combined under the umbrella of the Grand Prix, which now comprised 95 tournaments. Lamar Hunt separated the WCT from the Grand Prix for a short time in 1982 after a dispute with the ILTF. However, apart from Ivan Lendl, he was only able to move a few top players to transfer to his series of 22 tournaments, so that Hunt gave up after two years and the tournaments were reintegrated into the Grand Prix. The final season tournament, the WCT Finals , remained under this name until 1989.
Against the background of tensions between the ILTF and WCT, 40 players formed the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) as a union during the 1972 US Open in order to gain more influence and a say. When the Romanian Niki Pilić was banned from the ILTF the following March for not showing up at a Davis Cup match, the ATP called on the players to boycott the 1973 Wimbledon Championships , which ultimately 93 players complied with. In August 1973, the ATP launched the tennis world rankings , which were subsequently published on a weekly basis and replaced the rankings of journalists or national tennis associations that had existed up to that point, which were often based on subjective criteria, as the basis for tournament scores. The first player to top the world rankings was Romanian Ilie Năstase . From 1974 onwards, the Grand Prix was chaired by a body made up of representatives from the ILTF, the ATP and the tournament organizers, the so-called Men's International Professional Tennis Council (MIPTC).
Your own ladies tour
In the women's class, the dominant Australian Margaret Smith Court won her Grand Slam in 1970. Nevertheless, many players were dissatisfied because of the significantly lower prize money compared to the men. The endowment for women was on average a quarter, in some tournaments such as in Rome or Los Angeles only an eighth of the men's amount. In September 1970, a group of nine players, led by Billie Jean King , announced that instead of the following Los Angeles tournament, they would take part in their own tournament in Houston , organized by the tennis player and entrepreneur Gladys Heldman . After the head of the Grand Prix Jack Kramer had shown no concessions regarding an adjustment of the prize money, Heldman succeeded in winning the tobacco company Phillip Morris a potent financier for his own tournament. A few years earlier, Phillip Morris had launched a new cigarette brand for women - Virginia Slims - and launched a large-scale advertising campaign aimed at promoting self-confidence, sportiness and emancipation. Since women's tennis was an excellent fit for this, the company agreed to finance the tournament with prize money of $ 7,500. The USLTA immediately banned the participants of the Virginia Slims Tournament , but took them back the following spring.
After the Houston tournament was a success, Heldman succeeded the following year in putting together a series of 14 tournaments with total prize money of $ 309,000, the Virginia Slims Circuit . The American Tennis Association then approached Heldman and hired her as a representative for a joint women's tennis tour. In September 1971, however, Heldman separated again in a dispute from the USLTA and founded the short-lived Women's International Tennis Federation (WITF). In the winter and spring of 1973, the ILTF and the WITF held separate women's tours. When Heldman subsequently lost an antitrust lawsuit against the USLTA, this also meant the end of the WITF. The USLTA agreed on a women's tour with Phillip Morris. The former WITF players founded the Women's Tennis Association (WTA) during the 1973 Wimbledon Championships, with Billie Jean King as its first president. From 1974 onwards, the WTA, together with the USLTA, organized the new women's tour , the WTA Tour . The WTA has published a weekly world ranking list for women since 1975. In 1984 Martina Navrátilová was the first woman to win more prize money in one year than the most successful player in the men's John McEnroe ($ 2.17 versus $ 2.02 million).
Further developments
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With the professionalization of tennis in the 1970s, it developed from a largely elitist leisure time to a popular sport. The DTB increased its membership between 1971 and 1981 from around 350,000 to 1.4 million. Tennis games were increasingly being televised. The exhibition match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs on September 20, 1973 took place in front of a record crowd of 30,472 spectators at the Astrodome in Houston and attracted a good 50 million Americans in front of the television sets. A heated social debate - the emancipation of women - was cleverly taken up and transferred to the tennis court. The match, hyped up to the Battle of the Sexes, between the 55-year-old self-proclaimed “King of all chauvinists” Riggs and the 29-year-old King, known as a champion for women's rights, caught the spirit of the times and filled it the front pages in the US and beyond. In the course of the 1970s, the then predominant white balls were largely replaced by neon yellow, which were easier to see on television screens. Furthermore, the TV broadcasters were accommodated by the introduction of the tie-break , which made it easier to plan the duration of a game. While this was initially played out at different scores depending on the tournament - in Wimbledon, for example, with a score of 8: 8 - the uniform regulation that is still valid today was introduced in 1979.
Due to the increased demand, more and more manufacturers began to include tennis items in their product range. The structure of the tennis racket, which had remained practically the same since the early days of lawn tennis, has now undergone major changes. In 1967 Wilson brought out the first racquet with the T-2000 , the frame of which was made of metal instead of wood. In 1976, Howard Head , founder of the sporting goods manufacturer of the same name , developed the first "jumbo" racket with a large racket head, which made the game easier for beginners in particular. It was not until 1975 that the ILTF introduced the first regulations on the shape and quality of the clubs. In the course of an excitement about the "spaghetti racket" - a kind of double stringing that allowed hits with strong spin - the permissible stringing was defined more precisely in 1977. Carbon-fiber-reinforced plastic , which has improved rigidity and is low in weight, finally became the material for the frame . The last player to win the Wimbledon Championships with a wooden bat was John McEnroe in 1981.
Instead of the lawn, new, easy-care floor coverings made of rubber and asphalt mixtures were used. Most tennis associations deleted the term "Lawn" from their name and so the ILTF became the International Tennis Federation in 1977 . In 1978 the US Open moved from Forest Hills to a newly built tennis complex in Flushing Meadows Park . Instead of playing on grass, they were now played on a modern hard court surface. The first center court, the Louis Armstrong Stadium , offered 18,000 seats, the second largest stadium, the Grandstand , had 6,000 seats.
With the beginning of the Open Era , the Australian Championships fell behind again. Until the 1980s, the long way to get there deterred many top players from Europe and America from participating. In addition, many players preferred to take part in tournaments with comparatively high prize money in Europe or America, while the Australian Open was only an average. The Australian Open was not part of the Grand Prix until 1974. To counteract the loss of importance, it was decided in 1972 to set the venue on the Kooyong Lawn Tennis Club in Melbourne . By moving the tournament period to the Christmas holidays (late December to early January) from 1977 onwards, spectators and sponsors were accommodated, but other players were alienated. In the meantime, the Grand Slam status was withdrawn in favor of up-and-coming tournaments in Japan or Germany. Finally, in 1983 it was decided to invest in a new, large tennis facility with a hard court surface based on the model of the US Open, in order to enable larger numbers of spectators and participants. With the opening of Melbourne Park and the return to the period from mid to late January, the trend reversed in 1988 and the Australian Open was able to maintain its position as the fourth Grand Slam tournament.
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In terms of sport, the American Chris Evert was successful in the 1970s with the women alongside King . Towards the end of the 1970s Martina Navrátilová advanced to the top of the world, who was the first to recognize the importance of strength and conditioning training in the women's field and who, together with Evert, dominated women's tennis until Steffi Graf's appearance . For men, the 1970s were characterized by the duel between Jimmy Connors and Björn Borg . From the beginning of the 1980s, the players Mats Wilander , Ivan Lendl , Stefan Edberg and John McEnroe were added. German tennis experienced an unprecedented high phase with the successes of Boris Becker and Steffi Graf from the mid-1980s. Becker was the first German to win the Wimbledon tournament in 1985 and led the German team to victories in the Davis Cup in 1988 and 1989 . In 1988 Graf was the only female player to win all four Grand Slam tournaments and the Olympic tennis tournament in Seoul - a success known as the Golden Slam . She dominated women's tennis until the 1990s.
In 1988 representatives of the ATP under the leadership of Hamilton Jordan declared after a dispute with the ITF officials during the US Open that they would organize a new men's tournament series in the future. 85 of the 100 best players of the ATP immediately joined, so that the MIPTC was finally dissolved in 1990 and replaced by a committee consisting of representatives of the ATP and the tournament organizers. The ATP Tour emerged from the Grand Prix , which in the first year consisted of 75 tournaments and a season-end tournament, the so-called ATP World Championship .
Since 1990
Since 1990, ATP and WTA have been able to consolidate or expand their supremacy in international professional tennis. The ITF responded to the loss of the men's professional tour in 1990 by setting up a competing season-end tournament, the Grand Slam Cup . This competition, the participation of which was exclusively linked to the performance of the individual players in the four Grand Slam tournaments, offered an unusually high prize money, in the first year already 2 million US dollars. In 1998 and 1999 it was also held for women. The ITF even announced at the end of July 1995 that it was working on a series of tournaments with the funding of Rupert Murdoch , but withdrew this announcement within a few days. In 2000, the ITF and ATP finally agreed to hold a joint season-end tournament, the Tennis Masters Cup . At the same time mandatory events were introduced , in which the best players had to take part. This concept was also adopted by the WTA in 2009. Since 2009, the men's season-end tournament has been held under the sole supervision of the ATP under the name of ATP World Tour Finals .
The ITF was able to maintain the outstanding position of the Grand Slam tournaments, among other things, by significantly increasing the prize money from 1990 onwards. The Davis Cup , on the other hand, came under criticism, especially from the players' side, because it extends over the entire season, is difficult to plan and therefore the individual rounds often collide with the rest of the tournament calendar of the players. In 1975 the ATP made its first unsuccessful attempt to replace the Davis Cup with a two-week tournament at the same venue, the Nations Cup . Players like Pete Sampras called for the competition to be held only every two years.
In 1996, the introduction of the Trinity electronic system , which triggers a whistling tone when the mains is touched, made it possible to do away with the mains rectifier that had been used up until then. Since 2006, the Hawk-Eye has been another electronic aid that determines whether the ball has been played into the field. The first tournament with the Hawk-Eye was the Miami Masters . The system was then introduced in all tournaments of the ATP Tour and the WTA Tour and is now also used in the Grand Slam tournaments, whereby it has developed from a pure aid for players and referees to a separate element of tension for the audience.
In 1997 the largest tennis stadium in the world, Arthur Ashe Stadium , which holds 23,000 spectators , was inaugurated at the US Open . Critics criticized the two VIP levels and the immense size, unsuitable for tennis. In two of the four Grand Slam tournaments, the center court was equipped with a roof that can be pulled out if necessary, so that the game can continue even in bad weather. At the Australian Open, this was built in 1988 when Melbourne Park was being built - among other things to protect the players from extreme heat - the Wimbledon Championships followed suit in 2009. In particular, the wishes of television broadcasters for fixed, scheduled playing times were met. In 2016, a retractable roof was also built for the Arthur Ashe Stadium of the US Open.
In the men's category, the Americans Pete Sampras, Andre Agassi and Jim Courier were particularly successful in the 1990s . In addition to Graf, the top women were the players Monica Seles , Arantxa Sánchez Vicario and Martina Hingis . At the turn of the millennium, the sisters Venus and Serena Williams set new standards for strength and stamina in women's tennis. Since then, hard serves and powerful baseline strokes have also been the basis of a successful style of play in the women's area. In addition to the Williams sisters, who won a total of 30 singles and 14 doubles titles in Grand Slam tournaments up to 2018, the Belgians Justine Henin and Kim Clijsters and the Russian Svetlana Kuznetsova were successful in the first decade of the new century . At the moment, players from Eastern Europe in particular, such as Marija Sharapova or Wiktoryja Asaranka, are competing with Serena Williams for the world's best. In 2004, Roger Federer rose to become the almost undisputed ruler of men's tennis . By 2018 he won 20 Grand Slam titles more than any other player and is often referred to as the “best player of all time”. His long-term rival Rafael Nadal , originally a specialist in clay courts, prevailed against Federer in grand slam tournaments in 2008 on hard courts and grass in the final. Since 2008 the Serbian Novak Đoković and the Scot Andy Murray have established themselves firmly in the top of the world. Together with Federer and Nadal, the two form what is known as the Big Four, which is the quartet of currently strongest players.
In order to increase the attractiveness of doubles and mixed games, a new counting method was introduced in these competitions in 2006. With a score of 40:40, a "decision point" is now directly (engl. Deciding point ) played. Furthermore, in the event of a tie, the winner will be determined with the ten-point match tie-break instead of a third set .
Since the beginning of the Open Era, professional tennis has developed into a global billion-dollar business. The total prize money at the Wimbledon Championships, which was US $ 78,000 in 1968, rose to US $ 17.5 million by 2005. According to the tournament organizer Ion Țiriac , an ATP Masters tournament costs around 10-15 million dollars and makes a profit of 20-30%. The Grand Slam tournaments do not publish business figures. Țiriac estimates the sales of such a tournament at around $ 400 million. Top players are among the athletes with the highest earnings, with income from sponsorship and advertising contracts many times the prize money won. According to Forbes Magazine , Roger Federer earned a further $ 45 million from advertising contracts in 2012 in addition to prize money of $ 9.3 million; This placed him on the list of the world's best-paid athletes. Among the athletes, tennis players are those with the highest income. The Forbes list of the highest paid female athletes has been topped by tennis players since it was first introduced in 1990. While Steffi Graf earned a total of 6.1 million dollars in 1990 with prize money of 1.3 million dollars, Marija Sharapova had an annual income of 27.1 million dollars in 2012 (including 5.1 million dollars in prize money). In 2011, seven of the ten highest paid female athletes in the world were tennis players with incomes between $ 6 million and $ 25 million.
In professional women's tennis, there has been a clear focus on new markets in China and Southeast Asia in recent years . The China Open has been part of the WTA's highest tournament category (Premier Mandatory) since 2009 . In 2012 the WTA Challenger Series was launched, the tournament venues of which are mainly in this region. The trend was supported by the success of Li Na , who in 2011 became the first Asian woman to win a Grand Slam tournament. The WTA season-end tournament will take place in Singapore from 2014 to 2018 .
Origin of the counting method
The way tennis is counted today originally comes from the Jeu de Paume. There the score was counted in steps of 15 as early as 1415. To win a game, you had to score four points, as is still the case today, which was 60. The reason for this counting method was already forgotten in the middle of the 16th century and formed a breeding ground for a wide variety of speculations. Among other things, the method of counting should come from the dial of a clock. According to another theory, the method of counting should go back to betting amounts that were customary at the time. Several coins in medieval France (e.g. the gros denier tournois ) were divided into 15 sous . The number 60 forms a counting limit in French (70, 80 and 90 are expressed by combinations of smaller numbers), which suggests that most of the population could only count up to 60 at the time. Furthermore, it is known from several cities in the Middle Ages (including Nuremberg and Munich ) that a citizen's stake per day was not allowed to exceed 60 pfennigs.
It is also known from the 15th century that when the score was 45:45, the team that won the game was the one that won two shots in a row. As soon as a team had won the first goal, it had to shout out loud “Advantage” (French avantage , from it English advantage) , the origin of the score of the same name. In the course of time it was probably simplified 45 to 40, whereby the scores in French corresponded to short words (quinze - trente - quarante) . The deuce used in the English-speaking world for debut is a corruption of the French "à deux (points) du jeu" ("two more points to the game").
Another term widespread in Anglo-Saxon countries - "love" for 0 in the score - is often also traced back to the French language: the origin is supposed to be "l'œuf" (the egg) due to the fact that the digit zero corresponds to an egg resembles. However, the sounds for similar words originating from French were adopted in a different form in the English language; For example, the French “bœuf” became the English “beef”. Also, no scoreboards were used for the score at that time, which would suggest such an allusion. Above all, there is no evidence that the term “l'œuf” was used in tennis in France. Another theory also sees the usual money bets as the origin here. In English, for example, there is the phrase "neither for love, nor for money" ("neither out of pure (neighbor) love nor for money"), which has been documented since the year 971. The term “love” is still synonymous with “free” in English today. A player collecting points therefore played "for money", his inferior opponent "for love". A third thesis derives “love” from the Dutch “lof” (honor). “Omme lof”, to play for honor, was an accepted gaming occasion in the Netherlands in the 16th century, alongside money and deposit stakes. In addition, the expressions of other games (including backgammon ) were taken from English from Dutch. The English set ("sentence") is also of Dutch origin.
literature
- John Barrett: Wimbledon. The Official History of the Championships. Harper Collins, London 2001, ISBN 0-00-711707-8 .
- Wolfgang Behringer: cultural history of sport. From ancient Olympia to the 21st century. CH Beck, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-406-63205-1 .
- Bud Collins: History of Tennis. 2nd Edition. New Chapter Press, New York 2010, ISBN 978-0-942257-70-0 .
- Deutscher Tennis Bund (Ed.): Tennis in Germany. From the beginning until 2002. Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-428-10846-9 .
- John Heathcote et al .: Tennis. Lawn tennis. Racquets. Fives. 4th edition. Longmans, Green & Co., London 1901. (online)
- Robert William Henderson: Ball, Bat and Bishop. The Origin of Ball Games. University of Illinois Press, 1947. Reprinted 2001, ISBN 0-252-06992-7 .
- Heiner Gillmeister: cultural history of tennis. Wilhelm Fink Verlag, Munich 1990, ISBN 3-7705-2618-X .
- John Parsons et al: The Tennis Book. Carlton Books, London 2012, ISBN 978-1-78097-012-7 .
- Theo Stemmler: From Jeu de paume to tennis. A short story of the tennis game. Inselverlag, Frankfurt am Main 1988, ISBN 3-458-19076-7 .
- Lance Tingay: 100 years of Wimbledon. Guinness World Records Ltd, London 1977, ISBN 0-900424-71-0 .
- Janine van Someren: Women's sporting lives: a biographical study of elite amateur tennis players at Wimbledon. PhD dissertation submitted to the University of Southampton in 2010. (online)
- Malcolm D. Whitman: Tennis: Origins and Mysteries. Derrydale Press, New York 1932. Reprinted by Dover Publications, Mineola 2004, ISBN 0-486-43357-9 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Heiner Gillmeister: Cultural history of tennis. 1990, p. 133.
- ↑ Malcolm D. Whitman: Tennis: Origins and Mysteries. 1932, p. 26.
- ↑ Malcolm D. Whitman: Tennis: Origins and Mysteries. 1932, p. 31.
- ^ John Heathcote et al .: Lawn Tennis. Rackets. Fives. 1901, p. 12.
- ↑ Heiner Gillmeister: cultural history of tennis. 1990, p. 134.
- ^ Walter W. Skeat : An Etymogical Dictionary. Oxford University Press, Oxford 1888, p. 630 (online) .
- ^ "Which word the French, the only tennis players, use to say when hitting the ball" ( Ἡγεμων εἰς τας Γλωσσας, id est, Ductor in Linguas. The Guide into Tongues. Hebræa, London 1617, reprint New York 1978. Quoted in Malcolm D. Whitman: Tennis. Origins and Mysteries. 1932, pp. 27 f.).
- ↑ Heiner Gillmeister: cultural history of tennis. 1990, pp. 138-145.
- ^ EK Whiting: The Poems of John Audelay. Oxford University Press, Oxford 1931. Quoted from Heiner Gillmeister: Kulturgeschichte des Tennis. 1990, p. 146.
- ↑ Heiner Gillmeister: cultural history of tennis. 1990, pp. 9-11.
- ↑ a b c Heiner Gillmeister: Cultural history of tennis. 1990, p. 55 f.
- ↑ Heiner Gillmeister: cultural history of tennis. 1990, pp. 72-74.
- ↑ Heiner Gillmeister: cultural history of tennis. 1990, pp. 14-19.
- ↑ Heiner Gillmeister: cultural history of tennis. 1990, p. 400.
- ↑ Heiner Gillmeister: cultural history of tennis. 1990, p. 14.
- ↑ Heiner Gillmeister: cultural history of tennis. 1990, p. 125.
- ↑ Heiner Gillmeister: cultural history of tennis. 1990, p. 122.
- ↑ Heiner Gillmeister: cultural history of tennis. 1990, pp. 192-195.
- ↑ Heiner Gillmeister: Ritterliche Spiele. From: Tennis in Germany. From the beginning until 2002. 2002, pp. 14–35, here p. 18.
- ↑ This gave rise to a widespread misconception into the 20th century that tennis rackets were strung with cat intestines (Heiner Gillmeister: Kulturgeschichte des Tennis. 1990, p. 126).
- ↑ a b Theo Stemmler: From Jeu de paume to tennis. P. 14.
- ↑ a b c d e Wolfgang Behringer: Cultural history of sports. 2012, p. 201.
- ↑ Heiner Gillmeister: cultural history of tennis. 1990, p. 53.
- ^ Theo Stemmler: From Jeu de paume to tennis. 1988, p. 49.
- ↑ Heiner Gillmeister: cultural history of tennis. 1990, p. 30.
- ^ Theo Stemmler: From Jeu de paume to tennis. 1988, p. 19.
- ↑ a b c Wolfgang Behringer: Cultural history of sports. 2012, p. 177.
- ↑ Heiner Gillmeister: cultural history of tennis. 1990, p. 31.
- ^ Theo Stemmler: From Jeu de paume to tennis. 1988, p. 20.
- ^ Theo Stemmler: From Jeu de paume to tennis. 1988, p. 53.
- ↑ a b c Wolfgang Behringer: Cultural history of sports. 2012, p. 202.
- ↑ a b c Theo Stemmler: From Jeu de paume to tennis. 1988, p. 34 f.
- ^ Theo Stemmler: From Jeu de paume to tennis. 1988, p. 44.
- ↑ The Royal Tennis Court. Hampton Court Palace, accessed September 12, 2012 .
- ^ Theo Stemmler: From Jeu de paume to tennis. 1988, p. 26.
- ^ Theo Stemmler: From Jeu de paume to tennis. 1988, p. 48.
- ↑ Malcolm D. Whitman: Tennis: Origins and Mysteries. 1932, p. 56.
- ↑ Heiner Gillmeister: cultural history of tennis. 1990, p. 97.
- ↑ a b Theo Stemmler: From Jeu de paume to tennis. 1988, p. 42.
- ↑ Heiner Gillmeister: cultural history of tennis. 1990, p. 100 f.
- ^ Theo Stemmler: From Jeu de paume to tennis. 1988, p. 22.
- ↑ Heiner Gillmeister: cultural history of tennis. 1990, p. 102.
- ↑ Heiner Gillmeister: Ritterliche Spiele. From: Tennis in Germany. From the beginning until 2002. 2002, pp. 14–35, here p. 14.
- ↑ Heiner Gillmeister: cultural history of tennis. 1990, p. 103.
- ↑ Fortifications, see Schanze (fortress construction) .
- ↑ courts , ambiguous: noble courts and tennis courts.
- ↑ a b Theo Stemmler: From Jeu de paume to tennis. 1988, p. 60.
- ↑ Heiner Gillmeister: cultural history of tennis. 1990, p. 213.
- ^ Theo Stemmler: From Jeu de paume to tennis. 1988, p. 61.
- ^ Theo Stemmler: From Jeu de paume to tennis. 1988, p. 66 f.
- ↑ Heiner Gillmeister: cultural history of tennis. 1990, pp. 49-56.
- ↑ Heiner Gillmeister: cultural history of tennis. 1990, p. 397.
- ↑ a b Heiner Gillmeister: Cultural history of tennis. 1990, p. 85.
- ↑ Heiner Gillmeister: cultural history of tennis. 1990, p. 92 f.
- ↑ Heiner Gillmeister: cultural history of tennis. 1990, p. 20.
- ↑ Heiner Gillmeister: cultural history of tennis. 1990, p. 54.
- ^ Règlement - Documents officiels. Féderation Français de Longue Paume, accessed September 12, 2012 (French).
- ^ A b c d Bud Collins: History of Tennis. 2010, p. 5.
- ↑ Gillmeister: cultural history of tennis. 1990, p. 223.
- ↑ Heiner Gillmeister: cultural history of tennis. 1990, p. 234 f.
- ↑ Wolfgang Behringer: cultural history of sport. 2012, p. 275 f.
- ^ A b John Heathcote: Tennis. Lawn tennis. Rackets. Fives. 1901, p. 132.
- ↑ Heiner Gillmeister: cultural history of tennis. 1990, p. 222.
- ^ "A New and Improved Portable Court for Playing the Ancient Game of Tennis" (Lance Tingay: 100 years of Wimbledon. 1977, p. 15).
- ↑ John Heathcote: Tennis. Lawn tennis. Rackets. Fives. 1901, p. 129.
- ^ A b c Bud Collins: History of Tennis. 2010, p. 6.
- ↑ Heiner Gillmeister: cultural history of tennis. 1990, p. 238.
- ^ Lance Tingay: 100 years of Wimbledon. 1977, p. 16.
- ↑ Heiner Gillmeister: cultural history of tennis. 1990, p. 221.
- ↑ John Heathcote: Tennis. Lawn tennis. Rackets. Fives. 1901, p. 138.
- ^ John Parsons et al.: The Tennis Book. 2012, p. 10.
- ↑ a b Heiner Gillmeister: Cultural history of tennis. 1990, p. 228.
- ↑ a b c Lance Tingay: 100 years of Wimbledon. 1977, p. 15.
- ↑ Heiner Gillmeister: cultural history of tennis. 1990, p. 223.
- ↑ John Heathcote: Tennis. Lawn tennis. Rackets. Fives. 1901, p. 140.
- ↑ Heiner Gillmeister: Ritterliche Spiele. From: Tennis in Germany. From the beginning until 2002. 2002, pp. 14–35, here p. 24.
- ^ Janine van Someren: Women's sporting lives: a biographical study of elite amateur tennis players at Wimbledon. 2010, p. 16.
- ↑ Heiner Gillmeister: cultural history of tennis. 1990, pp. 252-254.
- ^ Club History. Leamington Lawn Tennis and Squash Club, accessed February 12, 2016 .
- ↑ Heiner Gillmeister: cultural history of tennis. 1990, p. 224.
- ↑ John Heathcote: Tennis. Lawn tennis. Rackets. Fives. 1901, p. 131.
- ^ A b John Heathcote: Tennis. Lawn tennis. Rackets. Fives. 1901, p. 133.
- ↑ George E. Alexander: Wingfield, Edwardian Gentleman. Peter Randall Publishing, Portsmouth 1986, ISBN 0-914339-14-1 .
- ↑ Heiner Gillmeister: cultural history of tennis. 1990, p. 234.
- ↑ John Heathcote: Tennis. Lawn tennis. Rackets. Fives. 1901, p. 139.
- ↑ John Heathcote: Tennis. Lawn tennis. Rackets. Fives. 1901, p. 141.
- ↑ John Barrett: Wimbledon. The Official History of the Championships. 2001, p. 20.
- ↑ John Heathcote: Tennis. Lawn tennis. Rackets. Fives. 1901, p. 142.
- ↑ John Heathcote: Tennis. Lawn tennis. Rackets. Fives. 1901, p. 145.
- ↑ Voluntary access to the net is generally not advisable in real tennis: the net player has no advantage, but only risks playing a short “chase” using drop volley. In addition, due to the lack of sideline, it can be passed safely by its opponent - even inaccessible via the "penthouse".
- ^ A b John Heathcote: Tennis. Lawn tennis. Rackets. Fives. 1901, p. 148.
- ↑ John Barrett: Wimbledon. The Official History of the Championships. 2001, p. 1.
- ↑ Heiner Gillmeister: cultural history of tennis. 1990, p. 237.
- ↑ John Barrett: Wimbledon. The Official History of the Championships. 2001, p. 2.
- ↑ John Barrett: Wimbledon. The Official History of the Championships. 2001, p. 3.
- ^ Bud Collins: History of Tennis. 2010, p. 7.
- ^ Reginald Doherty, Laurence Doherty: RF & HL Doherty on Lawn Tennis. Baker and Taylor Co., New York 1903, p. 173.
- ^ Reginald Doherty, Laurence Doherty: RF & HL Doherty on Lawn Tennis. Baker and Taylor Co., New York 1903, p. 169.
- ↑ Heiner Gillmeister: cultural history of tennis. 1990, p. 239.
- ↑ For the rather complex calculation of this handicap see John Heathcote: Tennis. Lawn tennis. Rackets. Fives. 1901, pp. 337-342.
- ↑ John Heathcote: Tennis. Lawn tennis. Rackets. Fives. 1901, p. 315.
- ^ Martha Summerhayes: Vanished Arizona: Recollections of the Army Life of a New England Woman. 2nd Edition. Salem Press, Salem (Massachusetts) 1911. (online) .
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- ↑ Heiner Gillmeister: cultural history of tennis. 1990, p. 260.
- ^ A b John Parsons et al: The Tennis Book. 2012, p. 218.
- ^ A b John Parsons et al: The Tennis Book. 2012, p. 55.
- ↑ a b Heiner Gillmeister: Cultural history of tennis. 1990, pp. 271-273.
- ^ John Parsons et al.: The Tennis Book. 2012, p. 46.
- ^ John Parsons et al.: The Tennis Book. 2012, p. 13.
- ^ John Parsons et al.: The Tennis Book. 2012, p. 44.
- ↑ Heiner Gillmeister: Ritterliche Spiele. From: Tennis in Germany. From the beginning until 2002. 2002, pp. 14–35, here p. 21 f.
- ↑ Heiner Gillmeister: cultural history of tennis. 1990, p. 277.
- ↑ Dieter Koditek: The big old clubs. From: Tennis in Germany. From the beginning to 2002. 2002, pp. 59–70.
- ↑ Heiner Gillmeister: Ritterliche Spiele. From: Tennis in Germany. From the beginning until 2002. 2002, pp. 14–35, here p. 23.
- ↑ a b Heiner Gillmeister: Ritterliche Spiele. From: Tennis in Germany. From the beginning until 2002. 2002, pp. 14–35, here p. 25.
- ↑ Heiner Gillmeister: cultural history of tennis. 1990, p. 281 f.
- ↑ Christian Eichler: The big tournaments. From: Tennis in Germany. From the beginning to 2002. 2002, pp. 212–220, here p. 213.
- ↑ a b Christian Eichler: The big tournaments. From: Tennis in Germany. From the beginnings to 2002. 2002, pp. 212–220, here p. 214.
- ↑ a b Heiner Gillmeister: Ritterliche Spiele. From: Tennis in Germany. From the beginning until 2002. 2002, pp. 14–35, here p. 28 f.
- ↑ Wolfgang Behringer: cultural history of sport. 2012, p. 347.
- ↑ In 1892 he had even spoken out in favor of German clubs joining the British Tennis Association LTA (after Heiner Gillmeister: Ritterliche Spiele. From: Tennis in Deutschland. From the beginnings to 2002. 2002, p. 32).
- ↑ Heiner Gillmeister: Ritterliche Spiele. From: Tennis in Germany. From the beginning until 2002. 2002, pp. 14–35, here p. 34.
- ↑ a b Heiner Gillmeister: Cultural history of tennis. 1990, p. 275.
- ^ A b John Parsons et al: The Tennis Book. 2012, p. 68.
- ↑ The Official Report of the Olympic Games of 1908. published by the British Olympic Association 1908. (online) ( Memento of the original from October 4, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .
- ↑ Heiner Gillmeister: cultural history of tennis. 1990, p. 277.
- ↑ At that time the sand court was called hard court.
- ↑ Heiner Gillmeister: Small and big story. From: Tennis in Germany. From the beginning to the present. 2002, pp. 46–55, here p. 53.
- ↑ a b c Heine Gillmeister: Cultural history of tennis. 1990, p. 240.
- ^ Lance Tingay: 100 years of Wimbledon. 1977, p. 50.
- ^ Bud Collins: History of Tennis. 2010, p. 15.
- ↑ Heiner Gillmeister: cultural history of tennis. 1990, pp. 263-270.
- ^ John Parsons et al.: The Tennis Book. 2012, p. 65 f.
- ^ John Parsons et al.: The Tennis Book. 2012, p. 67 f.
- ↑ Heiner Gillmeister: Small and big story. From: Tennis in Germany. From the beginning to the present. 2002, pp. 46–55, here p. 54.
- ^ John Parsons et al.: The Tennis Book. 2012, p. 159.
- ^ Bud Collins: History of Tennis. 2010, p. 26.
- ^ Bud Collins: History of Tennis. 2010, p. 36.
- ^ Bud Collins: History of Tennis. 2010, p. 412.
- ^ Bud Collins: History of Tennis. 2010, p. 33.
- ↑ Jörg Winterfeld: Difficult awakening. From: Tennis in Germany. From the beginnings to 2002. 2002, pp. 88–102, here p. 91.
- ↑ Hans-Jürgen Kaufhold: From light into darkness. From: Tennis in Germany. From the beginning to the present. 2002, pp. 136–143, here p. 136.
- ↑ Thomas Klemm: Tennis Baron and Noble Loser. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, July 7, 2009, accessed on September 13, 2012 .
- ↑ Ulrich Kaiser: The tennis baron. From: Tennis in Germany. From the beginning to the present. 2002, pp. 149–151, here p. 151.
- ^ Janine van Someren: Women's sporting lives: a biographical study of elite amateur tennis players at Wimbledon. 2010, p. 30.
- ^ Janine van Someren: Women's sporting lives: a biographical study of elite amateur tennis players at Wimbledon. 2010, p. 20.
- ↑ Heiner Gillmeister: cultural history of tennis. 1990, p. 242.
- ↑ Heiner Gillmeister: cultural history of tennis. 1990, p. 243.
- ↑ a b c d History. International Tennis Federation, accessed August 31, 2013 .
- ↑ a b c Janine van Someren: Women's sporting lives: a biographical study of elite amateur tennis players at Wimbledon. 2010, p. 31.
- ↑ Journal Sport in History Volume 36, 2016 - Issue 4, pages 498-521: The 'ghosts' of lawn tennis past: exploring the forgotten lives of early working-class coaching-professionals
- ^ John Parsons et al.: The Tennis Book. 2012, p. 97.
- ^ Janine van Someren: Women's sporting lives: a biographical study of elite amateur tennis players at Wimbledon. 2010, p. 42.
- ↑ Heiner Gillmeister: Small and big story. From: Tennis in Germany. From the beginning to the present. 2002, pp. 46–55, here p. 51.
- ↑ Tilden responded to the announcement of a temporary lockdown in 1924 by threatening to end his career entirely. However, the USLTA did not want to lose the crowd puller Tilden and therefore gave in. (Bud Collins: History of Tennis. 2010, p. 29).
- ^ Bud Collins: History of Tennis. 2010, p. 37.
- ^ Rainer Deike: The ostracized world champion. From: Tennis in Germany. From the beginning to the present. 2002, pp. 103-104.
- ↑ "Expense accounts at many tournaments have grown to such proportions that many players are making a living off the game and still classed amateurs. We feel that tournament expense accounts should be held to legitimate expense and private expense accounts forbidden" (quoted from Janine van Someren: Women's sporting lives: a biographical study of elite amateur tennis players at Wimbledon. 2010, p. 40).
- ^ Bud Collins: History of Tennis. 2010, p. 79.
- ↑ "The difference between an amateur and a professional is related to a phantom table. The amateur reveives money under it, the professional over it." (Quoted from Janine van Someren: Women's sporting lives: a biographical study of elite amateur tennis players at Wimbledon. 2010, p. 39).
- ↑ Ulrich Kaiser: Reconstruction. From: Tennis in Germany. From the beginning until 2002. 2002, pp. 164–173, here p. 171.
- ↑ a b Janine van Someren: Women's sporting lives: a biographical study of elite amateur tennis players at Wimbledon. 2010, p. 39.
- ^ Janine van Someren: Women's sporting lives: a biographical study of elite amateur tennis players at Wimbledon. 2010, p. 40.
- ^ Rainer Deike: Farewell to the amateur. From: Tennis in Germany. From the beginning until 2002. 2002, p. 196–206, here p. 196.
- ^ Bud Collins: History of Tennis. 2010, p. 67.
- ↑ Ulrich Kaiser: Reconstruction. From: Tennis in Germany. From the beginning to 2002. 2002, pp. 164–173, here p. 165.
- ^ Bud Collins: History of Tennis. 2010, p. 82.
- ^ A b c John Parsons et al: The Tennis Book. 2012, p. 187.
- ↑ Shamateur. oxforddictionaries.com, accessed October 1, 2013 .
- ^ A b Rainer Deike: Farewell to the amateur. From: Tennis in Germany. From the beginning to 2002. 2002, pp. 197–206.
- ^ Lance Tingay: 100 years of Wimbledon. 1977, p. 91 f.
- ^ Lance Tingay: 100 years of Wimbledon. 1977, p. 83 f.
- ^ John Parsons et al.: The Tennis Book. 2012, p. 194.
- ^ Lance Tingay: 100 years of Wimbledon. 1977, p. 87.
- ↑ John Barrett: Wimbledon. The History of the Championships. 2001, p. 111.
- ^ Bud Collins: History of Tennis. 2010, p. XVI.
- ^ A b John Barrett: Wimbledon. The Official History of the Championships. 2001, p. 122 f.
- ↑ "living lie", excerpts from the speech: "[…] we should remove sham and hypocrisis from the game. […] For too long now we have been governed by a set of amateur rules that are quite unenforcable. We know the so-called amateur players bargain for payments grossly in excess of what they are entitled to buy but without which they cannot live. We know that tournaments connive at this else there would be no players at their tournaments. […] Players should be able to earn openly an honestly […] "(quoted from John Parsons et al: The Tennis Book. 2012, p. 194).
- ^ Bud Collins: History of Tennis. 2010, p. 145.
- ^ A b Bud Collins: History of Tennis. 2010, p. 144.
- ^ John Parsons et al.: The Tennis Book. 2012, p. 66 u. 195.
- ^ Bud Collins: History of Tennis. 2010, p. 144 f.
- ^ Bud Collins: History of Tennis. 2010, p. 149.
- ^ Bud Collins: History of Tennis. 2010, p. 152.
- ^ Bud Collins: History of Tennis. 2010, p. 154.
- ^ Bud Collins: History of Tennis. 2010, p. 160.
- ^ A b Bud Collins: History of Tennis. 2010, p. 164.
- ^ A b John Parsons et al: The Tennis Book. 2012, p. 62.
- ^ A b John Parsons et al: The Tennis Book. 2012, p. 198.
- ^ A b Bud Collins: History of Tennis. 2010, p. 165.
- ^ A b Bud Collins: History of Tennis. 2010, p. 715.
- ↑ How it all began. Association of Tennis Professionals, accessed September 20, 2012 .
- ^ A b Bud Collins: History of Tennis. 2010, p. 155.
- ^ Bud Collins: History of Tennis. 2010, p. 170.
- ^ Bud Collins: History of Tennis. 2010, p. 223.
- ^ Bud Collins: History of Tennis. 2010, p. 143.
- ^ John Parsons et al.: The Tennis Book. 2012, p. 59.
- ^ Bud Collins: History of Tennis. 2010, p. 167.
- ↑ In Wimbledon was played with white balls until 1986.
- ^ A b John Parsons et al: The Tennis Book. 2012, p. 191.
- ^ Bud Collins: History of Tennis. 2010, p. 190.
- ^ John Parsons et al.: The Tennis Book. 2012, p. 193.
- ^ Bud Collins: History of Tennis. 2010, p. 191 f.
- ^ John Parsons et al.: The Tennis Book. 2012, pp. 42-46.
- ^ Bud Collins: History of Tennis. 2010, p. 250.
- ^ A b John Parsons et al: The Tennis Book. 2012, p. 199.
- ↑ Julie Cart, ITF Blames 'Negative' Debate in Abandoning Rival Tennis Tour. Los Angeles Times, August 2, 1995, accessed August 31, 2013 .
- ^ Bud Collins: History of Tennis. 2010, p. XVII.
- ^ Bud Collins: History of Tennis. 2010, p. 179.
- ^ John Parsons et al.: The Tennis Book. 2012, p. 67.
- ↑ Christopher Clarey, Waiting for the Beep, Instead of Judge's 'Let'. New York Times, June 15, 1996, accessed September 2, 2013 .
- ↑ at the French Open only for the information of the audience.
- ^ John Parsons et al.: The Tennis Book. 2012, p. 185.
- ^ Bud Collins: History of Tennis. 2010, p. 283.
- ↑ Peter Penders: A Roof for Wimbledon. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, July 2, 2012, accessed on August 31, 2013 .
- ^ Roof On Way For Arthur Ashe Stadium
- ^ What you need to know about the US Open Transformation. (No longer available online.) In: usopen.org. June 6, 2016, archived from the original on June 9, 2016 ; accessed on June 9, 2016 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Michael Kimmelmann: How Power Has Transformed Women's Tennis. New York Times, August 25, 2010, accessed October 1, 2013 .
- ^ John Parsons et al.: The Tennis Book. 2012, p. 81.
- ↑ Big-four's rivals desperate not to abandon all hope. (No longer available online.) The Citizen, September 2, 2013, archived from the original on February 12, 2016 ; accessed on February 12, 2016 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ 'Big Four', Novak Djokovic, Andy Murray, Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer, reach star-studded Cincinnati quarters. dnaindia.com, August 16, 2010, accessed October 28, 2013 .
- ^ John Parsons et al.: The Tennis Book. 2012, p. 181.
- ↑ The World's Highest-Paid Tennis Players - # 1 Roger Federer. Forbes magazine, accessed August 31, 2013 .
- ↑ Forbes Magazine. Edition of August 20, 1990, p. 70.
- ↑ The World's Highest-Paid Tennis Players - # 3 Maria Sharapova. Forbes magazine, accessed August 23, 2013 .
- ↑ The 10 Highest-Paid Female Athletes. Forbes Magazine, accessed August 31, 2013 .
- ↑ Brook Larmer: Li Na, China's Tennis Rebel. New York Times, August 22, 2013, accessed September 30, 2013 .
- ↑ Matthias Schmid: Upswing in high heels. Süddeutsche Zeitung, October 21, 2014, accessed December 30, 2014 .
- ↑ a b Heiner Gillmeister: Cultural history of tennis. 1990, pp. 156-164.
- ^ John Parsons et al.: The Tennis Book. 2012, p. 12.
- ↑ Heiner Gillmeister: cultural history of tennis. 1990, pp. 166-168.
- ↑ Malcolm D. Whitman: Tennis: Origins and Mysteries. 1932, p. 61.
- ↑ Malcolm D. Whitman: Tennis: Origins and Mysteries. 1932, p. 63.
- ↑ Heiner Gillmeister: cultural history of tennis. 1990, pp. 164-166.
