28 June: Tennis

If this was a normal year, Wimbledon would be starting today. At time of writing I don't know whether this year's tournament will be another victim of the covid plague. Here are 10 facts about tennis, anyway.

1. Tennis evolved from a 12th century game played by monks in France. Their game was called ‘paume’. They didn't have racquets but would hit the ball to each other using their hands. Racquets evolved from the Gloves people started to wear when playing the game. The origin of the word tennis dates from this time, too as the players would often shout “tenez,” which means to take heed.
2. Tennis was, for a time, a game mostly played by royalty and nobility. The first person known by name to be a keen tennis player was King Louis X of France. In fact, tennis proved to be the death of him, since after one particularly strenuous game he downed a large quantity of Wine and died because the wine had either gone off or had been poisoned. King Charles V of France had a court set up at the Louvre Palace, and across the Channel, Henry VIII had a tennis court at Hampton Court Palace, dating back to 1529. That one is still used today, making it the world's oldest tennis court. According to legend he received the news of Queen Anne Boleyn's execution while he was playing tennis on this court.
3. "Tennis balles" are mentioned by William Shakespeare in his play Henry V, when a basket of them is given to King Henry to poke fun at his youth and playfulness.
4. OK, so what's with the odd scoring system which goes Love, 15, 30 and 40? This originated in France as well. Love, meaning zero, comes from the word “l’oeuf,” meaning Egg, because a zero resembles an egg. The number progression is thought to come from the fact that early players used a Clock face as a scoreboard and would move the hands by a quarter of an hour when a point was scored. The first person to 60 would win. So shouldn't the final point be 45, then? This came from a rule that the winner should win by two points and so 40 and 50 minutes were used. Another theory has to do with old tennis courts being 90 yards long and whenever a point was scored the players moved 15 feet forward.
5. In the early days, tennis courts were hourglass shaped. The rectangular courts we know today were introduced in 1875 by the All England Croquet Club at Wimbledon. A standard tennis court today is 78 feet long. The width depends on whether it's a singles match (27 feet) or a doubles (36 feet). The net is 3 feet, 6 inches high.
6. A tennis racquet must not be more than 29 inches (74 cm) long and 12.5 inches (32 cm) wide. There's also a rule which says rackets must not provide any kind of communication, instruction or advice to the player during the match, so talking tennis racquets are out.
7. The diameter of a tennis ball is 65.41–68.58 mm (2.575–2.700 in) and it must weigh between 56.0 and 59.4 g (1.98 and 2.10 oz).
8. The four Grand Slam tournaments are the Australian Open, the French Open, Wimbledon, and the US Open.
9. Players often grunt or shriek when hitting the ball and quite loudly, too. Players like Maria Sharapova and Michelle Larcher de Brito have reached over 100 decibels. That means they are louder than motorcycle, a Lawnmower or a small aircraft landing, about the same as an ambulance siren and just 5 decibels quieter than a Lion roaring.
10. The longest tennis match ever lasted 11 hours and 5 minutes. It was between John Isner and Nicolas Mahut. John Isner won, after serving 113 aces during the match.

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