no titel

Title

no titel

Description

Representation of a woman playing Tennis

ca. 1875

Artist

Anonymus

Historical Description

The history of tennis covers the development of the sport of tennis from the High Middle Ages to the present day. The origin of tennis probably lies in northern French monasteries of the High Middle Ages. In the further 13th and 14th centuries such a ball game is documented at monasteries. It was played without a racket, exclusively with the flat of the hand or a glove slipped over it, in the courtyard of the cloister. From this developed the backstroke game -Jeu de Paume (game with the palm of the hand)- which was widespread among monks and experienced a heyday in the ballrooms of the 16th and 17th centuries, especially in France and England, and was popular among the nobility and the bourgeoisie. It was played outdoors by the common people. In the course of time, the population from the surrounding countryside also participated in the game in the monastery courtyard and eventually moved it to the cities. Betting for large sums of money now became a central part of tennis. Through monastic schools, the training centers of the nobility, the game entered aristocratic circles, where people began to move the jeu de paume to specially constructed halls. Especially in the Romanic countries and in England the Jeu de Paume was widespread. In Paris alone, the capital of tennis at the time, there are said to have been 1,800 courts around 1600. At the beginning of the 16th century, the first rackets appeared in Paris to relieve the heavy strain on the palms of the hands. In the 1870s, modern lawn tennis was invented in Great Britain and initially spread to Europe, the USA and the colonies of the British Empire. By the turn of the century, tennis tournaments with international participation were already being held in Europe. In 1900, the Davis Cup was the first international tennis competition. In 1923, the International Tennis Federation, founded ten years earlier, agreed on the four most important Grand Slam tournaments to date.