LAWN TENNIS and TENNIS. These two games are closely connected by origin—lawn tennis may indeed be regarded as the descendant and supplanter of tennis—but their practice is widely different. The more popular, lawn tennis, will be con sidered first.
As an independent member of the family of ball-games, of which the parent root was probably buried in Egypt or Persia Soo years before the Christian era, lawn tennis is relatively modern and its struggles for corporate existence are well within the memory of living men. Lawn tennis had its beginning in England as a pleas ant and not too taxing variant to old-established games. Now lawn tennis can claim more adherents throughout the world than any other independent ball-game; it has become a pastime for all civilized races. It is practised much more extensively on non-turf than on turf surfaces; it is played indoors as well as out-of-doors, by night as well as by day, by women even more than by men. The name of lawn tennis is still honoured and officially adopted in Anglo-Saxon countries, but throughout the Continent of Europe, in South Africa, in the East (except among British residents in India), and with increasing habit in America, the contraction of tennis has been employed.
To Maj. Walter Wingfield, M.V.O., must be given the credit for first realizing that lawn tennis could be adapted to the needs of society. If he was not the inventor of the game, for precursors of it had been played informally some years previously, he de posited specifications in Feb. 1874, with a view to obtaining a patent for "a new and improved portable court for playing the ancient game of tennis." The principle involved the erection of two standards, 21 ft. apart, with an oblong net between them. Triangular nets forming side walls to the courts were to be placed at right angles to the oblong net on either side; there were to be also a serving crease, in and out courts, right and left courts, and boundaries, marked with paint, coloured cord or tape. This was the hour-glass or "waist" court, introduced to the public by Maj. Wingfield under the ungainly name of Sphairistike. Neither court nor name was destined to live long, but the cult of lawn tennis was established. Croquet's supersession was for a time complete.
five feet high at the posts and four feet high at the centre. Base-lines 3o ft. in length were to be drawn at a distance of 39 ft., and service lines at a distance of 26 ft. from the net. The players were to be distinguished as hand-in and hand-out. Hand-in alone could serve or score; and on los ing a stroke he became hand-out.
The service was to be delivered with one foot outside the base line, and was required to drop between the net and the service line of the court diagonally oppo site to that in which the server stood. If he failed to serve the ball over the net, he lost the stroke and became hand-out, but it was a fault only if the ball dropped in the wrong court or over the service line. The balls were to be two and a quarter inches in diameter and one and a half ounces in weight. The game was 15 up, as in rackets, but in stead of being "set" at 14 all, the score was to be called deuce, then advantage as in tennis. In doubles matches, the partner of the striker out, might take a service dropping in the wrong court.
But the M.C.C. code, by re taining a combination of rackets and tennis scoring and adopting the hour-glass court, did not please more progressive opinion, and the discussions went on. Meanwhile, through the agency of Henry Jones, better known as "Cavendish," the game had been introduced into the ground of the All England croquet club at Wimbledon—an event destined to have a vital and permanent influence on its future. Early in 1877 the committee of the All England club added "Lawn Tennis" to their title and for a time all mention of croquet was dropped, members finding on the well-tended lawns an agreeable if rather too yielding surface for the practice of the new game. A little later in the same year the first championship meeting at Wimble don was announced, the proprietors of the Field offering a silver challenge cup to the value of 25 guineas. Before the competition was decided—the first of an illustrious line which in 1928, 51 years later, was to attract a daily crowd of nearly 20,000 spec tators and aspirants for the titles from 15 different nations—a sub-committee of the All England club devised a set of rules which, differing fundamentally from those of the M.C.C., intro duced three principles that were to remain inviolate. These were: (I) the adoption of a rectangular court 26 yd. long by 9 yd. wide, the net being suspended from posts placed 3 ft. outside the court ; (2) the adoption of tennis scoring in its entirety; and (3) the allowance of one fault without penalty, whether the serv ice dropped in the net, in the wrong court, or beyond the service line.