"He who would excel as a tennis-player must learn to serve," is the dictum of an amateur champion, but the necessary variations, the difference between the "railroad," the "giraffe," the "side wall," the "drop" can only be explained by an experienced player and on the court. It is most important to know what sort of service is most valuable in defending a particular chase. Most forms of service require cut, or twist, or combinations of the two. For the winning of hazard-side chases, indeed for all purposes, the nick service is useful, the endeavour being to make the service drop at the nick of the grille-wall and the floor. It is wise to cultivate one sort of service to perfection, if possible, with a reserve of others to suit the occasion. Again, the tennis stroke, differing essentially as it does from the racket stroke, can only be learnt in the court from a good teacher ; but it is an axiom that tennis is not a game in which hard hitting necessarily tells, though force may be usefully employed in trying to find the winning openings. This, however, is an important point of etiquette—it is not correct to force for the dedans when the striker is close to the net, unless the force is boasted or there is no danger of hitting the opponent.
History.—Tennis may well be called a royal game, having been popular with various kings of England and France. In the ball games of the Greeks and Romans we may see the rudiments of the French jeu de paume, which is in all probability the ancestor of modern tennis in a direct line. The origin of the name is quite obscure. The most probable derivation is from the word Tenez! (Take it ! Play!), especially when we remember the large number of French terms that adhere to the game, e.g., grille, tambour (drum, from the sound on the board that formed the face of that buttress), and dedans. Further, a poem dealing with the game, written in Latin elegaics by R. Frissart, makes the striker cry "Excipe !" (Take it !) after each stroke ; this seems to correspond with the custom which enjoins the racquet-marker to call "play" whenever a legitimate stroke has been made. In the Alexiad of Anna Comnena (about A.D. I I 20) is a reference to a game played on horseback in which a staff, curved at the end and strung with strings of plaited gut was used. This game was played in a court called "a court for goff" (sic) (according to the Lexicon of Alex andrine Greek) and some similar game, corrupted through tchan gan into chicane, was played in France. Good authorities also find a more ancient derivation of the game in Egypt, in Persia, and among the Arabs before Charlemagne. In A.D. 1300 the game was also known as La boude. Throughout the century indeed it was played in France and by the highest in the land. Thus Louis X. died from a chill contracted after playing and Charles V. was devoted to the game. In England the game, or some form of it, was known, Chaucer alluding to it in the words "But canstow playen racket to and fro."
Tennis was at this epoch frequently played in some crude form in the moats of castles where Charles VIII. used to watch the game. Henri II. is described as the best player in France, and worthy of the silver ball given to the finest players. Later, Henri IV. and Louis XIV. (who kept a regular staff to look after his court) were patrons and players of tennis; indeed, in Henri VI.'s reign so popular was the sport that it was said that there were "more tennis-players in Paris than drunkards in England." The i6th and i 7th centuries were the heyday of the game both in France and England. The word "tennis"—the game having hitherto been described as lusus pilae—is first found in Gower's "Balade unto the worthy and noble kynge Henry the fourth" (1400), but Shakespeare's allusion to tennis as known to Henry V. must not be omitted. Henry VII. played the game and revoked the edicts that forbade it ; there was a court at Windsor Castle in his time which still existed in 1607. It was in that reign that the king of Castile played a match with the marquis of Dorset, the king, who used a racket conceding 15 to the marquis, who played with his hand.
The king won the set. Henry VIII. built the court at Hampton Court Palace, 1529-30. This court is still in use to-day. In 1615 there were a number of courts in London of various sizes, and a picture of James II. as a boy represents him standing in a tennis court holding a short-handled racket strung diagonally. Pepys frequently alludes to tennis at a time when there were two courts at Oxford and five at Cambridge. In the 19th century the game lost some of its popularity, mainly through the demolition of courts as building operations increased; moreover, courts com plete in every detail alone were built, the play being consequently confined to the members of the clubs that could afford the expense.
Tennis was introduced to America in the '7os of last century.
An open amateur championship was started at Queen's club in 1889, and this became the blue riband of amateur tennis early in this century. Recent winners of this have been: The greatest of all amateur court tennis players has been Jay Gould (America) who won the U.S. national American champion ship (singles) uninterruptedly from 1906-25. Other noted Ameri can amateurs since the championship was started in 1892 have been R. D. Sears, Fiske Warren, B. S. de Garmendia, L. M. Stock ton, E. A. Thomson, G. R. Fearing, Joshua Crane, Jr., C. E Sands, C. S. Cutting, J. Hewitt Morgan and W. C. Wright The winner in 1927 was an English player, G. D. Huband, in 1928, H. Morgan.
The doubles championship which started in 1916 was won by Jay Gould and W. A. J. Huhn; in 1920-24, Jay Gould and J. W. Wear; in 1925 Fulton Cutting and C. A. Cutting; in 1926 Jay Gould and J. W. Wear, in 1928, Jay Gould and W. C. Wright.
See Treatise on Tennis, by a member of the Rodwell Tennis Club (1826) ; E. B. Noel and J. 0 M. Clark, A History of Tennis (1924).