History of tennis
Tennis is a sport played by two players at simple , or two teams (each team has two players). The objective of the game is to send a hollow rubber ball covered with felt into the opponent’s court. To do that each player uses a strung racquet.
Modern tennis was born in the United Kingdom, in the beginning of the 20th century. At the time it used to be played by rich people. Nowadays, tennis is an Olympic game, being played at all ages and by any class of the society. It is absolutely remarkable that, with the exception of the tie-break, all the other tennis rules have remained unchanged since 1890.
Modern tennis has two origins. Between 1859 and 1865, Harry Gem and his friend, Augurio Perera, developed a game that combined rackets and pelota (a Spanish game) elements. Later on, in 1874, along with 2 doctors from Warneford Hospital, they founded the first tennis club in the world. In 1884, one of the first tennis tournaments was deployed on Shrubland Hall courts.
In December 1873, Walter Clopton Wingfield invented a similar game just for his guest’s amusement at a party organized at his property in Nantclwyd.
Nowadays, in the ATP professional circuit there are 2 important tournament types. The most important are the Grand Slam tournaments: Roland Garos in France, Australian Open in Australia, Wimbledon in the United Kingdom and US Open in the United States of America. The second category of important tournaments is Masters Series. Here we have 9 tournaments: Indian Wells Masters, Miami Masters, Monte-Carlo Masters, Roma Masters, Hamburg Masters, Canada Masters, Cincinnati Masters, Madrid Masters and Paris-Bercy Masters.
