History of the Racquet in Court Tennis
in the beginning La Paume, The Palm
1100s The Glove
1200s The Thong Binding
1300s Battoir
1400s Battoir
1555 Scaino
a real separate sport, vibrant and growing, with governing bodies, pro and amateur tournaments around the world (there’s an epic, fortnight-long team tournament in Melbourne every two years) and new courts being built (one opened in England this summer; Charleston gets one next year). Yet it is determinedly, quirkily old-school. Players in all-white clothing still wield heavy wooden racquets to strike handmade balls. The asymmetrical court, with sloping roofs, beveled walls, doorways, and openings replicates the French village streets where it was invented a thousand years ago. The facile comparison, for tennis to court tennis, is checkers to chess. Court tennis is a dramatic leap in complexity. It is an explosion in a trigonometry factory. Balls spin and crash at all angles. There are well more than a dozen different serves. In the world championship, for example, Fahey and Riviere hit mostly railroads for first serves and then demi-piques and the occasional giraffe for second serves. Seriously. There is the chase, which more or less is a beautifully arcane way for a player gain the right to serve (you serve only from one end); it takes months for the neophyte to figure out all the permutations of the chase. It is all a bit eccentric, which is why it has such a loyal, passionate cohort of practitioners.
The crowds in the dedans and galleries roared. Riviere raised his arms, hurled his racquet and put his hands on his head. By the time he reached Fahey at the net, he was in tears. “You’re a real champion, buddy,” Lyons whispered into Riviere’s ear. “Fucking world champion. Amazing tennis. Well played.” Short history lesson. This match was in the game of court tennis (or real tennis as it is known in Australia and Great Britain or jeu de paume in France). Half a millennium ago there were hundreds of tennis courts around Europe. Anne Boleyn was watching a match when she was arrested (see: Wolf Hall). Caravaggio killed a man at a court in Rome. Shakespeare often used tennis as a metaphor. In Henry V, the French Dauphin taunted Henry with “a tun of treasure”—a gift of tennis balls—a gesture intended to mock the king for goofing around on the tennis court, being young and idle, a gambler. Rage also came to the game in 1873 when the English took tennis outside and simplified it. That is the game we now know as tennis, with Serena and Fed. Court tennis, suddenly obsolete, forced to come up with new appellations to distinguish itself, continued along in a diminished way. Today there are fifty courts around the world; ten are in the U.S. The game is not artisanal tennis but
Court Tennis World Champions Since 1994 ’94 Fahey ’95 Fahey ’96 Fahey ’98 Fahey ’00 Fahey ’02 Fahey ’04 Fahey ’06 Fahey ’08 Fahey ’10 Fahey ’12 Fahey ’14 Fahey ’16 Riviere
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