Historia Del Tenis (Inglés)

How did it all start?


Some historians date tennis as far back as Egyptian times. Tennis was first played in France about 900 years ago, with people using the palms of their hands. They say the Arabic word for the palm of the hand, rahat, is the origin of the word racket. But the most common view is that it was a crude courtyard ball game invented by 11th or 12th century French monks.The name tennis is said to come from the French word 'Tenez!' (from the verb tenir meaning 'to take'). It means 'take this', which the monks would yell as they served the ball with their hand. No one really knows how the scoring started, but "deuce" is based on the French word "deux", meaning two, when two people are on the same point.
The unusual word love, for zero, is also said to derive fromthe French 'oeuf', which means egg.
The game became popular as rich aristocrats learned the game from the monks.
The nobles modified their courtyards into indoor courts and developed gloves and then bats to hit the ball, which were made of cork wrapped in string or cloth and later, leather.

How do you score?

The mysterious scoring system originally it seems that the scoring was in fifteensgoing 15, 30, 45 but over time, instead of saying "forty-five", people started to say forty" for short and eventually this stuck; years after was introduced the "deuce", where if you are tied on forty-all you have to win by two clear points.

But why Fifteens? Well no one really knows. Some have said that it is based around the clock face, the target score of 60 being a complete revolution ofthe minute hand. This is possible but rather circumstantial and this author hasn't come across any evidence to support it.

A more plausible hypothesis points to a French origin since in the early middle ages, 60 was a very key number in France in the same way that 100 is today. That's why the words for seventy, eighty and ninety in French are based on sixty e.g. seventy is "soixante-dix" or"sixty and ten" so it makes sense that a game might be to sixty points. But then, why divide by four? The most likely theory is to do with betting since most sports including tennis were played for money in the Middle Ages. ……………… ……..

The match is divided up into sets. In men's tennis you normally have to get three sets to win. For women it's two. To win a set you have to win sixgames, but you also have to get two more games than your opponent.
So you can take the set 6-4, but not 6-5. In that case, you'd continue until someone won 7-5. If you get to 6-6 first, you play a tiebreak. The first person to get to seven points or more by two clear points wins the tiebreak and the set.

The tennis players’ apparel
In the early days of tennis in England, tennis was played onlawns and the players wore formal clothing. Even women wore full-length dresses as they played tennis. Nearly all tennis players wore all-white, cotton outfits. Today, tennis players wear all sorts of stylish tennis clothes made of all sorts of synthetic fabrics and in all sorts of colors.
The changes in the tennis clothes being worn during each era could be matched to the fashions of each era. Inthe 1970s and 1980s, for example, most men wore short-legged shorts and a polo shirt. Females in this same era wore short tennis skirts. In the 1990s and 2000s, most men began wearing long-legged, loose shorts and loose shirts. Women have also been wearing a wide variety of tennis wear, including long-legged shorts with t-shirts or miniskirts with t-shirts. While in the major competitions theremay be a color mandate for clothing, generally white, at most competitions tennis clothes can be found on tennis players in vary wide variety of colors.
Women’s clothing
Female tennis clothes are sometimes full short dresses. They are usually made out of material that absorbs sweat easily. Dresses and skirts will generally have built in spandex shorts underneath where they keep balls. The...