Hey, Tennis Fanatics!
If you love nothing more than swatting your racket through the air to send a fuzzy, little, lime-green ball speeding to a focused target with intentions to score on your opponent, then you’ll find today’s Blog post right up your alley! In celebration of National Tennis Day, we’re talking about this popular sport played on the court!
Tennis has come a long way. Prestigious tennis organizations such as the US Open 
(which boasts 137 years of operation since it was first founded in 1881), have brought tennis competitions to the world over for years upon years. But the sport of Tennis certainly goes back much longer than any of these organizations do.
First mentioned in Middle Ages literature, tennis is the sport that Sir Gawain—the knight from King Arthur’s round table—plays against a group of giants in ‘The Turke and Gawain’. Here’s a couplet taken from the Old English poem written by Bishop Thomas Percy:
The King said, “Gawaine, faire mot then fall!
Goe feitch me forth my tennisse ball”
You’ll notice the king says to fetch his tennis ball, but makes no mention of a racquet. Mr. Percy probably just couldn’t find a rhyme, right?
Well, actually, tennis has evolved over the course of hundreds of years from its initial invention in which players used their bare hands to hit the ball. It wasn’t until some time between the 1200s and the 1400s that the predecessor to the racquet came onto the courts; it was a glove. And, by the 16th Century, the glove had been replaced with the wire racquet closely resembling what we know today.
If you’re an aficionado of this court sport, check out the modern equipment you can pick up at the Everything Summer Camp website by clicking right here and, as always, thanks for reading.
- John