Play Tennis Day

What the day is

Play Tennis Day is observed on February 23. Modern tennis is young, codified in the 1870s, but it inherited its vocabulary from something several centuries older.

Origin and background

The ancestor is jeu de paume, the game of the palm, played in France from the medieval period, originally by striking a ball with the hand and later with rackets, in enclosed courts whose walls and sloping roofs were part of play. It survives as real tennis. The name tennis is generally traced to the French tenez, meaning take it or here it comes, called by the server.

The scoring is the best-known puzzle and has no settled explanation. The most repeated account holds that a clock face was used to mark points, moving a quarter each time, with forty-five shortened in speech to forty. It is plausible and unproven. Love for zero is usually derived from l'oeuf, the French for egg, on the shape of the numeral, which is likewise a reasonable guess without documentary backing. Both should be offered as theories rather than facts.

Deuce is on firmer ground, from a French phrase meaning two points needed, which describes exactly the situation it names.

The equipment changed the sport more than the rules did. Wooden rackets remained standard into the 1970s, and the shift to metal and then to composite frames allowed much larger heads and far more power, which is why the serve dominates the modern game in a way it did not when the professionals were using wood.

February is also a reasonable time to start, since indoor courts and clubs run beginner sessions before the outdoor season.

How to take part

• Find a public court. Many are free or nearly so and sit empty midweek.
• Try a beginner session at a club, which usually supplies rackets.
• Watch a real tennis match if you get the chance. The walls change everything.
• Treat the clock-face scoring story as a theory when you repeat it.
• Restring an old racket rather than replacing it. Dead strings ruin the game.