Janie and I have been back on the modern tennis court now for a month or so.
Real tennis, an indoor sport, is still a hope rather than an expectation in this time of Covid.
Anyway, Janie and I threw ourselves into playing modern tennis (or “lawners”, as some real tennis types call it) with abandon. Unfortunately, this switch from “nuffing” to “every day” did not seem to please Janie’s arm. I don’t suppose lugging heavy grub bags for FoodCycle has helped much either:
Anyway, point is, Janie is rehabilitating and we felt the game needed a bit of evening up while Janie’s arm gets better. I proposed using the handicapping system which we deploy as standard in real tennis. Janie, now steeped in the ways of real tennis, received the idea with alacrity.
Now, I know what some readers are thinking. “You can’t use the real tennis handicapping system for modern tennis”. “Doesn’t work”. “Serving whole games each messes up the system”.
I have heard all of those arguments before.
But here’s the thing.
In the very early days of modern tennis, the game was absolutely played on handicap, or “odds” as handicapping was known back then; to the same or arguably to a greater extent than in real tennis. And yes, the odds/handicaps work absolutely fine in modern tennis.
We’ve had a lot of fun trying different handicaps. When the injury was still quite bad and Janie’s play unpredictable, we used moving (sliding) handicaps on a steep gradient. For example, Janie would receive 15 for the first game, but if she lost that game she’d receive 15 and I’d owe 15 (start on -15) for the next one. If she won that game we’d go back to receive 15, but if she ended up two games down we’d progress to receive 15/owe30 and so on.
Now that Janie is almost better, we’ve tried a fixed handicap of owe15, which comes close to evening up the odds. But we’re enjoying more using a shallow moving handicap, where we start at owe 15 and adjust by one notch if either of us wins two games in a row. So if I go two games up the handicap goes up to receive 15, if Janie wins two in a row in goes to level.
Anyway, it does mean that we have been having some really close matches and have both been enjoying the contest despite. Now that Janie’s arm is almost better, we might even start playing level again, although a little bit of moving handicap does keep the match tight even if one of us is not performing at our best for whatever reason. It might even become part of our regular playing conditions. For sure, playing one point at 40-40 enables us readily to progress through a whole set in the 50-55 minutes we now get due to the “social distancing dance” we need to do with the previous and subsequent court-users.
Meanwhile I have been fascinated by the research I have been doing into the history of the tennis scoring system and the use of odds/handicaps for many centuries. I have found a wealth of material on-line, including some wonderful old books written by some extraordinary old characters. Meet Eustace Miles, for example.
In short, I have discovered that several of the game’s creation myths are…frankly…myths. Further, the reality is more messy, complicated and fascinating than many of the myths. I am planning three short pieces for the real tennis community on the following topics:
- Ancient origins of the tennis scoring system;
- Variety and evolution of tennis odds/handicaps – from esoteric to algorithmic;
- 150 years of symbiosis in the development of real and modern tennis rules and odds/handicaps.
Catchy titles, huh? Watch this space, folks.
Folks?
Where’s everybody gone?
