This Boodle’s event was, I suppose, a direct consequence of my Gresham Society On-Line talk about real tennis in the autumn of 2020:

Tennis Around The Time Of Thomas Gresham, Gresham Society Webinar Presentation, 7 October 2020

Oliver Wise called me out of the blue in March and asked me if I would be prepared to do something similar to the Gresham Society talk as part of a series of on-line events that his club, Boodle’s, has been holding during lockdown.

How could I possibly say no to Oliver? He probably doesn’t even remember it, but he gave me a great deal of encouragement when I started playing real tennis at Lord’s. I’m sure he does that with everyone; his view is that the handicapping system allows newbies and duffers to play with advanced players, so all should be encouraged to participate.

Anyway, I said yes to the Boodle’s on-line talk/discussion and we agreed a storyboard or semi-script with pictures and video clips that went roughly like this.

Playing The Odds: The Storyboard

Oliver: Can you briefly explain how real tennis differs from its offshoot, lawn tennis?

I’d like to answer that question in two respects – in terms of the history of the games and the nature of the games themselves.

Lawn tennis emerged in the mid to late 19th century, following the invention of vulcanised rubber. So when Boodle’s was founded, in 1762, the term “tennis” would refer to the game we now call “real tennis”. Indeed, the use of the single word “tennis” to refer normally to lawn tennis rather than real tennis dates from the early 20th century.

Real tennis is a rich and complex game played, mostly in indoor courts with gallery openings, penthouse roofs, targets and hazards, as well as the central feature of a net, shared between both real and lawn tennis. In France, real tennis is called “jeu de paume”, or “palm game”, which provides some insight into the game’s emergence by the 12^th century in France…

…at least that’s when the earliest records emerge. The game was played with the hand. This stunning late 13th century picture from the Cambrai Book Of Hours shows a monk instructing his pupils in the game.

I love this picture; one of the oldest if not the oldest image of real tennis action. The master is unquestionably wearing gloves; the pupils also, perhaps.

You might have noticed that the pupils are learning to play with their left hands – both hands will have been used until the notion of a racket emerged, at which point one-handed forehand and backhand play will also have evolved. The switch from hand play to racket play probably started around the advent of the Renaissance and was all-but complete by the end of the Tudor period.

Just a few comments about the game at this stage; we’ll explore more as we go along in our discussion.  The racket and balls for real tennis differ significantly from those used for lawn tennis. The racket is significantly smaller and irregularly shaped; some say the shape is an enlarged palm, others simply that the asymmetric shape assists shots that need to be taken near to the side walls and the nicks.  The racket is highly strung; in my case much like its user. The balls look superficially like modern tennis balls, but they are hard items made from a cork core (in medieval times human hair was bound as the core), webbing and a covering of wool felt, hand-made, only approximately regular in shape. 

The court is even more asymmetric than the implements. Serving is only done from one end – the bottom end as depicted. The receiving end is known as the hazard end.

The ball is hit back and forth across the net and must be sent back over the net on the volley or after the first bounce. But only a few designated areas of the court are places where a shot might win the point outright, although there is a better opportunity for the server than for the receiver to hit an outright winning shot. Only one gallery opening on each side is a winning target; all of the other gallery openings lead to chases, as does all of the floor at the service end and half the floor at the hazard end. In real tennis, the second bounce does not normally determine that the point has been won, but that a chase has been laid.

[Explain one or two chases using the mouse pointer on the picture]

After one or two chases are laid (depending on the score), the players change ends and the serve therefore switches from one player to the other. The player who has laid each chase then needs to defend their territory – i.e. ensure that their opponent lands a second bounce further away from the rear wall than the chase they laid. The winner of the chase scores the point for that chase.

Apart from the matter of chases, the scoring system for real tennis will be familiar to lawn tennis people. 15-30-40-game.  Normally six games to win a set.

Here is a CCTV clip from Lord’s, in which the service has just changed ends after the setting of two chases.   Mr Snitcher, now serving, is trying to defend the five yard line for the first chase and the three yard line for the second chase. The score is 30-30 and I am leading by 5 games to four. Oliver Wise will pick up the commentary:

Oliver: (after explaining the two chases that determine the set).  Would you please tell us a little about some of the colourful characters from the history of the game.

Ah, that’s one of my favourite topics.

There is documentary evidence of tennis as a royal pursuit from the early 14th century. Tennis’s first “star”, for all the wrong reasons, was Louis X of France, known as Louis The Quarrelsome.

Philip IV, Louis’s dad, bought the Tour de Nesle in 1308 and had a covered tennis court built within. While Philip was clearly keen on the game, there is no evidence that he played. It is said that the fashion for covered courts emanated from young Louis’s love of the game. That love also, perhaps, proved to be Louis’s undoing. Just a couple of years after succeeding to the French throne, Louis X died, age 26, apparently after playing an especially rigorous game of tennis at Vincennes, in 1316. Louis X thus became the earliest named tennis player in history.

That event also initiated a long and rather sordid tradition of monarchs or heirs to the throne dying in unusual circumstances with tennis standing accused of being central to their demise. We could have an entire talk on real tennis horrible histories if you fancy…no, thought not. But one such demise is relevant to Boodle’s and its links with tennis from Boodle’s earliest days. Frederick Prince of Wales died in 1751, purportedly from a lung injury sustained on the real tennis court some three years prior to his death. Horace Walpole said so and this is the received wisdom handed down from those Georgian times. Presumably there was a well-recorded incident in which the Prince was injured by “wearing one in the chest”. We’ve all occasionally sustained such bruises. Modern historians and doctors think it unlikely that a chest injury sustained three years earlier would cause such a death. More likely it was a pulmonary embolism. But the hard ball sports of cricket and tennis, which Frederick had loved and patronised, took a reputational hit in England for the rest of the Georgian era, reviving as the Victorian era evolved.

So, at the time that Boodle’s was formed in 1762, there was really only one public court of note in the whole of London; The James Street Court near the Haymarket; a short, pleasant walk away from Boodle’s.  It was sometimes referred to as The King’s Court as Frederick Prince of Wales was said to frequent the place. He had a reputation for enjoying sport and gambling. At that time, public tennis courts were in part for gaming or gambling as well as for playing the sport.  

It is unsurprising that many of the gentlemen who founded Boodle’s, with their love of gaming and sports, were tennis enthusiasts.

Charles James Fox was an early noteworthy…some might say notorious, member of Boodle’s. He was leader of the House of Commons and Foreign Secretary multiple times in the Georgian era. Fox was an inveterate gambler, womaniser and lover of things and fashions foreign. The Conservative historian, Lord Lexden, has compared Fox’s manner with that of the current Prime Minister, Boris Johnson. Fox was also, according to the Georgian equivalent of the tabloids, a keen tennis player.

Here is a quote from the Morning Post and Daily Advertiser, Wednesday, July 2, 1777:

“Charles Fox is become conspicuous at the tennis court. When he leaves off play, being generally in a violent perspiration, he wraps himself up in a loose fur coat, and in this garb, is conveyed to his lodgings.”

Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington was a more conservative character than Fox, both politically and behaviourally. Wellington was another notable member of Boodle’s and another Boodle’s member whose tennis exploits found their way into the papers. Wellington built a tennis court at Stratfield Saye. He even played a few sets there with Prince Albert when the Royal couple visited in 1845. The Illustrated London News reported that:

“we noticed this recreative adjunct to the mansion of Stratfield Saye when chronicling the Royal visit last week, when his Royal Highness Prince Albert enjoyed this olden game”. 

But The History of Stratfield Saye does not record the Duke of Wellington as the star tennis player of that court. That history reports that Wellington’s…

“butler, Phillips, became one of the finest players in England of his day, successively beating all the best French players with whom he contended”.

Some years earlier, in 1820, when Robert Lukin turned the James Street Court into a tennis club, Lukin wrote to Wellington inviting him to become a member of the new Club, enclosing a list of the members who had already subscribed; Wellington graciously accepted the invitation. It would be fascinating to compare that 1820 founding members list from The James Street Court Club with the 1820 members list of Boodle’s, to see how much the membership overlapped. I’d guess quite a bit.

Oliver: One of the things I have always loved about the game is the use of a handicapping or odds system.  Does the use of handicapping have ancient roots?

Unquestionably so, Oliver. We have written records of the use of handicapping as far back as the Renaissance.

There is no coincidence in the fact that the terms odds and handicap both originate from gambling. From the very dawn of civilisation there is evidence that people have liked to gamble on games of skill as well as on games of chance. We have certain, documented evidence from the middle ages onwards of noblemen and gentlemen gambling on tennis.

The fellow depicted, Philip the Bold of Burgundy, is one of my favourite colourful characters from the history of tennis. Here is a story about him, from an 1801 English book about sports and pastimes:

“During the reign of Charles V . palm play , which may properly enough be denominated hand – tennis , was exceedingly fashionable in France, being played by the nobility for large sums of money ; and when they had lost all that they had about them , they would sometimes pledge a part of their wearing apparel rather than give up the pursuit of the game . The duke of Burgundy , according to an old historian , having lost sixty franks at palm play with the duke of Bourbon , Messire William de Lyon , and Messire Guy de la Trimouille , and not having money enough to pay them , gave his girdle as a pledge for the remainder ; and shortly afterwards he left the same girdle with the comte D ‘ Eu for eighty franks , which he also lost at tennis.”

As an aside, Philip the Bold was not only well-known to be an enthusiast of jeu de paume (tennis), he was also a great enthusiast for the Pinot Noir grape; prohibiting the cultivation of the Gamay grape in Burgundy (1395), thus initiating that region’s fine wine tradition. Philip the Bold also initiated a musical chapel which founded the great 15th Century Burgundian school of music. Tennis, wine & music – Philip was my kinda guy…and might I hazard to suggest, also a Boodle’s kinda guy?

Coincidentally, the earliest written reference to handicapping I can find is from a 1506 account of a “visit” to Henry VII at Windsor by Philip The Handsome, a subsequent Duke of Burgundy and also King of Castile. I say “visit” in inverted commas because it seems that the Castilian Royal couple were shipwrecked off the coast of England and Henry VII decided that they should remain in England until they signed a trade deal between Castile and England. There might be a Brexit technique lesson in this sorry tale, but let’s focus on the tennis aspect. I shall read the contemporary account, which is charming:

“The Sattordaye the 7 of ffebruary…Bothe Kyngs wente to the Tennys plays and in the upper gallery theare was Layd ij Cushenes of Clothe of gold for the ij Kyngs…wheare played my Lord marques [of Dorset] the Lord Howard and two other knights togethers, and after the Kyngs of Casteele had scene them play a whylle , he made partys wth the Lord marques and then played the Kyngs of Casteele with the Lord Marques of Dorset the Kyngs Lookynge one them, but the Kyngs of Castelle played wth the Rackets and gave the Lord Marques xv. and after that he had pled his pleasure and arrayed himself agene it was almost nights, and so bothe Kyngs Retorned agayne to their Lodgingss.”

There’s a lot of interesting stuff in that eye-witness account. That early 16th century period was a period of transition between hand-play and racket-play at tennis. Most scholars agree that the racket came into use around 1500. So the handicap described in the account has the King of Castille playing with a racket and the Marquess of Dorset playing with his hand, while receiving fifteen (i.e. starting each game 15-0 up). Personally, I’d prefer the racket, but perhaps the Marquess was a very handy player.

The evidence suggests that handicapping served a twin purpose: – (a) – to simplifying the wagers – i.e. evening up the contest, such that the choice of winner at the start of the match should be perceived as an even bet – (b) facilitating good sport – the honour and joy of doing battle in a close competitive contest.

But by the mid to late 18th century, there had emerged a third purpose or style of handicapping which I’d like to explore with you; a form of handicapping linked with showmanship demonstrated by tennis professionals.

In The Annals of Tennis by Julian Marshall, the antics of the French star player of the mid 18th century, Monsieur Masson, are described in some detail. Here is a particularly vivid extract:

“Against the best of the amateurs [Masson] also played matches of the most difficult combinations. One of these was, that he should deliver the service seated in a barrel, in which he remained after serving, and from which he leapt continually in order to return each stroke of the amateur. On the hazard-side, again, he awaited the service seated by the grille in his barrel, which he had to leave precipitately to play his first stroke, and in which he was compelled by the terms of the match to take refuge, before the amateur returned the ball again.”

My wife, Janie, refuses to believe this story in the absence of CCTV footage. We also know that Monsieur Masson visited England in 1767, just a few years after Boodle’s was founded. He took on and soundly thrashed the English champion of the time, Mr Tompkyns at Whitehall Hall on April 10th.

In fact tennis was enjoying somewhat of a heyday in 18th century France until the revolution came along. There were hundreds of courts in Paris and hundreds more around France. A famous moment in the French Revolution, Le Serment du Jeu de Paume (or “The Tennis Court Oath”), a gathering in a tennis court near the Palace of Versailles is depicted in this 1791 Jacques-Louis David painting. The revolution led to a dramatic decline in French tennis in the ensuing decades, only partially abated by the Bourbon Restoration that followed Napoleon’s defeats.

Which brings us neatly back to the period, about 200 years ago, when Robert Lukin turned the James Street Court into a tennis club and also produced the first English language book on tennis, c1822, A Treatise On Tennis By A Member Of The Club. In this book, the author, believed to be Lukin himself, sets out over several pages all of the different handicaps in use at the time and provides some commentary on their use and their relative betting values.

The basic unit of handicapping was the bisque, whose history is documented as early as the Renaissance and which was used in several games and sports. A player who receives a bisque per set can claim one stroke (point) ahead of that point being played, at any stage during a set. Any number of bisques can be given, but the use of other point handicaps, such as giving fifteen every game or half-fifteen (i.e. fifteen every other game) means that the number of bisques per set would normally have been limited to one or two.

There are two distinct types of odds or handicaps for tennis; one being the points-based odds I have just described, the other being known as “cramped odds”, which restrict the better player in some way. Lukin’s book goes into those at some length. They mostly involve preventing the better player from making use of particular features of the court. Most of these handicaps are now obsolete or only used occasionally in fun and friendly games. “Barring The Openings”, for example, renders all of the openings, including the winning targets such as the grille, the dedans and the winning gallery, out of bounds for the better player. One interesting handicap was named “Round Service”, which required the better players serve to touch both the side and the rear penthouse to be a legitimate serve, which normally renders the serve easy to return.

To demonstrate the difference between a round service and a decent serve, I have found some very rare hand-held video of me serving to a certain Mr Wise. In the first clip, I accidentally deploy a round service, which Oliver despatches into the dedans gallery to win the point without a moment’s hesitation.

In the second clip, I produce a serve of decent length and cunning, which lead to a better outcome for my pair. Discerning viewers will notice that I was able to send my second shot to hit the tambour, which is a jutting out bit of wall on the hazard side of the court. The handicap “ban the tambour” remains in use even in the modern game for the more extreme handicaps.

In fact this might be a good moment to show some wonderful footage you pointed out to me, from the 2016 Boomerang Doubles Tournament, when the final was contested between a very uneven couple of pairs, but went right down to the wire. Would you kindly do the honours and talk us through the video sequence, Oliver?

Oliver introduced/explained and then let the clip speak for itself with the Aussie commentary. Clip runs for 2’25” from the start point of 43’35”

Oliver then explained the following highlights reel, of Rob Fahey playing Camden Riviere, which has 6’00” of sound footage but we showed just the first two minutes or so, to give people a flavour of real tennis rests at their very best] 

Questions From The Audience

Questions included the following topics:

• further examples of extreme handicapping, such as the exploits of Jacques-Edmond Barre, who walked from Paris to Versailles before thrashing a challenger on an extreme points handicap;
• a question about outdoor (jeu quarre) tennis, which I illustrated from experience at Falkland Palace;
• a question on the origins of the 15, 30, 45 scoring system.

References/Sources

Most of the material came from two of the four “tennis history” blog pieces I wrote during the first lockdown in the spring/summer of 2020:

Horrible Histories: The Primordial, Honourable & Ignoble Arts Of Tennis Handicapping, Part Two Of Four Pieces On Tennis History

Odds Oddities: 18th & 19th Century Tennis Handicaps & Traditions – Some Stranger Than Others, Part Three Of Four Pieces On Tennis History

The source references for those pieces are as follows:

Tennis: A Cultural History, Heiner Gillmeister, A&C Black, 1998 or Tennis A Cultural History (Second edition), Heiner Gillmeister, Equinox Publishing Ltd, 2017

Real Tennis Today and Yesterday, John Shneerson, Ronaldson Publications, 2015

Willis Faber Book Of Tennis & Rackets, Lord Aberdare, Hutchinson, 1980

The Annals Of Tennis, Julian Marshall, “The Field” Office, 1878

Colloquia Familiaria by Desiderius Erasmus, c1518

Antonio Scaino, 1555, Trattato del Giuoco della Palla (Treatise of the Ball Game)

La Maison Academique – 1659 – the first French book on games 

Signification de l’ancien jeu des chartes pythagorique et la déclaration de deux doubtes qui se trouvent en comptant le jeu de la paume by Jean Gosselin, c1582 

 A Treatise on Tennis By a Member of the Tennis Club, now attributed to Robert Lukin, 1822

Dialogus Miraculorum, by Caesarius of Heisterbach, early 13^th century

The Ball Game Motif in the Gilgamesh Tradition and International Folklore by Amar Annus and Mari Sarv, January 2015

Second Frutes, by John Florio, 1591

De Corrupti Sermonis Emendatione, Mathurin Cordier (Corderius), 1536

The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England from the Earliest Period, Joseph Strutt, 1801

Anyone For 18^th Century Tennis, Sarah Murden, All Things Georgian. February 2018

Tennis section of The Badminton Library of Sports and Pastimes (1st edition published 1890).

Lawn Tennis with the Laws Adopted by the MCC and the AEC&LTC, and Badminton, Julian Marshall, CFA Hinrichs (New York), 1879

The Manual Of British Rural Sports, John Henry Walsh (aka “Stonehenge”), 1856 (1867 edition attached) 

The Game of Lawn Tennis With the Laws Of The Marylebone and All England Clubs, Henry “Cavendish” Jones, De La Rue, 1888 

Lawn Tennis, James Dwight, Wright & Ditson (Boston), 1886 

Wright & Ditson Lawn Tennis Guide, 1894

Racquets, Tennis & Squash, Eustace Miles, D Appleton & Company (New York), 1903

Capping With Handicopes, Roger Pilgrim, Tennis & Rackets Association, 2010

In addition, the following sources proved useful for this specific Boodle’s piece:

Charles James Fox Wikipedia entry

Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington Wikipedia entry

The Wellington Connection – Tennis.

A History of Stratfield Saye by the Reverend Charles Griffith, John Murray, 1892