It is pretty clear from the medieval texts I covered in the article, Ancient Arithmetic, that tennis game scoring, since time immemorial, was a four point system described as 15, 30, 45 and 60:
Yet in modern parlance we use the number 40 to represent the third point, rather than 45. Most writers, if they mention the matter at all, suggest that 40 is merely an abbreviation for 45. The 1822: A Treatise on Tennis By a Member of the Tennis Club, now attributed to Robert Lukin, also referenced in Ancient Arithmetic, simply states that the score is called:
…40 or 45.
But since I published my tetralogy of pieces, several people have contacted me wondering about this forty/forty-five matter, so I thought I should delve a little deeper. Not least, I wondered how recent (or ancient) the use of forty might be. Also, is there actual evidence that “forty” merely is an abbreviation for “forty-five”.
John Florio was an Anglo-Italian with a fascinating back story of his own. His “Frutes” books are basically primers in the English and Italian languages. Chapter 2 of the Second Frutes book (pp15-29) is a dramatised story of a day going to play tennis with the intention to go on to the theatre afterwards. There’s a good deal of insight into Tudor tennis in that chapter, which is a fascinating and amusing read. But the key phrase for this purpose is spoken by the character H on P25:
But the habit of abbreviating “forty-five” to “forty” dates back at the very least several further decades…possibly even back to time immemorial.
Heiner Gillmeister buries the relevant factoid in a footnote within his excellent 1997 book,Tennis A Cultural History, which is also referenced in the main Ancient Arithmetic piece.
…quarante for quarante-cinq seems to be attested, at least by implication, for the year 1536.
Gillmeister (via Christian Schmitt) references Mathurin Cordier (Corderius, a fascinating character who was a humanist theologian, grammarian and pedagogue) from his De Corrupti Sermonis Emendatione, of 1536, in which the author is admonishing schoolboys for their sloppy use of language:
Caeterum omnino ineptum est quod pueri dicunt “quadra” pro “quadraginta quinque”.
Besides, it is totally useless to say “square” instead of “forty-five”
WTF? Kids abbreviating to absurdity. Who knew? Obvs.
Let’s be honest folks, most of us have been known, on occasion, to say “thirty-five” rather than “thirty-fifteen”…
…or “fift” rather than “fifteen”
…or “van” rather than “advantage”.
Mea culpa…or, as the young folks might say, “meculp”.
In syllable terms, we’re shaving but one syllable in English, when shortening forty-five to forty. Likewise in French; quarante-cinq to quarante. But in Italian, shortening quarantacinque to quaranta is an even more understandable five syllable to three syllable drop. The Latin equivalent, quadraginta quinque to quadraginta would be a six to four shift.
But the extra shave in Latin from quadraginta quinque to quadra really is going too far. Or not far enough; why stop at “quadra” when you can monosyllabically say “quad” and save yet another syllable?
Did the young really have such an abbreviated approach to language, even in the first half of the 16th century?
Yup. It seems they did. Perhaps we humans have done so since time immemorial.
This final piece explores in a little more detail the origins of the modern game of tennis and explains how handicapping was central to modern tennis’s development in the late 19th century and then subsequently those modern tennis developments to handicapping pervaded real tennis.
In truth, it had all happened rather quickly for that modern version of the game. In the mid 19th century, lots of sporty folk had experimented with garden-based adaptations of tennis in various forms. A club for one form of lawn tennis, named pelota, was founded in Leamington Spa in 1872. Major Clopton Wingfield applied for a patent on his version of lawn tennis, Sphairistikè, in 1874.
The Marylebone Cricket Club, which was, by the 1870s, the guardian of the laws of tennis as well as of cricket, got involved around 1875, in an attempt to codify and standardise the laws of lawn tennis.
There followed a rather controversial set of processes, from which emerged, in the end, the laws of lawn tennis in a form very similar to those we know today, but not without some evident deep debate and acrimony.
Prince Otto von Bismarck famously said that “to retain respect for sausages and laws, one must not watch them in the making.” He was probably right. Perhaps for that reason, Julian Marshall’s early booklet on lawn tennis is silent on the controversy around the laws, it merely sets them out.
A rye smile at a German sausage
But I’m going to have a go at exploring the controversy and the somewhat tortuous journey.
The MCC Got A Bunch Of Lawyers & Sport Enthusiasts Together To Codify This New-Fangled Lawn Tennis Game…What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
According to the younger Heathcote, by 1875 lawn tennis was becoming chaotically ubiquitous in the gardens of England; opinions in The Field magazine were united only in the view that things could not go on like this, so the tennis committee of the MCC was deputed to form a code for this new game.
The scoring method that these esteemed gentlemen came up with was, basically, the method used in rackets. Only the server (hand-in) could score points; serve only changed hands when the receiver (hand-out) won a stroke; a game was first to 15 (with some additional clever stuff to “set the game” if the game gets to 13-13 or 14-14).
The original MCC code seems to have been little used. CG Heathcote briefly documents one or two matches played that way.
The attempt at standardisation started to get messy again, when Henry “Cavendish” Jones, one of the doyens of the All England Croquet Club, who had been instrumental in introducing lawn tennis to that club, decided, in 1876, to advocate the use of tennis scoring rather than rackets scoring for lawn tennis.
Henry Jones, aka Cavendish. Now that’s what I call beard.
Jones advocated the use of tennis scoring on the grounds that:
interest is better sustained and handicapping facilitated.
CG Heathcote describes this turn of events as “a crisis”, exacerbated by the fact that John Henry “Stonehenge” Walsh, then editor of The Field, was honorary secretary (having been one of the founders) of the All England Croquet Club. He was more a dogs and guns man than a tennis and croquet man in truth; he regularly organised field gun trials, often using the All England Croquet Club fields for that purpose. Don’t ask.
By 1877, not only had the objects of the All England Croquet Club been changed to include lawn tennis but the name of the club had become All England Croquet & Lawn Tennis Club (AECLTC) and a lawn tennis tournament announced for July 1877.
At this juncture of the story, CG Heathcote’s essay on lawn tennis gets a bit melodramatic:
“…a graver crisis was at hand, which should determine whether the game was to bask for a few seasons in the smiles of fashion, and then decay and die, as rinking [rollerskating] had done, and as croquet also for a while did; or whether it was to take its place permanently among recognised English sports, and so contribute to the formation of English character and English history.”
Just in case the above paragraph does not render you, dear reader, ashiver, Heathcote goes on:
“A vehement controversy had been maintained in the press on the relative merits and demerits of racket and tennis scoring respectively; nor was this the only topic for acrimonious discussion.”
He’s talking about the size and shape of the court, the height of the net, the position of the service line, the question of faults on serves…
“…had been argued at great length and with considerable bitterness, and yet unanimity seemed as hopeless as ever.
A small sub-committee of the AECLTC was formed for the purpose of framing the rules for the 1877 tournament. Step forward Julian Marshall (he of The Annals of Tennis, most of which was being pre-published as articles in The Field during 1876 and 1877), Henry “Cavendish” Jones and CG Heathcote, whose interest in “bigging up” this story might be connected with his role in the controversy’s resolution.
Wimbledon 1877, a success by any measure or scoring system
Needless to say, this second committee opted for tennis scoring rather than rackets scoring, although that original publication offers rackets scoring as an alternative method allowed within the rules if the players so choose. A type of hedge that might have graced many a fine field in Wimbledon or St John’s Wood.
All three members of that triumphant sub-committee played a significant role in the 1877 tournament. Henry Jones umpired. Julian Marshall was a losing quarter-finalist, losing to CG Heathcote, who went on to lose his semi-final but was awarded third place on a play-off. The winner of that first championship, Spencer Gore, was a local (Wimbledon) chap; primarily a cricketer and rackets player.
As an aside, the 1878 Wimbledon Championship was also won by a rackets player, Frank Hadow, who defeated Spencer Gore in straight sets in the final. Frank Hadow defeated everyone he played in that championship in straight sets. He also chose not to defend his title, thus becoming the only tennis player in history never to have lost a championship match. When asked to defend his title, Frank Hadow allegedly said:
“No sir. It’s a sissy’s game played with a soft ball.”
I don’t personally agree with Mr Hadow’s disparaging view of lawn tennis; I am merely reporting it to you.
The rules as used for that first Wimbledon Championship in 1877 and the resulting codification, The Laws Of Lawn Tennis, adopted by the MCC (perhaps somewhat grudgingly) and the AECLTC can be found in full in Julian Marshall’s 1879 booklet, Lawn Tennis – here’s the link again. Those rules are remarkably similar to the rules of lawn tennis that remain in use to this day; quite an achievement and perhaps testament to the natural elegance of the tennis scoring system.
Handicapping In Lawn Tennis
By all accounts, in the early days of lawn tennis, the use of handicapping was near-ubiquitous, apart from championship-type matches. Rules 14-22 in the 1879 Lawn Tennis booklet set out the handicapping system for lawn tennis.
Were they “laws” or “rules”? The main title page describes them as “laws” but the chapter page describes them as “rules”. Another controversial point for MCC/AEC<C debate, no doubt.
Much simpler than that for real tennis – the only cramped odds on offer for handicapping are “half-court” given by the stronger player. Numeric odds on offer are only points given, perhaps enhanced or mitigated by a bisque or two. See part three of this work, Odds Oddities, for more detailed notes on the various cramped-odds and points-based odds used in real tennis.
Note also that rackets-style scoring, offered as an alternative method in rules 24-30 of the Lawn Tennis book of laws, also come with some handicapping (odds) in rules 31 to 33; one or more points given, the privilege of retaining hand-in (serve) two or more successive times and/or half-court.
…by Mr Henry Jones in a letter to the Field under date July 7, 1883. The bisque, now abolished, was the unit, and all the possible degrees of merit were indicated by classes separated from the other by one bisque. For bisques there have been substituted at first quarters and now sixths of fifteen as the unit, but the general principle will be the same.
Henry “Cavendish” Jones, you might recall, was the geezer who advocated the use of tennis scoring in the Field back in 1876 and who umpired the first Wimbledon Championship. He went on to write his own small treatise on lawn tennis in 1888, which you can read in full on the internet archive, if you wish, by clicking here. But if you simply want to see/read what he was talking about in the matter of handicapping, I have extracted the relevant tables and pages from this public domain work and present them below. You can click through the images to the on-line book and zoom in on the pages that way.
You might want to get out your slide rules and logarithm tables to get your head around those odds.
Seriously, though, two important and influential ideas were introduced into handicapping by Henry Jones’s (or should I say Cavendish’s?) innovations.
Firstly, the notion of owed odds as well as received odds. In other words, the notion that the superior player might start behind love – on minus fifteen or minus thirty instead of, or as well as, the inferior player starting ahead by fifteen, thirty etc. For those of us who play tennis using handicaps today, the notion of owed odds as well as received odds is quite natural, but in the 1880s it was an innovation, at least to the extent that there doesn’t seem to be any documentary evidence of owed odds being used prior to that suggestion.
Secondly, the tabular format for calculating the handicap to be used for lawn tennis is a precursor to the algorithmic method we use today in real tennis.
Even before Cavendish published his own treatise together with the laws and his handicapping methods, his suggested use of owed and received odds had found wide favour in lawn tennis.
There follows, in the Dwight, a more lengthy exposition about bisques; not only a great deal of thought on when to take them but also some thinking about what their computed value might be, compared with the more regular forms of numeric odds.
Despite this added complexity, the use of handicapping in lawn tennis matches was ubiquitous in those early decades of the game’s popularity, used at pretty much every level other than the major tournaments, which (as with real tennis) were played at scratch. Perhaps that complexity did for handicapping in lawn tennis in the end; it is barely used at all in modern tennis; regrettably in my view. Perhaps handicapping will return to regular use in modern (lawn) tennis some day.
Early 20th Century: Yet More Mileage In Handicapping
Received wisdom appears to suggest that he was deemed to have had some odd ideas about many things, including odds, i.e. handicaps.
Miles, for reasons that I cannot fathom, deems “owe” handicapping to be impossible in real tennis:
Handicap by points are simple – they have not yet been brought down to the fineness of Lawn Tennis Handicaps. They still are only – Half-fifteen; Fifteen; Half—thirty ; Thirty ; and so on . One cannot owe Points : the system of Chases makes this impossible.
Those of us who use handicapping regularly know that this assertion about chases negating the use of owed odds is simply untrue. But this does indicate that, twenty or so years after owe handicapping was introduced into lawn tennis, it had not yet found its way into real tennis.
I very much enjoy reading Eustace Miles other ideas on handicapping, some of which I like for their weirdness, but wouldn’t attempt them myself, others (possibly still weird) which I enjoy trying or wouldn’t mind giving a try.
Personally I find a Cricket bat to be the best practice. It develops the wrist and the arm, though it may strain them also. It involves a very accurate timing of the ball, and a very accurate position of the body, and a very full swing. Pettitt is an adept with a small specially-shaped piece of wood: I believe that the original piece of wood was part of a chair. Needless to say, such an implement compels one to be extremely careful. An inch or two of misjudgment, and one’s stroke is a failure . Older players played with some other object, as a soda-water bottle.
Don’t try the ideas from the above paragraph at home, children…nor adults come to that. Miles also elaborates at length on cramped odds in those pages – it is well worth reading through to the end of that chapter on p221.
What I particularly like about Miles’s thinking on handicapping is his desire to encourage good sport and handicaps that help both players to develop their game.
Miles’s suggestive Chapter XLIV on Handicaps and Scoring pp303-306 has a great many ideas, some more practicable and sensible than others. Again it is well worth a read. He believes as a matter of etiquette that players should be prepared to take or give handicaps; he also suggests some subtle cramped-odds type things that the superior player might apply if the opponent stubbornly refuses to accept a handicap.
He advocates moving handicaps – i.e. making the handicap rise or fall as the match progresses. I particularly enjoy using these in friendly matches, especially in circumstances when the algorithmic methods of the modern computerised handicapping system are unlikely to work well enough; often the case in doubles where one player is recovering from injury or where one player is an unknown quantity.
Miles also advocates the use of left-handed play, both for the benefit of players’s bodies and also as a method of handicapping at times. I use this method myself, for the former reason in real tennis and for both reasons when I play lawn tennis with my wife, Janie. In the interests of full disclosure, I should point out that Janie and I also use moving handicaps – owed and received – when we play lawn tennis, to great positive effect.
From The Tables Of The Late 19th Century To 21st Century Algorithmic Handicapping
Actually, the principles involved in the sophisticated lawn-tennis table-based handicapping of the late 19th century are remarkably similar to those we use today in the algorithm-based handicapping system at Real Tennis On-Line through the Tennis & Rackets Association.
On that site, following the centuries-old tradition of placing learned works about tennis on-line, in the public domain for all to see, Roger Pilgrim’s 2010 definitive guide to handicapping explains everything you ever wanted to know about the modern system of handicapping…but were afraid to ask. Click here to read and/or download that definitive piece.
Roger Pilgrim seems to make it his business to avoid being photographed at tennis matches, perhaps because he has no enormous beard or moustache to show off to the camera, unlike the Victorian and Edwardian folk who have mostly populated this piece.
But Roger has graced the tennis court with me, on several occasions. Despite the fact that he is far more experienced and a much better player than I shall ever be, we are able to enjoy playing tennis together through the wonders of the tennis handicapping system.
The handicap gets better very, very, very, slowlyHandicapping has come a long way since, in 1506, Philip, King of Castille (depicted) gave the Marquess of Dorset, the latter playing with his hand, fifteen in exchange for the former’s use of a racket
…I explored the phenomena of wagering and handicapping, which date back at least as far as the late medieval period for tennis.
The evidence suggests that handicapping (or “odds”, as handicapping was more commonly called in olden times) served a twin purpose:
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;
facilitating good sport – the honour and joy of doing battle in a close competitive contest.
Traditional tennis offers a large array of mechanisms for handicapping, not just point adjustments, which were well documented by the early 19th century and which I shall examine shortly.
But by the mid to late 18th century, there had emerged a third purpose or style of handicapping which I’d like to explore briefly; a form of handicapping linked with showmanship demonstrated by tennis professionals.
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.
What a shame there were no CCTV cameras on court in those days to provide us with images of those feats. My good lady, Janie, simply doesn’t believe this story in the absence of visual evidence. Perhaps we could persuade one of the modern tennis professionals to deploy this handicapping method and provide us with some video of such play. I gladly volunteer my own services as the hapless opponent.
There’s not much else to find about Monsieur Masson and his antics, other than a few additional notes in the Marshall Annals on Pages 43 & 44, including the fact that Masson (unusually for the time) wore spectacles, that he developed a frowned-upon, sort-of scoop shot to return balls dropping nearly perpendicularly from the penthouse and that his offspring showed disappointingly little talent at the game.
Tennis was enjoying somewhat of a heyday in 18th century France until the revolution came along. A famous moment in the revolution, Le Serment du Jeu de Paume (or “The Tennis Court Oath”) is depicted in the 1791 Jacques-Louis David painting shown below.
But the tradition of tennis professional high jinks lived on into the 19th century. Jacques-Edmond Barre (depicted as the headline picture above), although he was from a modest professional tennis family, became such a great player that, in 1828, age 26, Barre was appointed “poumier du roi” by (post-restoration) King Charles X of France.
On the same occasion [the day he enthralled and was appointed by the King] he had played a game with the Comte de Reignac, an officer in the Lancers of the Guard, in which he gave the latter “all the walls” — the longest possible odds of that kind, — and had won the match with ease.
At its conclusion, de Reignac sa id, “If you will give me my revenge in a few months, I will beat you, for by that time I shall have improved.”
To this Barre replied, “Comte, I will return next May, and I will give you the same odds again; and I undertake to walk on foot from Paris to Fontainebleau before the match.”
This was a bold wager; and he who made it must have not only had great strength, but also great confidence in his strength.
On the 5th of the following May, Barre started from Paris at daybreak, and at three o’clock in the afternoon, somewhat tired with his walk, he arrived at the place of rendezvous, having accomplished the distance, nearly forty-three miles, in ten hours.
After an hour’s repose he entered the Court, and played the match, which he won, apparently, with as much facility as on the previous occasion.
I’m sure the Comte de Reignac will have been a well-humoured fellow who took his humiliating return-match thrashing with good grace.
Both of the above examples are (extreme) examples of a genre known as cramped-odds, i.e. constraints on the mode of play, rather than points-based odds.
Before exploring the cramped-odds phenomenon in all its varied glory, perhaps best to set out the points-based odds.
In short, the basic currency unit of points handicap was the bisque. Little used today, it is a bit like a joker in a card game, in that a bisque enables the holder of the bisque to claim a stroke (point) at any time. Bisques date back at least to the 16th century, where we can find reference to them in French texts.
A great deal of strategy and tactics narrative in 19th century books on tennis revolve around when to take one’s bisques. They sound like great fun and must add some piquancy or frisson, especially if the match is being wagered upon or part of a tournament.
Bisques are rarely seen in any form of tennis in modern times, but I believe their use has survived in croquet, a game which adopted the bisque in earnest, certainly in its formal 19th century manifestation, if not earlier.
Odds of “half-fifteen” means that the receiver starts 15-0 up at the start of every other game, but never the first game of a set.
Odds of “fifteen” means that the receiver of those odds starts 15-0 up at the start of each game.
Odds of “half thirty” meant that the receiver would start 15-0 up on the first game of the set, then alternate between 30-0 up and 15-0 up at the start of each game. Note the past tense “meant” there – we now use “owe” odds as well as “receive” odds – I’ll explain the origins and development of those in part four – such that “half thirty” would not be used unmitigated in the modern game.
Back in the 19th century, odds were sometimes enhanced or mitigated by bisques. Thus, a player who was a bit too good to receive fifteen, but not quite good enough to receive only half-fifteen, might be presented with odds “receive fifteen but give a bisque”. Or a player who wasn’t quite good enough to receive just fifteen but was too good for odds of half-thirty might “receive fifteen and a bisque”.
There’s even a concept of a half or demi-bisque. Lukin suggests that the half-bisque is not used in England but is well-known in France. Marshall some 50 years later describes it as unusual and recommends agreeing in advance of the match what is meant by the term, as it was sometimes used to mean “one bisque every other set”, sometimes to mean “the right to annul a fault”, sometimes “to claim the point after one fault”, or sometimes “to claim chase-off for a chase”.
Lukin describes “Odds at Tennis” as a mechanism “to make a match equal; or in other words to put the inferior player upon a level with the superior.” While he doesn’t state that the main reason for doing this is linked with wagering, Lukin does, helpfully, pp 111-112, linked here and reproduced below, set out an appendix of “The Odds, As Usually Betted”.
At the end of P112, Lukin notes that chases make such betting odds
“very precarious: – to say nothing of the difficulty of making a match so near as to leave neither party the favourite.”
Don’t Cramp My Style With Your Odds
Bet you cannot leap in and out of those barrels between shots
At the less numerical end of the odds scale, we have the various cramped-odds, of which Masson’s barrel-jumping and Barre’s power-walking are rare examples.
Lukin lists several examples in his treatise, probably quite commonly used in the 19th century but rarely used today other than for fun or training:
Round Service – the serve must touch both the side and the rear penthouse to be a legitimate serve – this normally renders the serve easy to return;
Half Court – obliging the better player to confine his balls to one half of the court lengthways (left side or right side);
Touch-No-Wall – obliging the better player to ensure that there would be a second bounce before the ball reached any of the walls, which also renders the openings barred. This makes life extremely tough for the better player and much easier for the lesser player;
Touch-No-Side-Wall – which renders out of bounds, for the better player, the side galleries and doors, as well as the side walls, but it does leave the dedans and the grille in play;
Barring The Hazard – which renders the winning openings (dedans, grille & winning gallery) out of bounds for the better player;
Barring The Openings – which renders all of the openings, including the winning ones listed above, out of bounds for the better player.
Cramped-Odds: odds, in giving which a player agrees to renounce the liberty of playing into some usual part of the Court ; or plays with some unusual dress or implement ; or cramps his game in some other way, by agreement. These odds may be combined with bisques or other Odds, either in augmentation or diminution.
In those pages Julian Marshall also, helpfully, in a footnote, explains the relative value of cramped odds in terms of points odds:
The value of ordinary cramped-odds, though varying with different players, is usually estimated as follows:
Round services = 15 or nearly half-30
Half-court = half-30
Touch-no-side-walls = half-30 and, perhaps, a bisque
Touch no walls = about 40
Bar-the-hazard (no winning openings) = about 15
Bar the openings = 15 and a bisque, or nearly half-30
Simples.
Julian Marshall’s Annals of Tennis was published in 1878, around the time that Marshall and his pals were sharpening their pencils and debating the rules, scoring and handicapping for a novel game with some similarities to tennis. It was known in some circles as sphairistikè, in other circles as lawn tennis.
Part Four of my series will cover the synchronicities and controversies bound up in the evolution of the modern game. Modern tennis offers fewer opportunities for cramped-odds but that didn’t stop handicapping from the ancient and modern games from strongly influencing each other at the end of the Victorian era and early part of the 20th century.
“How’s about I give you a punnet of strawberries for two bisques?”, Wimbledon, 1877
But before signing off this part of the story, I’d like to introduce one other character who was hugely influential during that Victorian period of the sport’s (or should I say sports’s?) development: John Moyer Heathcote.
A contemporary of Julian Marshall; clearly one of Marshall’s pals & adversaries, Heathcote was a real tennis player at the James Street Court, a barrister and a Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) committee member around the time that guardianship of the laws of tennis moved from the James Street Court to Lord’s. He was a central character in the group responsible for codifying the laws of real tennis and latterly modern tennis. More on that in Part Four.
There is an ancient custom for which little can be said, except that it is an ancient custom, that a player who has lost a love set shall pay a shilling to the marker – a cruel and wanton aggravation of the annoyance usually felt by anyone who has been so signally defeated.
The refinement of this injury is carried even a step further in France: the marker on these occasions steps from his compartment into the court opposite to that occupied by the unfortunate victim, kisses the net-rope and saying, “bredouille, monsieur” [I am empty-handed, sir], makes a bow expressive of his claim to the customary douceur [sweetener].
I can find no other references to this “ancient custom”…
…but then, I find no old written references to other customs we know to be ubiquitous and ancient, such as the imperative that, on changing ends, the server-to-be enters the service end of the court before the striker-out-to-be leaves the service end and enters the hazard end. Woe betide any real tennis player who inadvertently forgets to comply with the change-of-ends custom.
I think the only possible explanation for that “big loser pays a shilling” custom is that the markers or tennis-court proprietors in days of yore were also, in effect, keepers of a gambling house. An uneven contest (which would probably have occurred due to the stubbornness of the loser in not taking sufficient handicap) would have much reduced the marker’s earnings from “the wager book” for that match. A shilling might have been sufficient (or at least some) compensation for the paucity of competition and resulting low interest from “spectating punters”.
Ancient customary odds: a King’s shilling for a bagel, or a “Silver Bagel Award”
Other Pieces On Tennis History
This piece is part three of four pieces. The other three pieces are:
…I trawled a great many authoritative (and some nonauthoritative) sources in search of the source of the tennis scoring system. In so doing, I also learnt a great deal about the odds, or handicapping systems that tend to accompany tennis scoring.
I also learnt that the origins of tennis, its scoring and handicapping are inextricably linked to the fact that tennis was widely played and observed as a wagering game, certainly as far back as medieval times. Enjoy the following example:
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 .
I love that 14th century story about my new friend, Philip The Bold, Duke of Burgundy. Of course, the detail might be more legend than history, but it forms part of a significant body of evidence that tennis was already a structured sport way back then, with wagering being “part of the scene”.
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 Burgundian school of music. Tennis, wine & music – Philip was my kinda guy.
Medieval Kings & Their Love/Hate Relationship With Tennis
There is documentary evidence that 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.
Quarrelsome? Moi?
Louis X’s kid sister, Isabella, married Edward II of England. Isabella quite possibly murdered the latter; for sure she had him deposed and had her 14 year old son, Edward III, inserted on the throne of England. That allowed Isabella and her mate, Roger Mortimer, to dabble in ruling England as regents for a bit, until Edward III asserted himself, aged 18.
Anyway, my point is, Philip IV of France (Louis X’s dad), Edward III of England and Charles V of France (Edward III’s third cousin, Philip The Bold of Burgundy’s brother) all had one thing in common in the matter of tennis; they banned it by decree.
In truth, medieval kings made a bit of a habit of banning tennis (along with most sports and games other than warlike sports, such as archery) for the middling sort, while at the same time building tennis courts and letting their families and noble entourages play tennis at will.
That sort of hypocritical prohibition by decree continued well into the 15th and 16th centuries, which almost certainly helped the game become rather popular as an underground activity.
(As an aside, I have often attributed my own love of cricket to the fact that my primary school headmistress banned cricket in the school playground when I was 10, which inevitably led to clandestine games of cricket on the common whenever the opportunity arose – thank you Miss Plumridge. I don’t suppose the teachers who ruled Rosemead School were hypocritically playing cricket, while prohibiting their charges from doing so. But who knows? Anyway, I digress.)
Renaissance Tennis, Honour & Wagering
While we have strong direct evidence that noble folk wagered on their play and sometimes wagered big – Henry VIII has a great many well-documented, substantial losses from playing tennis – we also have plenty of indirect evidence that tennis was a popular game around which the players indulged in wagering and observers often indulged in gambling.
Heiner Gillmeister in his Cultural History of Tennis is unequivocal on this point:
…in the Middle Ages tennis was always played for money…
This seminal treatise on tennis was a youthful act of patronage by Alfonso II d’Este, who went on to become Duke of Ferrara and to patronise a great many works of art and science, not least the works of Torquato Tasso. An arty family, those d’Este folk. Alfonso II’s grandmother was Lucretia Borgia and his auntie was Leonora d’Este, who most probably composed the wonderful sacred music sampled below:
So Scaino’s commission to write his treatise on tennis came from a noble, art-loving patron; it is perhaps unsurprising that the treatise focuses on matters noble and honourable about the game, while ignoring the seedier, money-oriented side of the game.
Note how Scaino explains the reasoning behind the “win by two clear points” aspect of the scoring system:
It is to be noted that the game of tennis is of a beautiful and well-reasoned ordinance. The winning of points is called by the numbers 15, 30 and 45 and if the two teams have each won three points the score is “a dua”, meaning that the game is reduced to two points (became “à deux” or “deux à” in French, “deuce” in English) and not one! The method of fighting such a distinguished battle should be removed from any suspicion of chance or fortune. He who wins must be sure that he has won by his own valour, not by any outside favour. Who does not see now that the game could not be devised with good reason to end with only one point? The good and staunch Cavalier is judged not by one thrust of his lance; the elegant Dancer not by just one leap, however bold and skilful, but by prolongued dancing, and the sure and cautious Bombardier not by one discharge of his Artillery, but by many.
While the above reasoning does not preclude the use of odds, or handicapping, it certainly does not in any way allude to it either. But we do have plenty of evidence to support the assertion that medieval tennis was played for money and we also have documentary evidence of the use of handicapping, some 50 years before Scaino.
At Odds With Renaissance Handicapping: Meet the Bisque
The earliest reference to odds, or handicapping, that I can find, is from early 1506, reported in Julian Marshall’s 1878 book, The Annals of Tennis. It is an eye-witness account, by one of Henry VII of England’s attendants, of a “visit” to Windsor Castle by Philip The Handsome (another Duke of Burgundy, plus also King of Castille) and his Queen: Joanna The Mad of Castille.
Philip The Handsome, Duke of Burgundy, King of Castille, husband to Joanna The Mad, not long for this world
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.
Sadly, the account doesn’t tell us who won the tennis match, but the story doesn’t end brilliantly well for the visiting monarch; who in reality was more a hostage than a guest of Henry VII. Philip signed some helpful treaties and trade deals to help bring his “visit” to an amicable conclusion. Still, within a few months, Philip The Handsome died in Spain; probably poisoned/assassinated there. This made Joanna The Mad even more distraught than usual, apparently.
Joanna The Mad, but possibly Joanna The Gaslit or Joanna The Misconstrued
Thomas Grey, the Marquess of Dorset, who as a youngster had been a ward of Henry VII, was, by 1508, sent to the tower as a suspected conspirator against Henry VII. Only the accession of Henry VIII the following year saved Grey, who had a decent run as a high-ranking courtier after that narrow escape. His grand-daughter, Lady Jane Grey, was not so lucky; famously the “nine day queen”.
Not that type of bisque
In days of yore, the most common currency in tennis handicaps or odds was the bisque. 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, perhaps occasionally three or four. Bisques would also be used sometimes to mitigate handicaps; for example Player A might receive fifteen but give a bisque or two to Player B to make the overall handicap less than fifteen.
The object of the exercise with odds (or handicapping) is to even up the game between players of differing quality. In days of yore, it almost certainly evolved as a mechanism to make wagering simpler and/or more exciting; hence the terms odds and handicapping (both gambling terms) to describe the practice.
In real tennis, handicapping is still very much part of the scene in all but the very highest level of play, as I shall explain in the third piece in this series.
As for the origins of the term “bisque”, that is lost in the mists of time. Some say the term “bisca” is Italian for tennis court and gambling house, much as the term “tripot” in French has those two meanings. But Scaino doesn’t use the term bisca or bisque at all in his treatise. The term bisque (spelt bisquaye) first appears in writing in the 1582 paper 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, but the context implies that this form of handicapping had been in regular use for some time, as Gosselin assumes that the term will be understood by the reader.
Many subsequent papers and books on tennis go into a great deal of detail about the tactical use of bisques by the player who has been given the opportunity to apply one or more of them.
Indeed, by the start of the 19th century, a fascinating array of odds/handicaps had emerged, mostly no doubt to enhance the enjoyment of wagering & gambling on the sport, but also as part of the honour system, by which the contestants were seeking to even up the match, better to enjoy the sport of the occasion. It is the latter rationale that prevails in real tennis to this day, to great effect.
But those 18th, 19th, 20th and 21st century developments will be the subject of my subsequent scribblings. As will the intriguing notion that handicaps were an intrinsic part of lawn tennis in the early days of that game.
Tennis Handicap Tournament, 1918, Upper Arlington Tennis Club
Other Pieces On Tennis History
This piece is part two of four pieces. The other three pieces are:
Pondering tennis scoring, abacus in hand, Moreton Morrell, 2019
Why Score Points/Strokes in 15s?
Lovers of tennis have long pondered the origins of the scoring system. In particular, the notion that the first point scores 15, the second point 30 and so on, until one player has scored four points, or, if the score reaches three-all, once one player has subsequently taken two consecutive points.
There are a great many theories about the origins of this convention.
At the time of writing this piece (the summer of 2020) there are two prevailing “origins” theories on the internet, both of which fail the credibility test as soon as some historical facts are thrown into the mix.
The most common of the fallacious origin theories is that tennis scorers habitually used clock faces to score the games, taking the minute hand numbers as scores, i.e. 15 to signify a quarter of the job done, 30 to signify half, 40 (as an abbreviation for 45), 60 to conclude the game.
Unfortunately for this elegant, oft-touted and much-believed theory, there are early written accounts of the 15/30/45 scoring system dating back to the Renaissance; long before anyone had considered the idea of minute markings on clock faces. While it is possible that such devices might have been used at times in the last 300 years, this simply is not a credible “origins” theory.
The second style of origin theory, often to be found on the internet, is connected with the chase markings on a real tennis court. Variations of this theory include the notion that there were traditionally 14 chase lines on the floor, so the concluded point was called, to avoid confusion, 15. The other main variation of the “floor plan” theory is that the court was traditionally 90 feet long (45 feet on each side) and that the server had to advance 15 feet on winning the first point, a further 15 on winning the second etc.
Lovers of the early forms of the game, known variously as real tennis, royal tennis, court tennis and jeu du paume, will recognise that there is no such standardisation of courts, whether on length or on court markings (or even on how to name the game). Just naming it “tennis” pleases me best.
There was a tradition in France at one time to have 14 floor marks on the service side, but that French tradition of floor marking was initiated long after the scoring system was established. It is possible that the French floor marking style was a nod to the fact that the scoring system was based on 15/30/45/60, but it cannot have been the cause of that scoring system.
While Internet Babble Might Hinder, So Might Historic, Original Sources, Now Available Freely Through The Internet, Help
So internet babble couldn’t solve this one for me. I needed to retreat into ancient texts on tennis. There I found such a rich collection of writings I could happily generate several essays on the origins of many aspects of the game; indeed I intend to do just that.
The Willis Faber Book Of Tennis & Rackets by Lord Aberdare (I had to purchase this one; it is not in the public domain) is an authoritative book on the subject. Aberdare shows documentary evidence that 15/30/45 were used as far back as the Middle Ages. Heiner Gillmeister quotes an early 15th Century Middle English poem about the Battle of Agincourt, which uses a game of tennis as a metaphor for the battle and quotes the scores XV, XXX and XLV. A poem by Charles d’Orleans, dated in the 1430s, also mentions 45 in the context of tennis. Erasmus’s Colloquies c 1518, mention the scoring of a love game as Quindecim, Trigenta, Quadraginta quinque.
Lord Aberdare also tells us that writers as far back as the 1430s wondered “why 15s?”, but could find no satisfactory answer.
Aberdare also quotes and lists his sources extensively. A great many of those original sources are now freely available on-line through the internet archive and other such public domain sources. I have provided links in this article where such sources exist.
In The Renaissance Period, The Italians & The French Were Doing Most Of The Running In Tennis
The very first treatise on tennis, attempting to set down its rules comprehensively, was written by Antonio Scaino in 1555, Trattato del Giuoco della Palla (Treatise of the Ball Game). Like so many of these ancient texts, it is freely available on-line through the Internet Archive – click the preceding link or image below to read the document.
I need to rely on Julian Marshall’s translation and interpretation of that text in his wonderful, seminal English work on the history of tennis; The Annals Of Tennis, 1878, which is also freely available through the internet archive. Julian Marshall’s work will feature large in some of my later pieces on tennis history. Lord Aberdare relies on Marshall heavily for the history of the game.
According to Marshall, Antonio Scaino advances a rather convoluted theory for the use of 15, based on (as he sees it) three types of game and the five points required to turn a 0-40 position into a game in one’s own favour.
While Scaino’s theory seems rather weak to my modern, forensic mind, yet it is still fascinating to note that Scaino speaks of this kind of scoring, including the use of deuces, as a standard thing for almost all ball games. Marshall writes:
This was, evidently, even then a matter of universal custom which needed no comment; and, with the “setting” of the game at deuce (a dua), it was common, Scaino says, to all ball-games, with the exception of foot-ball…
…why we should count, as from time immemorial we have counted, 15, 30, 45 and then game, which latter should be equivalent to 60, rather than by any other numbers greater or lesser than these.
Gosselin comes up with two “solutions” to his doubts. One based on astronomy or a sextant, being a sixth part of a circle itself consisting of 60 degrees and sixty minutes. Unfortunately, at that time, a set tended to comprise four games, not six as has more recently become common, so his 60 times four does not complete the circle.
His second theory is based on geometry and a rather convoluted theory around Roman measures, as four fingers =1 palm, 4 palms = 1 foot and 1 Clima = a square of 60 feet by 60 feet, 1 Actus = 2 Climates in length and breadth, 1 Jugerum = 2 Actus in length and 1 Actus in breadth.
After dancing around his two theories for a while, Gosselin concludes that he has solved the matter decisively, Q.E.F. (as the French say).
Readers might form their own views on Gosselin’s “extremely complicated” (as Lord Aberdare puts it) geometrical theories and the somewhat arrogant tone of Gosselin’s certainty that he has solved the doubts about the origins of the scoring system.
But I shall shortly return to the notions, which are undoubtedly so, that the origins are buried in antiquity and that, again as Lord Aberdare summarise it:
…the number 60 often represented a complete whole in mediaeval times…
While Italian written sources go back to the mid 16th century and relevant French ones to the late 16th century, there are no English authorities on tennis until the 19th century; just the occasional fragment or mention of tennis in other works.
On the question of using the term “forty” rather than “forty-five”, which several correspondents have raised, I have written a short Appendix:
19th & 20th Century English Contributions To Tennis History
The first English book on tennis was published in 1822: A Treatise on Tennis By a Member of the Tennis Club, now attributed to Robert Lukin. “The Club” referred to in the title was the James Street Court in Haymarket; at the time the club acted as “guardian of the laws” of tennis, until “the Tennis Club” closed and handed that guardianship role to the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) in the 1860s.
Again, these days, you can simply click the link and read the whole book on the internet archive. A fun and short read. That book is strong on odds/handicaps and also has a fascinating appendix with historical notes about notable royal lovers/players of the game, but the scoring system is merely stated as fact with the aside that strokes:
…are reckoned in a manner, which makes it at first very difficult to understand.
The first Stroke or point is called 15
The second…30
The third…40 or 45
…
So it really isn’t until Julian Marshall’s 1878 book, The Annals of Tennis (previously mentioned and linked, but, heck, here’s the link again) that the origins of the scoring system is given thoughtful coverage in English. Marshall’s influence spans lawn tennis as well as real tennis, as I shall explain in a subsequent piece about the intriguing ways the two games have developed, like conjoined twins, somewhat independent and yet in several ways metaphorically joined at the hip. Marshall was also a prominent MCC member who played a major role in the codification of the laws of tennis in the last few decades of the 19th century.
But Marshall doesn’t progress the thinking about the origins of the scoring system, he simply catalogues the Italian and French writings on the topic authoritatively and helpfully.
More recently, in the 1990s, the subject has had in depth and well-researched coverage in Heiner Gillmeister’s book, Tennis: A Cultural History:
Gillmeister is a leading expert on the history and origins of ball games generally and in particular tennis. Gillmeister’s extensive research leaves him in little or no doubt that the game we recognise today as tennis, including the scoring system, has its origins in medieval Europe and that scoring games using base 60, divided by four, is probably related to money matters at the time.
Whisper it, people, but medieval tennis, once it became popular among the secular classes, was not played for honour and valour; it was primarily played for money. It was a mechanism for the players and also sometimes spectators, to wager.
Many jurisdictions had wager limits embedded in the law. Nuremberg commoners are:
…enjoined not to play for more than sixty “haller”and for no object or possession valued at over sixty “pfennige”
A similar edict from Munich in 1365 limits stakes to 60 “denare” (deniers). But there is no direct evidence that such limits were applied in France, nor is there direct evidence that these regulations, which were applied to dice games, would also have been deemed to apply to wagers on tennis.
Gillmeister also says, regarding such gambling regulations:
…they do without doubt prove one thing: by at least the end of the thirteenth century and during the fourteenth century, the time when sous worth fifteen deniers were in circulation, games played for stakes of over 60 deniers were forbidden
Now Mr Gillmeister might know a heck of a lot about linguistics and the history of ball games, but I’m not as convinced that he has quite such a strong grasp on the history of money. While there were many variations of coinage at that stage of the medieval period, the relative standard of 12 deniers to the sous and 20 sous to the livre was fairly well established across Europe. In England this was expressed as 12 pennies to the shilling, 20 shillings to the pound. There were many local variations, including a coin known as the patard which was, at times, in circulation and worth 15d. At the higher end of the scale, Gillmeister mentions the double royal d’or and the gros denier tournois, but frankly neither of those coins became a standard based on sixty sous or fifteen deniers.
Still, I find compelling the arguments that medieval tennis was regularly played for stakes and that a maximum stake of 60 pfennigs (or 60 deniers, or 60 pennies) per game might have been a de facto standard regulation at a vital stage of the development of tennis. I find the “coinage arguments” for division into 15s less convincing, but it is quite possible that the principle of “the first to four wins the game, unless…” was well-established, making 15 the natural point counter, if you seek to get to 60 points for a game.
A further point regarding money, which Gillmeister misses but I recognise and find compelling, is the notion that, if 60 represents a game, 240 would, at that time, have represented a set. Until relatively recently, a set was, more commonly, the first to four games, not the first to six. Sets of tennis mostly being to six emerged as a standard in the last 200-300 years. So while Gillmeister agonises over coins that might or might not have been valued at 15 deniers in various places at various time, he misses some clear evidence in plain view, that a set of tennis, if counted to four games of 60, i.e. 240, would almost universally in Europe have represented a livre, or, as we say in English old money, 240 pennies makes one pound.
Gillmeister is far more convincing and consistent on the “medieval chivalric” case for deuces, or at least the principle that games should be determined by a margin of two points, not just one point. Jan Van Berghe – he of the early 15th century Agincourt poem, discusses, in a later work, the continuation of play from deuce until one player has won two consecutive chases.
Scaino, our Italian Renaissance correspondent from 1555, is emphatic on this point in his Trattato:
The method of fighting such a distinguished battle should be removed from any suspicion of chance or fortune. He who wins must be sure that he has won by his own valour, not by any outside favour. Who does not see now that the game could not be devised with good reason to end with only one point? The good and staunch Cavalier is judged not by one thrust of his lance; the elegant Dancer not by just one leap, however bold and skilful…
Less convincing, to my mind, is Gillmeister’s alternative view on the origins of the term “love” to describe the “lack of” score for the unfortunate player who has not yet won a stroke. He is not convinced that “love” is a bastardisation of the French word “l’oeuf”, i.e. egg, representing “0” – zero. He prefers the Dutch or Flemish word “lof”, meaning honour, or “nothing more than the love of the game”. Gillmeister is a linguist as well as a ball game historian, so what do I know when I say that I find the “oeuf” explanation more convincing than the “lof” argument?
The Stuff Of Ancient Legend; As Deep In Antiquity As Can Be
Gillmeister starts his book Tennis: A Cultural History with a fascinating legend from the late 12th century.
A young, intellectually-challenged trainee monk does a deal with the devil in order to shine in his studies. One day he falls ill and has a near-death experience, during which he descends into a hellish valley where demons fashion his soul into a ball and play jeu de paume (medieval tennis) with it.
The story is recorded in the early 13th century work, Dialogus Miraculorum, by Caesarius of Heisterbach – yet another of these wonderful old texts that is freely available on-line if you wish to read or just look in awe at the ancient text.
This legend, along with the Gillmeister’s central numerical point about the scoring system; that the use of base 60 was important in medieval Europe, brought another, much earlier culture to my mind.
The very earliest civilisation known to have urbanised, the Sumerians in Southern Mesopotamia.
They started writing stuff down around 5000 to 5500 years ago, did the Sumerians. Most of the stuff they wrote down was rather dull, accounting type records, in cuneiform, on clay tablets.
The Sumerians used the sexagesimal (base 60) counting system. Sexagesimal is, in many ways, a more sensible base for counting and dividing stuff up than the decimal system we use today. As the wikipedia entry so succinctly puts it:
Given that the Sumerians basically wanted to count crops, divide them up and pay for them, sexagesimal made a great deal of sense. They also wanted to measure angles and stuff; these latter habits in sexagesimal became so deeply established in ancient times (the Greeks and Romans persevered with those aspects) that elements of sexagesimal have found their way into measures in our society still; 360 degrees to a circle, hence latterly 60 minutes to an hour, 60 seconds to a minute, etc.
Unlike the hotch-potch of currencies and translation rates known to have existed in medieval Europe, records indicate that Sumerian money was unequivocally denominated in terms linked with base 60. The basic monetary unit was the shekel. There were 60 shekels to the mina and sixty minas to the talent.
Not only did the Sumerians leave plenty of evidence of proto accountants, they also left evidence of proto lawyers. The Code of Ur-Nammu is the oldest known legal code, more than 4000 years old (c.2100 BC). Only some of this code survives, sadly. But those surviving passages include fines and compensation rates, which include the following:
If a man divorces his first-time wife, he shall pay (her) one mina (60 shekels) of silver.
If it is a (former) widow whom he divorces, he shall pay (her) half a mina (30 shekels) of silver.
If the man had slept with the widow without there having been any marriage contract, he need not pay any silver. (Love).
If a man commits a kidnapping, he is to be imprisoned and pay 15 shekels of silver.
We also know that the Sumerians (and their successor civilisation, the Babylonians) were very keen on games. Boards for the Royal Game Of Ur have been found dating back more than 4500 years. Some boards have been found with additional counters, believed to be evidence of gambling on the games.
The Royal Game Of Ur
The game is a proto-game closely related to chase games popular today, such as ludo and backgammon. Sumerians used several four-sided dice for this game. A rules tablet for the Royal Game Of Ur was discovered and translated in the early 1980s.
“So did the Sumerians play ball games?”, I hear you cry.
Yes, they did.
Unfortunately, we, as yet, have very little on record as to what those ball games might have been like.
But the Epic Of Gilgamesh, arguably the earliest surviving work of great literature, written more than 4000 years ago, has passages that allude to ball games at the start and end of the epic.
At the start of the epic story, Gilgamesh exhausts his male companions through the playing of ball games while exercising his droit du seigneur on the local female brides. He’s not a nice chap, that Gilgamesh.
The final part of the story (in some ways disconnected from the earlier parts) is known as Gilgamesh, Enkidu and the Netherworld. In this story, Gilgamesh’s ball and ball-playing implement (sometimes translated as a mallet) has found its way into the Netherworld. Enkidu, who is Gilgamesh’s companion and/or nemesis throughout the epic, descends into the netherworld to retrieve the ball game apparatus, with predictably epic results.
This last story is hauntingly similar to the medieval story about a hellish game of tennis at the beginning of Heiner Gillmeister’s tennis history. It is also achingly similar to folklore tales throughout the world. A fascinating academic paper on this topic, The Ball Game Motif in the Gilgamesh Tradition and International Folklore by Amar Annus and Mari Sarv, can be found on Researchgate through the preceding link. Many traditional folk stories have ball games as their plot triggers, including Persian direct descendants of the Gilgamesh legends and the Estonian stories described in the “Ball Game Motif” paper.
Conclusion: An Absence Of Claims But A Wealth of Interesting Stuff
Let me be clear about this; I am not claiming that the ancient Sumerians played tennis or even anything like it. The ball games played in Sumeria were probably more akin to hockey or polo. But while we don’t know exactly how they played ball games; we do know for sure that they played such things, with implements, to the extent that such artefacts were the subject of legend.
We also know for sure that the Sumerians counted, divided and used a monetary system in base 60. We know that Sumerian regulations used denominations of 15, 30 and 60 as compensation payments and fines. We also know that this very ancient civilisation not only played ball games but also board games using four-sided dice. We strongly suspect that they gambled.
We know that lawyers and accountants tend to get involved in games as guardians of the rules and as scorers. In more modern times, the MCC is a living example of that phenomenon (in the matters of cricket and tennis anyway) and has been so for several hundred years.
Me, marking, with Hampton Court abacus in hand
The Sumerians devised the abacus too.
One of the other truly intriguing things about the Sumerian civilisation is that we still have so much to discover about them. Only a fraction of the relics that are almost certainly preserved and buried there waiting to be discovered have yet been excavated from Southern Mesopotamia. So we (or our descendants) might yet learn some further fascinating details about Sumerian games and scoring systems.
But my main point in this piece is that legends, cultural mores and gaming traditions have a strange habit of surviving and/or re-emerging across centuries and millennia.
Our game, tennis, undoubtedly emerged in medieval times and evolved from there. The extent to which the scoring system was novel in the middle ages, based on the monetary system and gambling regulations, or was based on traditional counting and gaming conventions handed down across the centuries and millennia, is unknown and cannot be known. Such mysteries are part of the fun playing and observing a game so steeped in traditions and history.
Other Pieces On Tennis History
This piece is part one of four pieces. The other three pieces are:
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.
What’s a bisque?
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.
Linda Massey pulled out all the stops to get us back on court day one of the Covid-19 partial unlocking . Thanks Linda.
I was the second person to log on and book, but while Alfred went for a leisurely 11:00 booking, the only slot we could do on a busy day of work, FoodCycle charity round and Virtual Glad performance (all to come) was 10:00.
So we were the first people back on court. Yah boo.
As you can see from the headline photo, I couldn’t even remember what to do with the tennis bag – I look utterly bewildered as indeed I was.
Court Two has not been vandalised – it has been decommissioned while social distancing remains in full force.
You can even tell from the pictures that Janie was up for it to a greater extent than me. She took the first set 6-2. I started to come back second set, leading 5-3 when it was time for us to leave.
Normally, of course, the next pair on need to drag us off the court kicking and screaming because we still want to play.
But on this occasion, due to social distancing, we politely yielded the court, donning gloves and wipes to ensure that the gate handle is kept as germ free as possible.
We saw several of the regular dog walkers who waved at us and we waved back. We even exchanged a few words at extreme distance which I’m sure is not a breach of the spirit or even the letter of the social distancing rules.
It really is great to be back on court at Boston Manor. Thanks again to Linda Massey for organising it so quickly.
This is an exciting moment in our tennis lives, as the Boston Manor courts are set to reopen after lockdown. Daisy and I are allowed to play again.
Have we merely been sitting on our bottoms biding our time? Have we heck.
When it seemed inevitable that lockdown was about to happen, I got ordering on-line, so a variety of tennis-oriented gizmos have been trickling through the system to us over the last couple of months.
The first manifestation of the “tennis ball on an elastic string” training device was not a great success. The base was fine, but the “string” was an elastic band and the ball seemed to be made of cardboard rather than vulcanised rubber.
It lasted about five minutes.
Fortunately I had already ordered some more robust-looking varieties which trickled through in early April. The depicted version is one of two we now have, using a proper elasticated string and balls that have some durability.
If you look carefully in the background of the above picture you can also see the other device I bought, which is far less fun but it helps you to work on technique. The ball is static but it won’t move the way you want it to move unless you apply, for example, top spin or cut properly.
Actually it is especially good for practicing cut. I’ll probably persevere with this device with my real tennis racket once we are back on the modern courts with the modern rackets. So my real tennis friends should watch out when (if) we get back onto the real tennis court.
As usual Daisy looks more elegant, stylish and (let’s be honest) balanced, even when playing with this elasticated string thing and its erratic bounce.
But it’s not all been about modern tennis in the back yard – dear me no.
We’ve played table tennis pretty much every day of lockdown and my game has improved quite a bit. Before lockdown, Janie was, for sure, better than me at table tennis and always had been.
By the end of lockdown, I think it is fair to say that we are playing level.
I filmed just over 11 minutes of our last match before the end of lockdown:
Unfortunately the camera runs out of film as the scores are about to draw level at 3-3 in the decider, so this film is only for aficionados of the game…well, not even for them, frankly.
Daisy and Ged might want to see it again in their dotage.
Some people might want to watch some of it for a laugh.
If by any chance there are Ogblog readers desperate to know how this match ended, we have a team of operatives standing by (Daisy and Ged) to provide personalised responses to e-mail requests, e.g. for the final score or even for a blow-by-blow account of the closing salvos.
In the grander scheme of things, our sporting woes are small beer. But last week, on Tuesday, I played real tennis at Lord’s for the last time in a while. Earlier today we played lawners in an almost-empty Boston Manor Park, again probably on hold for some time, now that non-essential road travel is off the agenda.
Desperate times call for desperate measures. When socially distancing and only going out when necessary, we’ll need to exercise and play at home for a while. I have ordered some low cost, high value gizmondry for the purpose, which should be wending its way to us as I write…
…but in the meantime we dug out the little Butterfly miniature table tennis table:
Other brands and other outlets are no doubt available, but click the pic for an outlet
We bought ours for a mere score, perhaps a score or more years ago. We’ve only used it occasionally and always enjoyed ourselves when we have done so. It is very small and very frustrating to play…in a good way.
Daisy normally wins at table tennis and I think had always previously won at the miniature variety. The speed of reflexes and balance aspects of the game play to her strengths.
Yet, strangely, since I started playing real tennis, my table tennis results against Daisy have been getting better. Would that also apply to the miniature variety?
Only one way to find out. We agreed to play a proper match, i.e. a best of 5 games, in which each game is won by the first player to win 11 points, and be at least 2 points ahead of their opponent.
Let the games begin
The first game was an absolute humdinger, which Ged eventually won 21-19, after being 10-8 up and having far more game points than Daisy.
The second game Daisy won 11-9, keeping her nose in front pretty much all the way through that game.
Ged won the third game 11-7, in fairly dominant fashion after the first few points.
Then Ged took the lead in the fourth; at 8-5 up Ged thought he had Daisy staring down the barrel, but as so often at table tennis, the winning line seemed to evade Ged as Daisy slowly but surely turned the game around to win it 12-10.
So it was 2-2 going in to the final game. When Daisy went 4-3 up in the fifth, Ged even exclaimed…
…why do I always find a way to lose this stupid game?
…which, with the benefit of hindsight, is probably not the right way to project one’s confidence in winning at your opponent.
Still, despite that schoolboy error, Ged then managed a little run of points and then just about managed to keep his cool and his nose in front to win the final game and therefore the match 11-9.
What fun. Not quite the real thing, but better than nothing.
With thanks to John Random for the 1992 pictures, such as the one above.
It was with great sadness, although not surprise, that I learnt, on 11 March, that Chris Stanton has died. He had been battling and eventually reconciling himself with terminal cancer for a couple of years. It was a fitting coincidence that I learnt of his demise, through the NewsRevue alum community (specifically, via Chris Rowe), as I came off the real tennis court at Lord’s.
I first met Chris at the Canal Cafe Theatre in the spring of 1992, when I started writing for NewsRevue and while Chris was performing in John Random’s Spring 1992 run of the show.
Chris Stanton was the very first professional performer to deliver my lyrics to a paying audience. A rather morbid number, entitled California Here I Go:
Not one of my best, but one of my first…and my goodness, a performer of Chris’s quality could make the most of whatever material he was given.
That cast: Sarah Swingler, Ian Angus Wilkie, Chris Stanton, Sonia Beck
Later that run, the cast, with Chris Stanton up front and exceptional, performed another of mine, You Can’t Hurry Trusts. A much better – indeed still relevant – lyric for a topical satirical review, though I say so myself:
Chris Stanton’s professional career continued to thrive and take off as the 1990s went on…as did mine of course, but his was a performing career whereas my career was a more conventional one. I saw little of him for 20 or so years after our involvement with NewsRevue waned, by the end of the 1990s.
Chris was reluctant to join us at Ivan Shakespeare Memorial Dinners, although he did perhaps turn up once or twice in the early part of the 20th century.
Coincidentally, our paths crossed again some 20 years after Chris’s involvement with NewsRevue ceased, in 2016, when I took up real tennis at Lord’s and ran into Chris in the dedans gallery.
I, beginner.
Real tennis is a wonderful game, still played virtually unchanged since medieval times, ideal for those with a sense of comedy. As I said back in 2016:
Unless you are very gifted at the game (which I am not and Chris was only a little more gifted than me), you have to be prepared to look absurd at times, the game is so complex and confounding. Yet addictive.
Real tennis players are sometimes referred to as “realists” but I think there is an “absurdist” element to it for us comedy types. I especially enjoyed saying, panto-style, “it’s behind you” to Chris, if he ended up (as oft we do) confounded by the eventual landing point of that hand-made, not-quite-round ball in that crazily-shaped court. Ironically, of course, Chris was doing a fair bit of panto in recent years, before he was taken ill.
We are a geeky lot too, so “the book” for real tennis scores is a global database that records the results of every match. Here is my head-2-head of recorded games with Chris; he will have given me handicap points in each of these matches; fewer as the years went on:
Final score: Stanton 3 matches to Harris 2 matches. I could have been a contender…
I didn’t know why I hadn’t seen Chris for a while – I thought he might just have been busy with work or off games with an injury – until I ran into him at Lord’s last summer on a test match day and he explained to me (with some surprise that I didn’t know) that he had lung cancer (one of the non-smoker varieties), was undergoing treatment but was probably just staving off the inevitable. By that time, Chris seemed reconciled, I’d even say at peace, with his fate. Certainly that was the way he presented me with the facts of the matter.
My last memory of spending time with him will be an abiding one and speaks volumes about the man. Towards the end of last summer, we had a 40th anniversary party for NewsRevue at the Canal Cafe Theatre. The event included the extant show and a “smoker” – the latter being a form of party we often had in the 1990s at which performers and writers would do party pieces for one another.
Chris said to me, earlier in the evening, that he was worried that his lungs no longer had the capacity to carry him all the way through 0898 without a breather. I said that I was sure it wouldn’t matter if he did need a breather; we were a gathering of friends.
Of course, commensurate professional that he was, Chris somehow got through the song without missing a beat or pausing for breath once. It was a masterful performance, not least in the circumstances.
I don’t suppose my report of his tenacity comes as news to anyone who worked with Chris throughout his long and successful acting career, nor to anyone who did battle with him on the real tennis court.
In the language of real tennis, Chris was a “better than half a yard” sort of bloke; news of his demise has made me (and no doubt many others) feel “worse than the door”.
Or in the language of the stage, Chris Stanton was a stellar performer whose passing has temporarily made me feel wooden as I write.
But such super memories. Thank you, Chris Stanton.
Postscript: The Coincidence Magnifies
Within a day or so of posting this tribute, I learnt that Chris Rowe, the Newsrevue alum who notified us about Chris Stanton’s demise, is also a member of the MCC and also a real tennis enthusiast. Indeed, it was through Chris Rowe that Chris Stanton got involved with real tennis at Lord’s.
Here is a poster from the Newsrevue 1991 Edinburgh show, in which both of the gentlemen appeared:
