BackRoyal ball
Real tennis, once a game of kings, still has its loyalists, though its successor, lawn tennis, surpasses it in popularity
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If Cliff Richard, Morris dancing and jellied eels haven’t adequately convinced you that the British are really quite naff, then think about this: In London you can play croquet at a tennis club, and tennis at a cricket club.
The first of those two peculiar arrangements is reasonably well-known. The All England Lawn Tennis Club (AELTC) is home to the Wimbledon tennis tournament. The club was first founded in 1868 purely for croquet enthusiasts. Lawn tennis, however, quickly became the club’s obsession. So much so that in 1877, the All England Croquet Club became the All England Croquet and Lawn Tennis Club and then, in 1899, the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club. Today, nobody really plays all that much croquet there and the club officially uses the name All England Lawn Tennis Club.
Far fewer people are aware of the second of those sporting arrangements. Several months ago, I was part of a small group of Indian journalists who were shown around the Lord’s cricket ground complex in London’s St John’s Wood area. It was a worshipful experience, of course, even though much of what I saw was not particularly new to any ardent cricket fan: stands, changing rooms, museum, that famous slope of the pitch, the balcony where Kapil Dev lifted the world cup in 1983…
What I was not expecting to do, however, was to sit behind the dedans section (a large open gallery behind the player on the serving side) of a real tennis court watching two middle-aged men playing a somewhat obscure sport generally called real tennis but also known as court tennis, jeu a dedans, jeu de paume, or by the sobriquet “the sport of kings".
Once upon a time real tennis was the only tennis there was. “Up until 1873 this was tennis," Frederika Adam says on the phone. Adam, champion real tennis player and evangelist, is an American photographer and entrepreneur who lives in London. In fact, most real tennis players, Adam says, call their sport tennis, preferring to call that other modern impostor “lawn tennis" (not that “lawn tennis" is really played on lawns any more).
Adam is part of a global real tennis community that numbers around 8,000. And all these enthusiasts must make do with just 45 real tennis courts all over the globe, over half of which are in the UK alone (including the one at Lord’s). To put this in perspective, the AELTCby itself has more tennis courts in the Wimbledon complex than the entire sport of real tennis has globally.
And this is just the first of many differences between real tennis and its descendant. In fact real tennis and lawn tennis share as many similarities as Rahul Gandhi and Rahul Dravid—the name is just about the only commonality.
A game for thrones
Nobody is exactly sure which castle, monastery or courtyard was the model for the modern real tennis court. Adam believes that bits and pieces of it were probably inspired by several medieval courts in continental Europe. The most important inspiration, she speculates, could have been the courts at the Louvre in Paris, back in the 15th and 16th centuries when it was still a palace.
There is much uncertainty about when real tennis in the form that we see today was first played. References to similar sports played with rackets, gloves or just bare palms are numerous. However, most histories of the sport suggest that by the late 15th century the rules of the game, the size of the court and scoring systems, had been more or less codified. “The first book about real tennis was written in Italy in the 1550s," Adam says.
As its sobriquet would suggest, the game was immensely popular with royalty in both France and England. Henry VIII was one of the sport’s greatest benefactors and enthusiasts, building several courts, including one at Hampton Court Palace.
The royal preoccupation with tennis was ubiquitous enough to find mention in Shakespeare’s plays. The deaths of at least two French kings are attributed to tennis-related incidents. In 1498, Charles VIII hit his head on a door frame while on his way to watch a match. He managed to watch the whole match, but then fell into a coma and died a few hours later. By the 1700s, there were hundreds of courts all over France, including around 250 in Paris alone.
This was a time when several racquet and ball games vied for popularity. Real tennis seemed to be winning this contest. And then it was dealt two death blows, almost a century apart. First came the French Revolution in 1789. One of the famous events that sparked the overthrow of the Bourbon monarchy was an oath taken by a national assembly of revolutionaries at a real tennis court near Versailles. The tennis court came to symbolize the excessive lifestyles of France’s aristocracy. “Unfortunately this association with monarchy has never really gone away in Republican France," says Adam. Today, just two French courts remain.
The second blow came with the invention of lawn tennis in 1873. This new game was simpler in every way.
Unusual features
This is a brief excerpt about real tennis scoring from the website of the Cambridge University Real Tennis Club: “The unusual feature of tennis is the chase. A chase is a point held in abeyance and occurs when a ball bounces twice without being struck or enters some of the galleries (but there are three openings wherein the entry of the ball wins the stroke not a chase). The chase is recorded, e.g. chase better than four means that the second bounce of the ball was nearer than four yards from the back wall. However no stroke is scored. There are lines on the floor to help measure the chase."
Lawn tennis, on the other hand, was simplicity itself. Find a flat surface, chalk out the symmetric markings and serve. No need to construct faux medieval walls and galleries or go chasing after points held in abeyance. The new sport grew rapidly in popularity, helped along by the imports of India rubber balls and the invention of lawn mowers, while real tennis began to fall into an ever-narrowing niche.
That is not to say that real tennis is not without its world championships, eagerly contested tournaments or grass- roots development programmes. Indeed, the men’s world championship of real tennis is one of the oldest sports competitions in the world, with the earliest known winner, Clergé The Elder, dating back to 1740.
Today, much like its rambunctious descendant, real tennis too has four Opens—US, British, French and Australian—that together form a Grand Slam. And there is an annual calendar of dozens of tournaments. The list is remarkable when you take into account the sport’s scarce playing infrastructure.
Since the 1990s, however, there has been a concerted effort to revive its popularity. The biggest hurdle remains the cost of building real tennis courts. Adam says new courts cost anywhere from £750,000 to £1 million (around ₹ 7.6 crore to ₹ 10 crore). Enthusiasts, however, are working on high-tech new courts that may prove cheaper to make and easier to put up. This may involve using squash-style glass enclosures and other materials that will help create cheap, pop-up courts to attract a new generation of players.
“Once we have enough courts people will get a chance to experience this really interesting sport. It is a challenge to get the hang of it. But once you do, it is really a unique experience," Adam says.
The experience is nothing like tennis. In fact, Adam says it is akin to cricket or golf. “I’ve just started playing cricket," she tells me on the phone, “and the defensive stroke feels just like a blocking shot in real tennis."
The community makes up for a lack of scale with sheer enthusiasm. Adam and current men’s champion and sport legend Robert Fahey are eager evangelists. And where courts are available, they are seldom free. Out at the Marylebone Cricket Club’s (MCC’s) real tennis courts at Lord’s, club professional and real tennis manager Adam Phillips tells me that the game is thriving. The solitary court at the MCC is open all day on most days, and Phillips says 94-95% of court time is usually booked out. “There are lawn tennis managers who would kill to get 95% bookings on their courts," he says.
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