Tennis

Although it may be not as easy or popular as football, Tennis nowadays belongs to the most popular sports we have. It is one of the hardest, but also one of the most funny kinds of sport, as it is as well complex enough for always new situations to happen, but also easy enough to be understood immediately. But where does this amazing sport come from?

 

As with all sports, it is also with Tennis very difficult to define its origin. Sports can evolve at a lot of different places at once, just slightly different, and then it is nearly impossible to say, which one is the true origin of the sport we know today. And with Tennis it is similar. However, what we can say for sure, is, that Tennis is a rather young sport. Because of the rather complex way to play, it can be only played with some certain materials, Tennis developed very late. Football for example you can play everywhere, it is incredibly easy, that’s why it developed so early, around 600 a.D. in China. Tennis on the other hand, has its origins somewhere between 1500 and 1600 a.D., so it is much younger. But this didn`t lead to it being easier to reconstruct its history. Not even 10 years ago, the most common thesis for the development of tennis was that it originated in France, from the game Jeu de Paume, where the players hit the ball with their hand over a net, back and forth. Some experts also thought to find the origin of tennis in Switzerland, today one of the leading countries in this sport, in the game “Ballschlag”, that evolved around 1525, but died relatively fast again.

Anyway, both of these theses proved to be wrong, when historians found a diary from the year 1489 in, Chios, Greece 4 years ago. In this diary of a normal fisher, called Iannis Koutzovolis, is a description of his favorite game: In winter, the fishermen made small constructions with their fisher nets and wood, similar to a tennis racket, just with the net loose, so it could catch the ball. Then they started throwing small balls or similar back and forth, from the one net to the other. They early developed a competition out of this, with the goal being to not let the ball fall down. After some time though they got bored of this to static and slow game, so they started to make the nets more and more tense in their small constructions, until they got the effect of the ball pralling back from the net. It didn`t take long anymore, until one of the fishers had the idea to limit the space to play on a court and to add a net for more difficulty. Tennis was born. 

However, as this was on the back then remote island of Chios, it took a long time, until Tennis met other people except for the people living on Chios. Experts suspect, that one traveler brought the game to the main land of Europe around 1800, because around this time also in Germany, Austria, and especially France, tennis in the form of Chios started growing popular out of nowhere. In 1922, in Wimbledon, the first rules were found for this sport, and the development of Tennis was nearly complete.

Who would have thought, that such a popular sport would develop on such a small island? Do you believe it? Look it up on our solution! 

Solution:
No, this story is not true. Tennis really evolved out of the French game Jeu de Paume around 1500.

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