Africa: Book Review | Tennis for the People

23 September 2020
book review

David Berry's extensively researched history of lawn tennis, from its start in Britain to its status as the Grand Slam to win 150 years later, reveals the little-known more progressive side of the game.

The first lawn tennis matches were played on hourglass-shaped courts. But not for long. Three years after Walter Wingfield was granted the patent for his "portable court" and began selling his lawn tennis sets, the first Wimbledon tournament took place in June 1877 on a rectangular court. The shape of the court and the scoring system from that inaugural Gentlemen's Singles tournament is still used today. In other ways though, lawn tennis has changed immensely, as David Berry shows in A People's History of Tennis.

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