Lawn Tennis was one of the sports enjoyed mainly by the social elite and to a lesser degree by the middle class in late-nineteenth-century America. Although the origins of tennis can be traced to fourteenth-century France, the game, as was played in the nineteenth-century United States, developed in England during the 1870s. Maj. Walter Clopton Wingfield, a retired British army officer, developed the game, which was played on an hourglass-shaped grass court, and copyrighted the rules in 1873. Members of the All-England Croquet Club began playing tennis in 1874 on the croquet lawns, calling the game “lawn tennis.” That year the club became known as the All-England Croquet and Lawn Tennis Club and one of its members, Julian Marshall, revised the rules of the game and had them published by the ? G. Heathcote publishing company. Marshall also promoted the new rules through The Field, the leading sports journal in Britain. John Moyer Heathcote developed a new ball for the game made of vulcanized rubber covered with white flannel. In 1877 the All-England Croquet and Lawn Tennis Club sponsored its first national tennis tournament.
American Beginnings. Although the first recorded tennis game in the United States occurred on 8 October 1874 at Camp Apache, near Tucson, Arizona, Mary Ewing Outerbridge, a New York socialite, is generally credited with introducing the game to the United States. In 1874, during her annual winter vacation in Bermuda, she observed British army officers hitting a rubber ball over a net stretched across a freshly mowed lawn with catgut-strung rackets. She purchased a box of tennis equipment and brought it back to the United States. Eugenius Outerbridge, brother of Mary and director of the Staten Island Cricket and Baseball Club, set up a tennis court in the corner of a cricket field. For nearly a year the Outerbridge family played tennis before other club members became interested in the game. As more members of the Staten Island Cricket and Baseball Club began playing tennis, the club devoted one day a week to the game.
American Beginnings. Although the first recorded tennis game in the United States occurred on 8 October 1874 at Camp Apache, near Tucson, Arizona, Mary Ewing Outerbridge, a New York socialite, is generally credited with introducing the game to the United States. In 1874, during her annual winter vacation in Bermuda, she observed British army officers hitting a rubber ball over a net stretched across a freshly mowed lawn with catgut-strung rackets. She purchased a box of tennis equipment and brought it back to the United States. Eugenius Outerbridge, brother of Mary and director of the Staten Island Cricket and Baseball Club, set up a tennis court in the corner of a cricket field. For nearly a year the Outerbridge family played tennis before other club members became interested in the game. As more members of the Staten Island Cricket and Baseball Club began playing tennis, the club devoted one day a week to the game.
No comments:
Post a Comment