Tennis

Tennis is a racket sport played between two players (singles) or two pairs (doubles) on a rectangular court divided by a net. The modern outdoor game, originally called lawn tennis, was patented in England in 1874 by Major Walter Clopton Wingfield, who adapted the older indoor game of real tennis for play on grass with rubber balls that could bounce. Real tennis itself, also called jeu de paume, traces to French monastery courtyards around the twelfth century, where it began as a handball game played against walls before rackets were introduced around the sixteenth century, so the sport carries two distinct origin points depending on whether the ancient handball ancestor or the modern codified outdoor game is meant. Scoring is counted in points named love, fifteen, thirty and forty within a game, a game won by reaching forty with a two-point margin (or by winning consecutive points from deuce, forty-all); games accumulate into sets, ordinarily won by the first side to six games with a two-game margin, and a match is won by the first side to take a majority of sets, best-of-three in most competition and best-of-five in the men's draw at three of the four Grand Slam tournaments.