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No 3/274 The Racquet of the Majesty 1583
The Racquet of the Majesty, dated 1583, belongs to the Golden age of Real Tennis, the sport of European kings. The game had evolved from the French Jeu de Paume and became a symbol of royal prestige. Courts were built in palaces such as Hampton Court under King Henry VIII, where the game was played indoors with refined skill and ceremony. Across France, by the end of the sixteenth century, hundreds of such courts stood in use, serving nobles and courtiers alike. In Normandy,

Berlin Tennis Gallery
16 hours ago1 min read


No 2/274 The Scanno Racquet from 1555
Antonio Scaino, an Italian priest and theologian from Salò, completed Trattato del giuoco della palla in 1555. The work was printed in Venice by Gabriel Giolito de’ Ferrari and his brothers, one of the leading publishing houses of the Renaissance. It is recognized as the earliest known treatise devoted entirely to the study of ball games in Europe. Scaino described the social context of play at the courts of Ferrara and Mantua and divided existing games into three main types

Berlin Tennis Gallery
3 days ago2 min read


The Beginning of Tennis
The game we now know as tennis took nearly a thousand years to evolve into its modern form. While some evidence suggests that early forms of ball games were played in ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome, most historians trace its direct origins to French monasteries around the year 1000 AD. Here, monks played jeu de paume, the “game of the palm,” striking a wooden ball with the bare hand or with a simple leather glove across a rope stretched through the cloister courtyard. The ga

Berlin Tennis Gallery
7 days ago2 min read


How an Automotive Pioneer gave Tennis its First Bounce
Charles Goodyear Vulcanized Solid Rubber Ball In the 19th century, two groundbreaking inventions laid the foundation for modern lawn tennis: Charles Goodyear's vulcanization of rubber and Edwin Budding's creation of the mechanical lawn mower. In 1839 , Charles Goodyear discovered that heating natural rubber with sulfur transformed it into a durable, elastic material, a process he patented in 1844 as vulcanization . This innovation revolutionized the production of rubber good

Berlin Tennis Gallery
Apr 261 min read


Miloslav Mecir - The Last to Win a Title with a Wooden Racquet
Factory-sealed Snauwaert Graphite Mid at the Berlin Tennis Gallery The Last Wooden Triumph: Miloslav Mecir’s Historic Victory On 19 March 1989, Miloslav Mecir – known as “The Big Cat” for his effortless movement – defeated Yannick Noah in a memorable five-set battle at Indian Wells. It was a meeting between two remarkable milestones: Mecir, the last man to win a professional title with a racquet containing wood, overcame Noah, who had himself been the last player to win a Gr

Berlin Tennis Gallery
Apr 251 min read
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