Tennis Evolution Part I - From Hand to Racquet 1000 AD - 1500
- Berlin Tennis Gallery
- 14 minutes ago
- 2 min read
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 game spread quickly across northern France and became a favorite among clergy and students.
By the thirteenth century, players began using gloves reinforced with parchment, followed by small wooden paddles. These gradually evolved into rackets, and the balls were refined from solid wood to stitched leather filled with wool, sand, or sawdust. Written accounts from this period describe paumiers, early ball-makers who specialized in shaping and sewing these leather balls by hand. During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, jeu de paume left the monasteries and entered royal courts. King Louis X of France, known as le Hutin, was an enthusiastic player and is even recorded as having died after an exhausting match in 1316. His successor, Charles V, ordered the construction of indoor courts in Paris, which marked the beginning of tennis as an enclosed sport. By the fifteenth century, dedicated courts had appeared in nearly every major French and Burgundian city, and the game had become an essential part of aristocratic culture.
A mid-1980s advertisement by Snauwaert later recalled these beginnings, depicting the early monks’ gloves designed for jeu de paume as the distant ancestors of the modern racquet. This long evolution, from a palm game in monastery courtyards to an organized indoor sport of the nobility, laid the foundation for what would, centuries later, become tennis.
The result was a new game, soon known as "Real Tennis" or "Royal Tennis". A pastime reserved for the elite. Henry VIII of England was one of its most enthusiastic supporters, commissioning numerous courts across the country. The oldest known depiction of a tennis racquet appears in a 1555 book by the Italian priest and philosopher Antonio Scaino. A replica of this historic Scaino racquet is on display at the Berlin Tennis Gallery.
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About the Author:
Andreas Fixemer
Berlin Tennis Gallery
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