Hi my name is Duy Nguyen. I am Junior at the University of Houston, major in Information System Technology in the UH Technology. I create this web page for my favorite sport that I have play for the past 8 years. I must talk about the history of tennis because not many tennis players know how tennis begins.

 

 

 

 

Unlike most other sports, lawn tennis has precise origins. An Englishman, Major Walter C. Wingfield, invented lawn tennis in 1873 and first played it at a garden party in Wales. The early game was played on an hourglass-shaped court, widest at the baselines and narrowest at the net. In creating the new sport, Wingfield borrowed heavily from the older games of court tennis and squash racquets and probably even from the Indian game of badminton.

Lawn tennis caught on quickly in Great Britain, and soon the All England Croquet Club at Wimbledon held the first world tennis championship in 1877. Restricted to male players, that event became the famous Wimbledon Tournament for the British National Championship. In 1884 Wimbledon made a women's championship. Soon the game became popular in many parts of the British Empire, especially in Australia.

Tennis spread to the United States by way of Bermuda. While vacationing there, Mary Ewing Outerbridge of New York was introduced in 1874 to the game by a friend of Wingfield. She returned to the United States with a net, balls, and rackets, and with the help of her brother, set up a tennis court in Staten Island, New York. The first National Championship, for men only, was held in 1881 at Newport, Rhode Island. A women's championship was begun six years later, and in 1915 the National Championship moved to Forest Hills, New York. Since 1978 the National Tennis Center in Flushing, New York, has hosted the U.S. Open. The Tennis Hall of Fame is in Newport, Rhode Island.