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.