Off Topic Tennis

WIMBLEDON!!

 

If we can have a cricket thread...

 

Who started an entire thread about tennis for me??!

This one's gonna fly!!

 

No idea

 

not that into tennis meself. the mother is though.

loves it.

you are all old women in other words.

 

And Top Gear...

 

Yeah, but we've got to have some decent OT threads too though

 

IS ****ING ****E

 

See the second line of post #3

 

Too much grunting.

 

Tennis is dull. All the good players are kept apart until the semis anyway and rarely get any upsets.

Should make ot a free for all and might get a bit more interest.

 

Bit illogical there, Igor. If a top player knocked out another top player then it wouldn't be much of an upset, would it?
As it is, seeds are knocked out by lower ranked players often enough to keep them on their toes.

Still too much grunting, though.

 

It's been a license to print money for years in the men's game.

Up to semis you could bet on 4 guys and be right each round.

 

Then and Now, 1995
We look back to a review by Peter Raby of Tennis: The development of the European ball game by Roger Morgan
Published: 24 June 2015

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A sixteenth-century engraving of real tennis
We hope you enjoy this free piece from the TLS, which is available every Thursday in print and on the TLS app. This week’s issue asks how we make our mental and physical maps of the world, charts the unlikely transformation of Hans Christian Andersen and wonders how to define folk art. You will also find Lachlan McKinnon on W. H. Auden, Rebecca K. Morrison on bratwurst, David Horspool on the last man in the Tour de France, and much more.

Anne Boleyn was reportedly watching a game of tennis at Greenwich, and rashly laying a bet on a chase, at the moment of her arrest, an interest in the sport which did nothing to improve her case. Henry VIII remains the most glamorous figure associated with the ancient game now distinguished as “real” tennis, and Shakespeare’s version of the Dauphin’s insolent present of “the Paris balls” to Henry V establishes that the scoring system of winning openings and laying chases in use today was firmly established in the sixteenth century. These royal incidents have a place in Roger Morgan’s wide-ranging study, Tennis, which maintains the tradition with a foreword by Prince Edward. The rest of the title, The development of the European ball game, opens up much less familiar territory. Morgan’s trail begins in Vetulonia, north of Grosseto, where a version of tennis, played five-a-side in the main square with the hand rather than a racket, scored 15-20-40-advantage and game and using the territorial chase system, is still played: the chalk markings and the fault line intersperse confusingly with the traffic markings, but the game itself is clearly recognizable from Scaino’s key work of 1555, Trattato del Giuoco della Palla. Morgan traces the long and tortuous history of territorial ball games, concentrating on those which score in fifteens and make chases. He has uncovered a surprising number of related games which are very much alive: kaatsen in Friesland, parkspel in Gottland, balle-pelote and balle au gant in Belgium and northern France,balle à la main, balle au tamis and longue paume all to be found within sixty miles of Amiens,raspall in Valencia. Only in Britain, it seems, have these simpler varieties (simpler in terms of equipment) vanished from the streets and open spaces, to survive only in the enclosed court versions.

This book offers many pleasures. It is handsomely produced and very fully illustrated, with some fine colour plates and a wide range of engravings, photographs and diagrams. All the illustrations make a point: the angle of a penthouse, the lay-out of the courts, the uses of adjacent buildings, the weird assortment of rags, gloves, sieves, tambours and rackets which propel the ball, the countless ways of making the ball itself. The basis of fact is clearly laid out; but Morgan is not afraid to speculate, and the story roams around Europe, and backwards and forwards in time, as the complex relationship between game and location unfolds. As with the associates of the playhouses which took over some of the tennis courts of Restoration London, tennis and players of tennis tended to arouse public disapproval: too much betting, occasional cheating, frequent disturbances of the peace, violent flashes of temper which make Wimbledon seem tame. The games inevitably attracted some unsavoury characters: Parolles gives the impression of specialist knowledge when he encourages Bertram: “Why, these balls bound; there’s noise in it. ‘Tis hard”: but one suspects Parolles picked up his swaggering jargon from the spectators’ gallery. Aristocratic amateurs set poor examples of etiquette. The Earl of Essex drew blood from Prince Henry by whacking him with his racket; the Earl of Leicester, sweating from his exertions on court, wiped his face, uninvited, on Queen Elizabeth’s napkin, an action which the Duke of Norfolk found too “saucy”. The games had their own hazards: in Elford Church is the effigy of the ten-year-old Stanley, his right hand pointing to his temple, his left grasping the rather large ball which struck the fatal blow. There were, too, from early times professionals who made a living from the game: as ball- and racket-makers, as tennis-court keepers, and as players. One of the most famous was Margot of Hainault there were many keen women players of paume in Brussels in the fifteenth century who defended her titles at Paris, and won substantial sums in challenges and exhibition matches, before retiring to the Abbey of Soleiment.

Real tennis, forty years ago the preserve of relatively few enthusiasts, is enjoying a great resurgence. The opening of new courts, the most recent at Newmarket; the increased number of women players, and young players; and an international handicap system, have all contributed to making an unusual game more widely accessible. This book is a valuable addition to the rich literature of tennis, from Scaino to Aberdare. More radically, it dispels any sense that real tennis is an eccentric survival of an elite pastime, and places it firmly within the mainstream of European sport.

 

****ing philistines

 

Yes because you might get to the semis with 2 or 3 lower ranked players because the favourites have played each other and knocked each other out.

At at the moment all that happens is the top 4 avoid each other until the semis so in most cases you get Murray, nasal, federer and Djokovic in the final 4... Occasionally you'll get 1 more random in there instead of one of the others though.

For a lower ranked player to get to the final they have to beat 2 or 3 top seeds under current rulings where as make it a free for all and they would stand much more of a chance.

 

He should win by a nose.



Unfortunately people want to see the big names, so it's always going to be done that way.

 

So a bit like the CL then

 

You do all know (Tobes and maybe Greez excepted) that they don't just play tennis at Wimbledon don't you??

There are other tournaments

 

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