History of Tennis: From Real Tennis to the Big Three Era

Tennis began as a game played with the palm of the hand in medieval French courtyards, became the pastime of kings, and is now a global professional sport whose four Grand Slam tournaments are among the most watched events in the calendar. Along the way it changed its courts and rackets — and, most importantly, who was allowed to make a living from it. This is the story from real tennis to the Big Three, and to the generation now taking over.

From Jeu de Paume to Real Tennis

Historians trace tennis to northern France in the 12th century, where monks played jeu de paume — "game of the palm" — striking a ball with their bare hands over a rope in monastery courtyards. Rackets followed in the 16th century, and the game moved indoors into courts with sloping roofs and galleries. This was real tennis — also called royal tennis, for the kings who adored it. Henry VIII of England was a keen player, and a real tennis court still stands at his palace at Hampton Court. The French cry of "tenez" — take it, play — as the server called out is usually credited as the origin of the word tennis itself. Real tennis is still played today as a small separate sport, but its outdoor descendant is the one that conquered the world.

Photo: ad acta, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. The real tennis court at Hampton Court — the indoor royal game from which lawn tennis descends.

Lawn Tennis and Wimbledon

The breakthrough came in the 1870s, when rubber balls that bounced on grass made an outdoor version practical on England's croquet lawns. Major Walter Clopton Wingfield patented his game of "Sphairistike" in 1874 and sold boxed sets of nets, rackets and rules. Rival versions existed, but it was the Marylebone Cricket Club's standardised rules of 1875 that gave the sport a common shape. In July 1877 the All England Club at Wimbledon staged the first championship: twenty-two men entered the singles, and Spencer Gore became the first champion. A ladies' singles was added in 1884.

The championship model spread fast. National championships were founded in the United States (1881), France (1891) and Australasia (1905), and those four tournaments — today the Australian Open, the French Open at Roland-Garros, Wimbledon and the US Open — eventually became the Grand Slams, the four prizes every player is measured by. Wimbledon remains the only one played on grass; the Australian and US Opens moved to hard courts in the twentieth century, and Paris keeps its red clay.

From Shamateurism to the Open Era

For its first ninety years, tennis was officially amateur. The best players could not openly be paid, so the sport ran on under-the-table money — "shamateurism" — while those who turned professional, as many champions did from the first pro tour in 1926 onwards, were banned from the Slams. In 1968 the sport abolished the amateur–professional distinction and the Open Era began: everyone could finally compete together, for prize money, in the same events. Rod Laver, who had won the calendar Grand Slam as an amateur in 1962, won it again in 1969 as a professional — a feat no man has repeated since. The players organised with the ATP (1972) and the WTA (1973), and television money turned tennis into a year-round world tour.

Year	Milestone
12th c.	Jeu de paume played in northern France — tennis's earliest ancestor
1874	Wingfield patents "Sphairistike", his lawn tennis game
1877	First Wimbledon championship; Spencer Gore wins the men's singles
1884	Ladies' singles added at Wimbledon
1968	Open Era begins — professionals admitted to all tournaments
1969	Rod Laver completes his second calendar Grand Slam
1973	WTA founded; US Open becomes first Slam with equal prize money
2007	Wimbledon adopts equal prize money, completing parity at all four Slams
2022	Roger Federer retires at the Laver Cup
2024	Rafael Nadal retires; Alcaraz and Sinner divide the year's four Slams

Photo: GATORFAN2525, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Centre Court, Wimbledon — venue of the first championship in 1877 and still the sport's most famous stage.

Surfaces, Rackets and the Modern Athlete

The Open Era game was transformed by equipment. Wooden rackets gave way to steel and aluminium frames in the late 1960s and 1970s, then to wide-body graphite rackets in the 1980s, and to the light, powerful frames and polyester strings of today, which let players hit with heavy topspin from anywhere on the court. Serve-and-volley, the grass-court style of the wooden era, largely died out as returns improved; the modern baseline game would be unrecognisable to the players of 1877. Scoring adapted too: tiebreaks arrived at the Slams from 1970 onwards, electronic line-calling replaced guesswork, and since 2022 all four Slams have settled final sets with a ten-point tiebreak.

The Women's Game and the Fight for Equal Pay

Women's tennis carries one of sport's great social stories. Margaret Court's twenty-four Grand Slam singles titles remain the all-time record, and Serena Williams set the Open Era mark with twenty-three. But the modern women's tour exists because players fought for it: in 1970 Billie Jean King led the "Original Nine" who signed symbolic one-dollar contracts to launch their own circuit rather than accept a fraction of the men's prize money. King founded the WTA in 1973, beat Bobby Riggs in the Battle of the Sexes that year, and saw the US Open become the first major to pay men and women equally in 1973. Wimbledon, the last holdout, followed only in 2007, after a campaign in which Venus Williams played a leading role. Tennis is now the world's leading women's professional sport — a position built by those fights.

The Big Three and the New Generation

From Roger Federer's first Wimbledon title in 2003 to Novak Djokovic's US Open title in 2023, three men produced the most concentrated dominance any sport has seen: Federer, Rafael Nadal and Djokovic — the Big Three — won sixty-six of the eighty-one Grand Slam titles played in that period. Djokovic leads the race with a record twenty-four majors, ahead of Nadal's twenty-two (including fourteen French Opens) and Federer's twenty. Federer retired in 2022 and Nadal in November 2024, leaving Djokovic, still competing in 2026, as the era's last man standing — he reached the Australian Open final that January at thirty-eight.

The succession was swift. Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner divided all four majors between them in both 2024 and 2025, and in 2026 the field opened further: Alcaraz won the Australian Open to become the youngest man ever to complete the career Grand Slam, Sinner defended his Wimbledon title, and Alexander Zverev finally broke through with his first two majors, at Roland-Garros and the US Open. On the women's side, Elena Rybakina won in Melbourne and New York in 2026, with first-time champions Mirra Andreeva in Paris and Linda Nosková at Wimbledon. The game the monks started is now in new hands — and as healthy as it has ever been.

Timeline facts checked November 2026 against Wimbledon, ATP and WTA records and reporting of the 2026 Grand Slam season.