Book Review | Tennis for the people
KELLY FLETCHER THE first lawn tennis matches were played on hourglass-shaped courts. But not for long. Three years after Walter Wingfield was granted the patent for his “portable court” and began selling his lawn tennis sets, the first Wimbledon tournament took place in June 1877 on a rectangular court. The shape of the court and the scoring system from that inaugural Gentlemen’s Singles tournament is still used today. In other ways though, lawn tennis has changed immensely, as David Berry shows in A People’s History of Tennis. Tennis is still seen as a sport for the privileged by many today and…