Together with golf, bowling and billiards, tennis is one of the world’s four largest sports for gentlemen. It is originated from a "game of the hand" among French monks in 12th or 13th century: two people playing the ball which was a wad of hair wrapped in cloth over a rope strung across a courtyard.

Following the monastery, the game was prevailed among French nobilities. French King Louis IV often played the game for amusement. From 1358 to 1360 it was spread to England, where Edward III was an avid player who promoted the building of more indoor courts in the palace. Then the racket was changed into sheepskin cover and the ball was wrapped in leather instead of cloth, but the ball’s size and weight was not specifically recorded. In the 15th century the racket with strings was invented and in the 16th century the ancient indoor tennis became the national ball of France. From then on it had its own regulations and was well developed in Europe especially in England.

Tennis as the modern sport can be traced to England. In 1873, inspired by the ancient tennis, British Major Walter Clopton Wingfield designed a similar game called sphairistike, an outdoor sport suitable for both genders. In 1875, as the sport in the hourglass-shaped court became popular, the All England Croquet Club built a lawn tennis court nearby the croquet court. As the authoritative organizer Mary Boen Croquet Club formulated a series of rules, the lawn tennis officially replaced sphairistike.

In 1877, a few lawn tennis headquarters were established in Wimbledon, London, England. Lawn tennis was then further developed. In July, the first lawn tennis championship was played in Wimbledon. Henry Jones and other two people crafted brand new rules for the championship and he himself was one of the judges. The court was rectangular, with a length of 23.77m and a width of 8.23, which remained unchanged till today. The service line was 7.92m from the web and the central height of the web was 0.99m. When taking the service, the player could stand one foot in front of the base line and another behind. One fault service would not lose point. The scoring for each game was the same as the ancient indoor tennis: 0, 15, 30 and 45. Henry Jones was believed to be the founder of modern tennis.

Closely following Britain, the United States started to play tennis.

In 1881, the world first national tennis association--the United States National Lawn Tennis Association (the United States Tennis Association since 1920) held the first U.S. National Men’s Singles Championship and Men’s Doubles Championship at Newport, Rhode Island from Aug. 31 to Sep. 3. Rules of the Wimbledon game were adopted. 26 players participated in the game and Richard D Sears (7-year consecutive champion) won Men’s Singles Gold; and Clark and Taylor were the Men’s Doubles Champions.

The U.S. National Women’s Singles Championships were first held in 1887, Women’s Doubles Championships in 1890 and the Mixed Doubles Championships in 1892.

The US president of the time Theodore Roosevelt was fond of tennis, known as "tennis cabinet" , who was strongly supportive of building tennis courts and holding tennis games, and had a court built in the White House grounds and invited his friends to play tennis with him. And so, tennis in the US was unprecedentedly developed. During the two World Wars, tennis matches in the whole world were suspended but the US. Instead, tennis in the US was amazingly on its peak and 40 million people played tennis at the height of the time. So it is not surprising that US tennis has been always on the world leading position. Excellent tennis players were emerging in endlessly. As the list showed on Dec.3, 1994, amongst the world top ten men/women players, four men players and two women players are Americans, which was a sufficient proof of America’s leading position in the tennis world.

Since 1878, from British immigrants, merchants and garrisons, lawn tennis was spread worldwide, i.e. Canada (1878), Sri Lanka (1878), Czechoslovakia (1879), Sweden (1879), India and Japan (1880), Australia (1880) and South Africa (1881).

At that time, most of the tennis fans were welloff bourgeois who built tennis courts at their lawns for social activities. In the mid 1990s, tennis was on its preliminary development and many countries and regions organized tennis associations and held periodical games.

In Paris, France on March 1, 1913, the world supreme tennis organization—the International Tennis Federation was established, which opened up a wider road for the further development of tennis.

After the 1970s, tennis was farther developed, because: firstly, the professional players were allowed to take part in championships like Wimbledon, which was a fresh start of professional tennis tour. The boundary between professionals and amateurs was eliminated so the competition was fiercer. It boosted the improvement of the athletes’ technical levels and attracted more people to watch the games, play the games and comment on the games. Secondly, the rackets were more scientifically manufactured, which accelerated the production of advanced equipment and the improvement of technology. So were born more excellent young players and tennis development was thus promoted.

After the 1990s, tennis development was featured by: 1. popularity—as statistics shows, at the beginning of 1990, there were 156 associations registered at the International Tennis Federation; 2. high level and fierce competition, which was shown on Sheet 1 and Sheet 2; 3. power and speed are the directions where tennis is developing towards along with the reform of equipment, particularly the development of rackets; 4. more professionalized and commercialized as prix for tennis matches constantly increases. All in all, as the world second largest sport, tennis is to win more and more fans and spectators by right of its incomparable charm and developing technology.