Tennis has come a long way from its beginnings in medieval France to the fast, global sport it is today. Along the way it has racked up some genuinely surprising history and records.
Here are fact-checked facts about tennis, covering its origins, its quirks, and a few record-breaking moments.
Tennis traces back to a 12th-century French handball game called "jeu de paume" ("game of the palm"), played with bare hands against a wall or over a rope.
Gloves came into use in the 14th and 15th centuries to protect players' hands, and by the 16th century those gloves had evolved into wooden rackets.
The modern game was standardized in the 1870s under the name "lawn tennis," to distinguish it from the older indoor game of "real tennis" and to reflect that it was played outdoors on grass.
The longest tennis match in history was played at Wimbledon in 2010, when John Isner beat Nicolas Mahut 70-68 in the fifth set. The match lasted 11 hours and 5 minutes over three days.
Tennis balls were originally white (or sometimes black), but in 1972 the International Tennis Federation approved optic yellow balls after research showed they were easier for television viewers to see. Wimbledon didn't switch to yellow balls until 1986.
Wimbledon, first played in 1877, is the oldest tennis tournament in the world and is still held on grass courts, unlike the other three Grand Slams.
The 2019 Wimbledon men's final between Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer was the longest men's singles final in Wimbledon history, running 4 hours and 57 minutes and ending with the tournament's first-ever final-set tiebreak, decided 13-12.
Croatian player Ivo Karlovic, at 6 feet 11 inches (2.11 m), is among the tallest players in professional tennis history and was long considered the tallest.
The fastest serve ever officially recorded in a professional match was 163.7 mph (263.4 km/h), hit by Australia's Sam Groth at a 2012 ATP Challenger event in Busan, South Korea.
Playing singles tennis is a solid cardio workout: a 150-pound person burns roughly 250-300 calories in 30 minutes of play, depending on intensity.
A tennis set is normally won by the first player to reach six games with a margin of two; if the set reaches 6-6, a tiebreaker game usually decides it.
There are four Grand Slam tournaments each year: the Australian Open, the French Open, Wimbledon, and the US Open.
A score of "love" in tennis means zero points, and the term likely comes from the French "l'oeuf" ("the egg"), a nod to the round shape of a zero.
Tennis was an Olympic sport from 1896 until 1924, was dropped for over 60 years, and returned permanently at the 1988 Seoul Olympics.
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