Rules of the Australian Open: Why is tennis scored the way it is?
For most sports, one thing that has to be abundantly clear is keeping score.
Usually, the simpler the better. Football, for example, takes all the guesswork out of it - get the ball in the net, that’s a point.
Other sports can be more elaborate, but generally, the rules were agreed upon at a certain point by one peak body, and have largely remained the same for an extended period of time.
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While the same can be said of tennis, at least since the late 1800s, the origins of the unconventional scoring system are somewhat up for debate.
The game of tennis has a foggy history but a few things are generally accepted.
First is that what we know recognise as modern tennis can be traced back to a medieval game in France - jeu de palme, according to TIME Magazine.
Unique scoring system has medieval origins
The game emerged in the 12th century, and it was a few hundred years before it was played with racquets, which were popularised in roughly the 16th century.
Predictably the game looked wildly different to modern tennis, but the basis of the 15-30-40 scoring system looked to be in place from the beginning, albeit a little bit different.
In early games of tennis, scores looked to be counted up to 45, rather than 40, before a game was won.
According to The Sun, most tennis historians have ruled out the scoring being linked to the four points on a clock, pointing instead to the 45-foot long playing area on each side of the court. Players would then advance 15 feet closer to the net on each point won.
Where the ‘40’ score replaced the ‘45’ is unclear - some say it relates to how close players advanced to the net on each point, others suggest French players started shortening ‘45’ to ‘40’.
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The rules of tennis had largely been set since the game’s inception centuries earlier, but they were officially patented by Major Walter Clopton Wingfield, a Welshman who is credited in the International Tennis Hall of Fame as being one of the pioneers of modern lawn tennis.
Wingfield patented his game in 1874, and the first Championships at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet club followed after his patent expired in 1877.
While it was at this tournament that some of the mainstays of modern tennis were established (such as a rectangular court, as opposed to Wingfield’s original hourglass-shaped court), the 15-30-40-deuce scoring system remained.
While the exact origins of the unique scoring system might be lost to history, that tennis has its origins in a unique and possibly more romantic version of the sport seems fitting for what it has evolved into in the 21st century.
