LONDON: The All England Lawn Tennis Club (AELTC), the organizers of the Wimbledon Championship, celebrated the 150th year of the Grand Slam with the release of a limited edition, illustrated book called ‘The Birth of Lawn Tennis: From the Origins of the Game to the First Championship at Wimbledon.’
Spread across 570 pages is a 20-year effort taken by tennis historians, Bob Everitt and Richard Hillway to trace the chronology of events that shaped Wimbledon to be the championship tournament that is today such as the formation of a croquet club in 1868, the staging of the first ever Championships in Wimbledon in 1877, and a comprehensive study of Major Walter Clopton Wingfield, the British Army officer who founded the modern game of lawn tennis.
Everitt, an illustrator and graphic designer, has created an acrylic-on-canvas recreation of the inaugural Championships won by Spencer Gore, inspired by an etching that is the only existing image of the 1877 competition. It shows three terraces of grass courts, six summer houses to provide shade for spectators, a steam train passing on the London and South West Railways line (that habitually drowned the umpires’ calls) and an exquisitely dressed Victorian crowd complete with haughty expressions.
He identifies three intriguing technical differences between the Championships of 1877 and today. “First, the score was called in a different way by the umpires,” he explained enthusiastically at a reception in the Wimbledon Museum Gallery.
In contrast to today, where the score is read according to the serving player – 15-love if he has won the point or love-15 if he has lost it – the umpires in 1877 followed real tennis and called it according to whoever won the point.
“Second, the way they marked out the courts which were just singles courts, 78 feet by 27 feet. They would begin by marking the centre line all the way through the court. Then, they’d position a right-angled wooden device like a giant set square that measured 27 feet by 13.5, and flip it over to mark out the service lines.
“Third, it is in the record books that Spencer Gore – our first champion who invented the volley – lost as defending champion in 1878 to Frank Hadow with a scoreline of 7–5, 6–1, 9–7, but every point of the 1877 and 1878 finals was recorded in The Field [who sponsored the event], and there the scores stands as 10-8 in the final set.”, Everitt concluded.
