tennishistory.com.au

Another interesting tennis item emerged this week with a 1927 photo article about an Australian invented tennis ball machine. Here we have the inventor, Mr P Jepson of Melbourne (left) along with Gerald Patterson (2nd right) with the visiting French Team of Brugnon and Boussus. It served out balls at a rate of 14 -28 balls a minute. So there you go a very early date for the development of ball machines. Also note that Renee Lacoste wrote about building a Tennis ball machine in his book “Lacoste on tennis” so maybe this was the inspiration. This also went to the USA for various exhibitions at tournaments. No idea of the commercial success but a great piece of ingenuity.

From 1874 when Major Wingfield patented his lawn tennis game called “sphairistike”, the game caught on quickly and headed around the globe. In the USA, the story goes that in February 1874 a Mrs Outerbridge brought a set back from Bermuda where British Troops were playing the game, although Wingfield had only applied for his patent at this exact time ( 23-2-1874) . Maybe there were early sets made prior to the patent, but it seems odd that sets would be on the other side of the world prior to the patent application which would be required to protect the intellectual property. The Wimbledon Museum actually has the sales records for Major Wingfield’s partner business French & Co. for the period from 6 July 1874 to 26 June 1875, noting that none of these records contain any information about direct sales bound for the USA or Australia. They also believe that many sets may well have been sent out many before and after these dates – probably up to 1880. As for the early lawn tennis game devised at Leamington Spa by Major Gem, he did not market his game and just produced a set of rules.
From the above, it would be reasonable to assume that British military bases which required consistent supplies may well have included sporting items such as tennis sets. However, the whole scenario as to how tennis arrived here is wide open. The first Australian, official croquet club commenced in South Australia in 1867 and this club was connected to the All England Croquet Club. As the UK parent was instrumental in defining new rules of the game this could be a very strong candidate for the first set arriving. Of course Cricket clubs were also widespread even in the USA and tennis was a popular way to provide the ladies a pastime while the menfolk played their game. Many of the cricket manufacturers easily adapted tennis into their sporting goods range.

In Australia, in January 1876 we have our earliest mention of the new and now fashionable game of tennis from a retail store ad in Launceston, Tasmania. For there to be an ad means that demand and interest had already been established at some point over 1874/1875. But perhaps one of the greatest insights, is the Courier Mail 1888 article looking back at tennis arriving in Queensland in August 1876 and the early development of the local clubs. The description of the high net and scoring method seems to point to this set being a Wingfield version that the schoolmaster of Brisbane Grammar, Mr Roe brought with his family from the UK. The social popularity of the game via Sunday afternoon lawn tennis parties and individual families buying sets for their own entertainment, particularly if they were heading to unknown lands may end up being the eventual source of tennis arriving in Australia.

Please check the full article on www.tennishistory.com.au

Anyone with more knowledge and articles on tennis arriving here please email us your contact details.

Cheers Rod

It could take a long time sitting in a library searching for articles about tennis in newspapers from the mid 1870’s. Well thanks to a National Library initiative, there is now an online search engine with a key word search that isolates articles, headings, text and ads. Consequently, we have found some wonderful reference material in the form of ads to include on the site. A huge benefit of this material is that we can identify makes and models being sold by retailers prior to the development of the local industry and those produced locally. We have loaded some on the www.tennishistory.com.au website to provide a visual time warp back to earlier times. Check out racquet retailing in particular for informative display ads. http://tennishistory.com.au/equipment/racquets/racquet-retailing.html

See the national Library site at http://ndpbeta.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/home and explore Australian Tennis History or any other subject as it was written at the time.

Cheers Rod

Tennis History Australia tennishistory.com.au

Well after many months of hard work http://tennishistory.com.au has finally gone live !!

Backing it up we have created this blog. We aim to use this blog to talk about interesting items, maybe if you remember using any racquets, watching any matches, meeting tennis heros etc.

Please feel free to contact us with any suggestions on topics and enjoy the site.

Rod and I worked hard to gather content and create a dynamic web site that we can extend daily.

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Michael