Tennis: King of the Court

In an idle moment 700 years ago, two French monks began batting a ball around a monastery courtyard with crude wooden paddles. Thus was launched a royal rage. The impromptu game, which came to be known as court tennis, spread from cloister to castle and soon ranked as the foremost sport of kings. Louis X so overextended him self chasing balls that he became ill and died shortly after a match. Henry VIII was reportedly puffing around the court when aides informed him that Anne Boleyn’s beheading had been accomplished. In 1641, Louis XIII of France defeated Philip IV of Spain in a match, perhaps because Cardinal Richelieu was the referee. Benvenuto Cellini also took a whack at the game, as did the Duke of Wellington. Napoleon played, but badly.

Court tennis is still being played, and mostly by modern-day royalty. Of the 3,000 or so aficionados who play the game today, most are straight out of the social register—with one notable exception. Last week the world open court-tennis championship, held in Manchester, England, pitted George (“Pete”) Bostwick Jr., 34, Wall Street stockbroker, topflight amateur golfer and son of a polo player, against John Willis, 25, ex-boxer and son of a Manchester factory worker. Bostwick developed his game at New York’s Racquet and Tennis Club; Willis picked up his skills as an apprentice professional while earning his keep as a custodian at the Manchester Tennis and Racquet Club.

Devilishly Complicated. In the end, it was not surprising that Blueblood Bostwick won. But it is a wonder to all concerned that the ancient game is still being played at all. The forerunner of lawn tennis, pingpong, squash and badminton, court tennis is one of the most devilishly complicated sports ever devised by man —or monk. It takes hours just to understand the rules and years of playing to master the rudiments. The court itself, a stylized version of the old monastery courtyard, costs up to $250,000 to construct. There are only 27 courts in use today, two in France, two in Australia, seven in the U.S. and 16 in Britain, including the one built by Henry VIII at Hampton Court Palace in 1529.

The regulation court is divided into asymmetrical halves by a sagging net 5 ft. high at its ends. Using pear-shaped rackets that look like relics of turn-of-the-century lawn tennis, players bounce their serves off shedlike roofs (a throwback to the monastery cow stalls) extending around three sides of the court. Though the scoring is almost identical to that of lawn tennis, the methods of attack are different. Points are scored by driving the cloth ball off a slanting 3-ft.-wide wall called the tambour (the monastery’s flying buttress) at unreturnable angles, or by knocking it into rectangular openings called the winning gallery and the dedans (cloister) or a 3-ft. 1-in. square hole in the wall called the grille (buttery hatch). A player may also score points in “the chase,” which means dropping placement shots into blocked-off sections marked on the floor.

Bostwick, who likes to describe court tennis as the “chess of sports,” needed every gambit he could muster in last week’s match. Willis, who lost the first round of the match, 7 sets to 3, repeatedly drove threadneedle shots into the grille and dropped unplayable lobs into the corners to go ahead in the final round 5-3. Needing only one set to win, Bostwick jumped out to an early lead at the start of the final day. During a volley for match point, he drilled a hard shot at the grille. Willis managed to get his racket on the ball, but his return soared out of bounds. Game, set, match and world championship to Bostwick. After a gentlemanly handshake, the new king of the court packed his bags and left for the French Amateur Championship, where he will pursue the more simple sport of golf.