Modern tennis descends from a handball game born in French monasteries

Introduction: a monks' game that became a global sport

From medieval cloisters to the courts of Roland-Garros

Before becoming one of the most popular sports in the world, tennis had a little-known prehistory, woven through the corridors and cloisters of French monasteries in the 12th century. This ancestral game, called jeu de paume, involved striking a ball with the palm of the hand, without a racket, long before the sport took on the name we know today across every continent on Earth. This monastic origin often surprises the general public, given how far today's image of tennis seems from the religious, contemplative life of medieval monks.

According to Britannica and several specialized institutions such as the Smithsonian, this practice reportedly developed in specific architectural spaces, the corridors of cloisters, whose elongated layout lent itself particularly well to this type of bouncing-ball game. The monks, seeking physical recreation compatible with their way of life, would thus have unwittingly laid the groundwork for a sport that would go on to achieve global reach several centuries later, far beyond their original monastic walls.

Why this origin remains so little known

Sports history often favors more recent, more spectacular narratives, leaving in the shadows these medieval roots, which are nonetheless essential to understanding today's tennis and its rather peculiar rules. I always find it fascinating that a sport as codified and technological as tennis is today can trace its roots back to a practice as rudimentary and improvised as one born in the silence of French monasteries.

This lineage, documented notably by the International Tennis Federation, the ITF, deserves to be rediscovered, because it sheds light on many peculiarities of modern tennis that, without this precise historical context, would remain completely incomprehensible to today's fans of this immensely popular global sport.

From bare-handed jeu de paume to the invention of the racket

A gradual shift toward modern equipment

In its early days, the jeu de paume was played literally bare-handed, which explains its evocative name. Players struck the ball directly with the palm of the hand, a method that limited both the power and precision of exchanges between participants. Over the centuries, this practice gradually evolved toward the use of reinforced gloves, then rudimentary wooden paddles, before the definitive adoption of true wooden rackets, which would permanently transform the very nature and dynamics of the game.

This technical evolution, spread across several centuries, illustrates a classic pattern in the history of world sport: a popular, informal practice that gradually becomes more sophisticated as enthusiasts seek to improve their performance and comfort of play, eventually giving rise to standardized equipment recognized internationally by every relevant sports federation.

Jeu de paume, an aristocratic pastime in France

Beyond the monasteries, jeu de paume enjoyed considerable growth in French royal and aristocratic courts, becoming a favored pastime of the nobility from the late Middle Ages and for several centuries afterward. Dedicated venues, called tripots, were even built in several French cities to accommodate this booming pastime, evidence of its growing popularity well beyond the initial religious circle of the monasteries.

This shift from a monastic game to a courtly pastime beautifully illustrates how a popular practice can completely change social status within a few generations, without losing its fundamental playful essence and sheer enjoyment. This golden age of jeu de paume in France directly paved the way for its later export to England, where it would undergo its definitive transformation into the modern tennis we play today.

The riddle of the word "tennis" and its vocabulary

"Tenez!": the most widely accepted theory among historians

The origin of the English word tennis remains a subject of debate among linguists and sports historians, but the most widely shared theory traces the term back to the French word "tenez", meaning "take this" or "here you go." This word, which players allegedly shouted before serving the ball to their opponent on the court, would gradually have been adopted and altered by English-speaking players until it became the very name of the sport in the language of Shakespeare and the entire English-speaking world.

This theory, echoed by sources such as Britannica and National Geographic, beautifully illustrates how a simple everyday word, uttered mechanically thousands of times on French courts, can end up lending its name to an entire global sporting discipline, transcending by far its original medieval French linguistic roots.

The mystery of the 15, 30, 40 scoring system

Another fascinating quirk of tennis: its highly specific scoring system, with points counted as 15, 30, and 40, unlike any other contemporary sporting scoring system known today. Several theories attempt to explain this historical oddity, the most popular pointing to a link with an old clock face used by early players to visualize and track the progress of points during a game.

According to this theory, widely repeated by outlets such as the BBC and Smithsonian Magazine, the clock face would have been divided into quarters each representing 15 units, with an adjustment to 40 rather than 45 for practical reasons of pronunciation or pacing on the court. Although this explanation doesn't command total consensus among sports historians, it remains the most solid and most frequently cited lead to date for cracking this centuries-old sporting mystery.

France's central role in this sporting story

A French sporting heritage too often forgotten today

It's striking how little known the French origin of jeu de paume remains internationally, even though tennis is now perceived as a deeply Anglo-Saxon sport in the popular global imagination. This lack of awareness is partly explained by the fact that the modern codification of tennis, with its precise, standardized rules, was indeed completed in England in the 19th century, somewhat overshadowing the game's medieval French roots.

There's something rather delicious about pointing out that the country hosting one of the four Grand Slam tournaments today, at Roland-Garros, is also the one where it all literally began, several centuries before the word tennis itself was even coined on English soil. This historical continuity, from the medieval cloister to the contemporary Parisian stadium, deserves far greater recognition in today's popular sporting culture.

Architectural traces still visible in France today

Some historic French buildings still bear traces of this ancient practice today, with cloister and corridor architecture that directly recalls the layouts once used for medieval jeu de paume. These remnants, studied by sports historians and specialized heritage institutions, offer tangible and valuable evidence of this history, often unfamiliar to today's general public and to modern tennis fans alike.

Institutions such as the Smithsonian and specialized platforms devoted to sports history continue to document these architectural and historical links, helping researchers better reconstruct the exact conditions under which this ancestral game developed and transformed over successive centuries into the tennis played worldwide today.

From Victorian England to a global contemporary sport

The decisive English codification of the 19th century

It was ultimately in England, during the 19th century, that the French jeu de paume underwent its definitive transformation into the modern tennis we know today on a global scale. British enthusiasts codified precise rules, standardized court dimensions, and popularized the use of the racket, laying the foundations of today's international sport, with competitions now followed by hundreds of millions of spectators around the world.

This codification allowed tennis to spread rapidly across the British Empire and then throughout the world, giving rise to the major international competitions we passionately follow today, including the four Grand Slam tournaments that punctuate the global sporting calendar every year for amateurs and seasoned professionals alike.

A sport in constant, ongoing evolution

Since this Victorian codification, tennis has continued to evolve technically and materially: rackets made of composite materials, standardized balls, and playing surfaces diversified between clay, grass, and hard court. Yet the very essence of the game, that exchange of a ball between two or four players separated by a net, remains fundamentally faithful to what was already being played, in a more rudimentary form, in the French cloisters of the Middle Ages, many centuries ago.

This continuity between a medieval game and an ultra-professionalized contemporary sport strikes me as one of the finest illustrations of how a simple idea can travel through the centuries while constantly reinventing itself along the way. It's also a reminder that behind every great modern sport often lies a much older, much humbler history than we would spontaneously imagine at first glance.

What this story teaches us about the evolution of sports

Unsuspected religious origins in world sport

Tennis is not an isolated case: several other contemporary sporting disciplines have religious or monastic origins largely forgotten by today's general public. This recurring historical pattern invites us to reconsider the role of medieval religious institutions, often seen as purely contemplative and withdrawn from the world, when in fact they were also, in practice, important sites of playful and physical innovation for their respective communities.

This perspective enriches our overall understanding of sports history, showing that major sporting innovations don't always emerge from the contexts we would spontaneously imagine at first glance, but sometimes from completely unexpected places and communities, such as isolated monasteries.

Why these roots deserve to be told today

Telling the monastic origin of tennis is not just about satisfying an anecdotal historical curiosity: it also enriches the experience of fans of this sport, who can now look differently at every match they watch or play, aware of the long historical chain linking their modern racket to the bare palms of medieval monks so many centuries ago.

In short, the tennis we know today is the direct heir of a jeu de paume played as early as the 12th century in French monasteries, before its aristocratic adoption, its English codification in the 19th century, and its complete contemporary globalization. The word "tennis" is believed to come from the French "tenez", and its enigmatic scoring system is thought to trace back to an old clock face, two theories solidly documented by sports historians who specialize in this global discipline.

A living legacy the public is rediscovering

A renewed fascination with the origins of sport

In recent years, a renewed interest in the historical origins of the world's major sports has emerged in the media and on specialized cultural platforms, driven by institutions such as the Smithsonian and National Geographic. Tennis, with its history both rich and little known, perfectly illustrates this growing enthusiasm for rediscovering the world's sporting heritage and its deep roots.

This renewed curiosity directly benefits tennis fans, who now have access to a wealth of documented resources to deepen their understanding of a sport they may have followed since childhood, without ever suspecting its very particular medieval French roots.

What to take away from this fascinating story

In the end, this story of jeu de paume becoming global tennis teaches us a valuable, universal lesson: even the most sophisticated and international sporting institutions of today often find their roots in modest, local, and sometimes utterly unexpected practices, such as an improvised ball game in the silent corridor of a French monastery of the Middle Ages.

This lesson in historical humility deserves to be shared widely, as it enriches our everyday relationship with sport and invites us to take a fresh look at disciplines we thought we already knew and understood down to their smallest details.

By Maxime Marquette, columnist

Sources

Primary sources

Britannica — Tennis, history and origins of jeu de paume — 2026

Smithsonian Institution — Spotlight, sports history — 2026

International Tennis Federation (ITF) — Official portal — 2026

Secondary sources

Smithsonian Magazine — History section — 2026

BBC Sport — Sports news and stories — 2026

National Geographic — History section — 2026