Book on oldest tennis tales offers a fresh look at history
Asked if his new book will upset people, Richard Hillway answered immediately in the affirmative. “Yes, oh yes,” he said. His co-author, Robert Everitt, nodded.
Their book is not about any of the typical inflammatory topics in sports: no cheating, no greed, no steroids. Instead, it is about in what order which people started playing tennis in the 1870s.
The topic, however esoteric, has been a point of contention for those who think they have a claim to having been first, on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. Leaving no stone unturned in the search for answers and verifications of those answers, Hillway and Ever- itt’s book, “The Birth of Lawn Tennis,” weighs in at around 7 pounds, replete with lush archival images from the earliest days of the sport, and the many similar games that preceded it.
“It’s a search for what the real story is, the true story,” Hillway said. “And we have evidence to back it up. Now it’s possible that some family will say, well, since 110 years ago, it’s been passed on that this happened. Well, it’s possible that it happened, but there’s no verification.”
The tome, of which only 500 limited-edition copies, leatherbound, were printed, does not use the word “invented” lightly. The authors confirm the prevailing theory that lawn tennis was invented in 1874 by Maj. Walter Clopton Wingfield, who published his first rule book for the sport in February of that year. He received patents for the game in Britain and in the United States later that year.
“There’s no dispute as to people experimenting with a game outside, perhaps many years before lawn tennis was invented by Wingfield,” Everitt said.
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