Love means nothing at Wimbledon

THIS summer has been one of various sports. We have had the cricket and the women’s football where we got all the way to the semi-finals.

Then of course there was Wimbledon.

I always thought it was strange the way tennis matches are scored, not like other sports. With cricket, where it is increments of one, with the four or six thrown in.

However tennis goes from zero to 15, then on to 30, then on to 40 and then whoever wins the next point has won that game. Strange but it seems these ways of scoring come from the French.

There seems to be two ideas, one is that in Medieval France the clock face was used on the court and it had to be over in 60mins so the scores related to a quarter of the clock face, 15, 30,45 and 60, but they altered it from 45 to 40 in order for one player to win by two clear points. So if they didn’t go to 40, they wouldn’t have the deuce, advantage and then end of the game. But the question is, did they have clock faces with minutes on in the medieval period?

Yet another theory says, again French. There was a game similar to tennis where they didn’t use rackets, but their hands. The court was 90 feet long, 45 each side. So when a player scored a point they moved nearer to the net, first by 15ft, then another 15ft making 30 and next time by only 10ft making 40.

What about when a player doesn’t score at all? That is called love, again the reason behind this is disputed, a couple of ideas from the French and one from the Dutch.

I saw a clever poster outside a church which read ‘At Wimbledon, love means nothing, with God love means everything’. I think it is a very clever way of looking at things. If your score is love, you have nothing, because at Wimbledon that is what it means, but the Bible does tell us that for God love means everything, He loves us and puts a great value on all of us, He is by His very nature love, His love for us is so great He died for us and rose again and when we take time to get to know Him we discover how great is love is for us is. Yes love at Wimbledon may mean nothing but to God it means everything.