Printer-friendly versionTennis Scoring Stems from France
Tennis scoring has its origin in European medieval numerology.
The number 60 was considered to be a "good" or "complete" number back then, in about the same way you'd consider 100 to be a nice round figure today. The medieval version of tennis, therefore, was based on 60--the four points when 15, 30, 45 (which we abbreviate to 40) and 60, or game.
The puzzling "love," or zero, derives from the idea of playing for love, rather than money - the implication being that one who scores zero consistently can only be motivated by a true love for the game.
Although version of tennis can be traced as far back to as the ancient Greek game of ‘Sphairistrike’ the modern game really originated in the 12th or 13th century in France, where it was called jeu de paume ("palm game"). It seems to have derived its present name from the French habit of calling "tenez!" before serving. Tenir is the French verb ‘hold or ‘take’ and originally this be could used to announce ‘Take heed, hold, I am about to serve”.
Interesting how European numerology regarded 60 as ‘complete’ and how our watches, clocks and all time is judged with 60 second to a minutes and 60 minutes to an hour. The world is comprised of 360 degrees and each degree is broken into 60 minutes.
Everything is linked!
