Why does tennis score 15 30 40

If the server scored a third time, he or she could only move 10 ft closer. Jeu de Paume: History. ISBN Since a third score would put the server right at the net, 10 feet was the last bump forward.

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Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. Anyway, here goes Improve this answer. The best explanation I could find of this is from Wikipedia : The origins of the 15, 30, and 40 scores are believed to be medieval French. It makes very well sense that this is the case. Community Bot 1. Dynamic Dynamic 7 7 silver badges 20 20 bronze badges. If they can arbitrarily decide to advance 10 instead of 15, then why don't they say when the game is tied at , the next point would advance to 55, and the winning point would advance to That seems equally plausible.

In any case that seems to be a quite random idea. Dynamic Wikipedia has another line after these which state "the concept of tennis scores originating from the clock face, could not have come from medieval times", please do look at that. As for the history of tennis scoring, there are two background stories: That it has its origin in medieval numerology. The number 60 was considered to be a "good" or "complete" number back then, in about the same way you'd consider to be a nice round figure today.

The medieval version of tennis, therefore, was based on the four points when 15, 30, 45 which we abbreviate to 40 and 60, or game. The system may be based on the presence of a clock face at the end of the tennis court. However, 45 in 2 words forty-five. The palm game was quite similar to tennis, but the big difference was that they used their hands instead of rackets. The palm game courts are exactly 90 feet long and 45 on each side.

When a player wins a point, he got to move up 15 feet on the court, if he won another point he got to move up another 15 feet, 30 feet in total for 2 points. If the player wins the third point, he would need to move into the net, since the courts are 45 feet long. Therefore the third pointer was 10 feet, which gave the 15 30 40 scoring system. The scoring for the palm game was exactly the same as the tennis scores are today and because of that, there are a lot of historians that strongly believe in this theory.

It does make more sense than the clock theory, but it needs to be said that the clock theory got more proof behind it. The third Theory is that the 15 30 and 40 were copied from the game sphairistike, which was played by British officers in India during the 19th century. When firing a salute, the ships first fired their pound guns on the main deck, followed by the pound guns of the middle deck, and finally by the pound lower gun deck.

An often heard theory is that the term also comes from France. The proper way to describe a score of zero to zero is to say love-all. The truth is unknown. Since the game was reinvented years ago people have wondered about this without conclusion. From that tie the next person to get a point has the advantage, but generally has to win by two points — that is, to score twice in a row — to win the game.

Six of these games make a set, and the set must be won by two games or it goes to a tiebreaker. After the set is over, it repeats. To win the whole match requires either winning best of five sets or best of three sets, depending on the competition.

Open , those less familiar with the game may once again ponder an inevitable question: Why count this way? Disappointingly, the origins of pretty much every part of the scoring system are a mystery. Some of the ideas about how it began are quite fanciful.

The modern game of tennis traces back to a medieval game called jeu de paume , which began in 12th century France. It was initially played with the palm of the hand, and rackets were added by 16th century. With its strong association with pageant traditions of the French court, Wilson says, tennis was highly stylized from the beginning. Over a course of the next few centuries the game saw periods of incredible popularity, with more than 1, tennis courts in Paris in the 16th century.

A poem written a few years after the battle of Agincourt counts up the points — 15, 30, 45 — in a tennis game between English King Henry V and the French Dauphin. A tennis match at Windsor castle gave one player a handicap of But the reasons behind this counting method were obscure even then.

It is, after all, a little curious that they count or win more than one point for a single stroke… Why is not one point given for one stroke, and two for two strokes? One of the most common suggestions, Wilson says, is that the progression is related to minutes on a clock. But how it came to mean this is also unexplained. Gillmeister has a different loan-word idea.