Tennis (which was called in Italian ‘Royal or Real Tennis’ during Fascism) is a sport involving two players staying on opposite sides (‘single match’) or four players (two against two, ‘double match’). The players use a tennis racket, which in the past had a wooden frame, and then were made out of light alloys and nowadays polymeric materials are employed, with a stiff net made up by a string pattern with a vertical-horizontal grid, tied onto the frame in order to hit the ball. The main purpose of the game is to hit the ball so that the opponent, in the other half of the playing area or court, fails to hit it back after the first bounce or, while hitting, he ends up making a fault. Ever since 1988, tennis is once again an Olympic discipline (in 1984 a show tournament took place). The origin of the present tennis might derive from a Latin game (‘pila trigonalis’), a game played in the Byzantine court and from the French game ‘jeu de paume’, that is an evolution of Real Tennis, which already back in the sixteenth century required the use of a racket, whereas before then it was played just with the palm of a hand covered by a special glove.

EVOLUTION OF TENNIS
The Englishman Walter Clopton Wingfield established a first set of rules in 1873 and called this game ‘sphairistike’: the following year, the sport was becoming popular in the United States, thanks to Mary Outerbridge; the final set of rules were established in 1888, when the English Tennis Association was created. The decision taken in 1883 to halve the height of the net was essential for the development of the game. In 1895, the first Italian championship for tennis players took place. In 1896, tennis became part of the programme of the first modern Olympic Games and this lasted until 1924, when it was taken out of the programme and readmitted once more in 1988. In 1900, the first Davis Cup took place: a trophy awarded every year to the national team winning the world championship: the Italian national team won this trophy in 1976; the national matches every year in the women professional tennis is called Fed Cup, which the Italian national team won in 2006. In 1971, a final game based on an 8-8 score was accepted, which then decreased in 1979 to a 6-6 score. With the appearance of an electronic computer in 1973, daily updates of the results of the professional tennis player ranking were done: up to that time, all results were edited manually by experts, to be published in specialised magazines and reviews. In 1986, recurrent anti-doping checks were made on professional players as well as on referees. The racket frames evolved from wooden to metallic material, until the present synthetic material was adopted and the interlaced strings initially made of natural gut were then made out of nylon, or similar synthetic materials.

TENNIS IN ITALY
The seventies and eighties brought the sport of tennis a rise in popularity in Italy, thanks to successful players such as Adriano Panatta, Corrado Barazzutti, Paolo Bertolucci and Antonio Zugarelli. In spite of the fact that the Italian government together with the main mass media argued about the participation of the Italian team in the Davis Cup in Chile - a country ruled by the Fascist General Augusto Pinochet – the national team succeeded in winning the first Davis Cup for Italy in 1976 (a triumph which until that year had never been reached before, not even during the sixties by Nicola Pietrangeli, Orlando Sirola, Beppe Merlo and Fausto Gardini, all eliminated in the final match that took place in Melbourne against Australia). The Rai TV channel broadcast only a brief synthesis of the final match, presented in Rome by the television commentator Guido Oddo. The increasing popularity of tennis was also sustained by the success of Adriano Panatta during international tournaments of high importance, such as the Italian international matches which took place in Rome and the Roland Garros in Paris, as well as by the popularity of champions like Jimmy Connors, Guillermo Vilas, Bjorn Borg, John McEnroe, Ivan Lendl, Yannick Noah, Henry Leconte, Mats Wilander, Pat Cash, Stefan Edberg, Boris Becker, Thomas Muster, Michael Chang, Chris Evert, Martina Navratilova, Steffi Graf, Monica Seles, Gabriela Sabatini, Arantxa Sanchez, Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi. The decline of the tennis popularity in Italy (considered an upper-class activity since its dawn), is undoubtedly related to the exclusion of tennis matches from public TV channels and goes back to the period of the mid nineties, when the so called “pay TV” came out. At present, tennis seems to be definitely restarting due to its popularity in Italy, thanks also to the strong rivalry between Roger Federer (CH), currently no. 1 in the world and considered one of the greatest tennis players ever, and Rafael Nadal (SPA), currently no. 2 in the world, winner of the last three Roland Garros tournaments.

TENNIS BALL
The ball is made of rubber covered by a felt coat, it has a diameter of about 6 cm and weights around 58 g. Always new balls are used during professional matches and they are replaced according to the specific rules of the tournament: after 7 games from the beginning of the match and then again after 9 played games that means 9/11 or 11/13. Both players alternate with the service after each game. The contest is directed by a head judge – or chair umpire - in cooperation with line judges and one net judge.

TENNIS TOURNAMENTS
At present, professional tournaments are managed mainly by the associations of professional players: the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) for men and the Women's Tennis Association (WTA) for their female counterparts. Furthermore, the International Tennis Federation (ITF) directly coordinates the Davis Cup, the tournaments called Big Slam and the international contests for youngsters. We distinguish between two specialties, single and double:  singles, or individuals, for matches are played by 2 athletes, either men or women; this discipline is considered by the greatest tennis lovers as the most important specialty and as a matter of fact, tennis is widely considered as a sport which is played ‘single’, or individually. We talk about "doubles" when a match is played by 4 athletes, men or women, divided into couples of 2 contestants of the same gender. A special case is the "mixed", where a male and female team up to oppose another male and female team. There are also contests for professional veterans over 35 years: men and women; from time to time, also tournaments for professionals are organised who compete for a prize money, but do not count for the world ranking: these ones are called show contests; such single show contests happen also between some women champions as well as men champions. Obviously, there is a wide range of tournaments for beginners: juniors, veterans and disabled. In Italy, a circuit of tournaments for the disabled is rapidly developing (tennis in a wheelchair), as part of the International Wheelchair Tennis Federation (IWTF).