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New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLV, Issue 23, 7 December 1910, Page 11

Tennis is a game of foreign origin. It was invented iin the Middle Ages, and first played in the fosses of the great fortified chateaux in France and Italy. It came to England about 1350, and covered courts were already in vogue at that date. Lawn tennis, its direct descendant, is, however, purely English. Its inventor w'as .Major Wingfield, who called it by the rather absurd name of “sphavistike.” It was first seen on English lawns in 1874, and in less than ten years had become the most popular garden game in Britain. Oddly enough, the introduction of this new game met with violent opposition. Cricket authorities avowed that tennis would be the ruin xrf "manly” sport, and strenuously objected to the marking out of lawns at public schools.