Tennis History and Traditions Reinterpreted in New Book

Interview with author Gabriel Allen on the inspiration behind his book, tennis origins, and tennis traditions.

Gabriel Allen's new book examines tennis history through a new perspective. | IMAGO / Alberto Gardin

Tennis has long been a sport steeped in tradition, but tennis coach-turned-author Gabriel Allen argues that many of the game's deeply held assumptions should be examined more closely. Allen's debut book, Tennis Tensions: Class, Race and Gender in the Evolution of the Sport, is a daring reinterpretation of tennis's rich cultural history.

Allen introduces new concepts and explains how privilege helped shape the sport. His research highlights how historical decisions led to the adoption of the current scoring system, along with criticism of play style, accepted narratives, and tennis governing bodies. In the following Q&A, Allen discusses his research, his central arguments, and his vision for the future of the sport.

Tim Mayotte's quote on Gabriel Allen's new book. | Gabriel Allen

How did the project come together?

Having spent as much time as I had interviewing people about the tennis scoring system and my solution to the inequities that exist in it, with the extended tiebreaker, what I call the tiebreaker match. As I was discovering about the rules having been changed regarding serves and the sport really being born from badminton rather than from this older game of tennis that many people don't even really know exists, [the project] kind of just occurred to me.

Right when I started to conceive of the project was right around the time COVID first happened. So, I had a lot of downtime, and I was spending maybe eight to 10 hours a day reading and thinking about these topics.

The invention of lawn tennis plays a big role in how you set up for a lot of the conversations that you speak of later on. What drew you to make that connection?

After having read the basketball book The Ball Don't Lie, I realized I needed to learn as much as I could about the origins of the sport, and it just so happened that around that same time, there was a book published called The Birth of Lawn Tennis. That book uncovered a lot of truths that hadn't been uncovered yet. In particular, the origin of lawn tennis really coming from badminton.

They're saying anybody who takes a careful look at the rules and the origin of how lawn tennis was structured in the very beginning, it's clear that badminton was probably the precursor. At the same time, they're saying, well, it's called tennis for the obvious fact that it's tennis played on a lawn. So, there's a little bit of attention there in admitting that this comes from badminton.

Wimbledon commissioned the authors of this book, and Wimbledon is very invested in the tradition of the older game... the early history of tennis is certainly shaping the game to be more like the older game of tennis, certainly with the scoring system, the two serves unconditionally, the height of the net, and various other things.

Althea Gibson won the Wimbledon Championship in 1957 and 1958. | IMAGO / ZUMA Press Wire

Should Wimbledon change some of its traditions to help move the sport forward?

I think it's time, certainly on the scoring and serving fronts. And of course, the white clothing tradition, which, as is noted in the epilogue of the book, really is not such an old tradition as they would have you believe, with the rules actually being set in stone, like around more more like around 1960. This white clothing rule really kind of crept in and was solidified, I argue, in response to lower-class, non-white competitors who began to compete in the tournaments and win them, such as Althea Gibson.

What is the “tiebreaker match” concept you introduce, and why do you think it is better?

So in a tiebreaker match, the person who wins the most points is going to win the match, which is, you know, how I feel like the better player on a given day, whoever plays the best on that day should win the match. With the current system, the point inequity that's possible within sets and the whole match, I think it's not correct.

If it's a contest and there's supposed to be a winner and a loser, then the winner should reflect who performed better and not just who happened to win in a certain sequential order that they may or may not have had total control over.

Jannik Sinner serves the ball at Wimbledon. | Susan Mullane-Imagn Images

You discuss a lot about how dominance in serve is rooted in trying to boost the sport's masculine image. What rule change would you make to address serve dominance?

I think this conversation really speaks to the tension that's there with wanting to have the sport be recognized as a masculine sporting activity. In the beginning, sports are pretty much considered to be a male domain, and something to train for war and all this. Women are not really included in the early sporting games. Badminton, of course, being a major exception where women were playing as much, if not more than men, and on the same court.

Eliminating a second serve certainly would make people think twice about how powerful am I going to try to make it. Certainly, some players are good enough at it that they would continue to hit their fastest serves all the time.

That may be successful or it may not. We would have to see. The sport seems to be stuck in that if you bring up this idea of one serve, you're going to get a lot of pushback... I'm not saying let's raise the net again necessarily, but I do think that eliminating the second serve would be it.

What do you hope will come out of writing this book?

As a lifelong lover of the game and my job, I teach tennis full-time at my alma mater. I'm very invested in tennis and want the culture and the game to continue to improve and be more inclusive. My hope is that this book will cause a revolution and that, soon enough, we will be playing tiebreaker matches with only one serve allowed, and that people will come to appreciate all the varying styles of play.

We can move past these connections about your style of play representing a masculine or feminine or black or white. We can come to have a sport that's equitable from a scoring and serving perspective, and that we have fair rules where the better player on the day of the match is guaranteed to win. Also, that we can appreciate all the styles of play equally and don't feel the need to delineate players because they do things differently than we might.