Roland-Garros: why are points counted in 15, 30, 40 and game in tennis?


Jean-François Pérès, edited by Gauthier Delomez / Photo credits: ADRIAN DENNIS / AFP
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9:36 a.m., May 30, 2023

The fortnight of Roland-Garros began this Sunday. If fans of the little yellow ball miss nothing of the matches on the Parisian courts, do they know why the point system in tennis (15, 30, 40, game) is so atypical? Europe 1, official radio of the tournament, looks at the origins of this particular count.

Face-to-face players, separated by a net. Rackets, a ball and a referee. Simple concepts to evoke tennis, a game which however has a point system that is not so easy to understand… Official Roland-Garros radio, Europe 1 wonders why the score is counted in 15, 30, 40 and game. In reality, you have to go back to the origins of tennis to understand this confusing system, to say the least.

In this French ancestor of tennis, popularized by Henri IV, each half of the court was divided into three parts, numbered 15, 30 and 45.

A system that has never been questioned

For each point won, the server had the right to advance 15 feet towards the net, that is to say about five meters, to make his task easier. Logic would have dictated that the straight would be 30, and then 45, but it was felt that stepping forward 45 feet brought the server too close to the net. We therefore moved the line back to 40 feet to arrive at the now 15, 30 and 40. It was this system that was taken up by the Welsh major Walter Clopton Windfield when he patented the tennis in 1874.

The way of counting the points when there is a tie also goes back to the game of tennis. Indeed, when the two opponents were at 40 all, the referee said in old French “À deus!”, which meant that it was necessary to win two consecutive points to win the game. For the English, it became ” deuce” and for the French, “equality”. Despite its strangeness, this system has never been questioned until today.



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