Inside the weird world of real tennis

When John Lumley was a baby, his mother placed him in his carrycot at one end of the tennis court in the leafy village of Holyport in Berkshire, and drove balls at him. I should clarify that John was perfectly safe. The tennis in question was real tennis: the old-fashioned version of the game, which is played indoors, with a window at one end fitted with string netting. 

Nevertheless it’s easy to picture the infant John, secure behind that safety net, being jolted awake as ball after ball thudded into it, and waving his arms wildly in the way that babies do, before lapsing back into unconsciousness. Few sportsmen can ever have been so intimately introduced, at such a tender age, to the sport that would define their lives. 

Few, too, have grown up so immersed in it.