The best Real Tennis you will ever watch (Compilation) 

It's not popular because of the logistics, you can't build that room anywhere. That's why tennis replaced it back when it was invented, way easier, you could just play outside with no walls.

There's only 10 courts in America

​@@TheJoy___ Lawn tennis is a different sport and it don't resemble with real tennis the sport which resemble it are padel,pop tennis,platform tennis unlike lawn tennis in terms of similarity pickleball and soft tennis can rival it

And I’m on the toilet watching this now lmao. But fax this is how the toilet search rabbit hole usually goes down 😂. Even tho it wasn’t that for me today but just curious of the sport

its kind of where it belongs, it was an elitist "sport" , when it began, and it still is

Great comment, give the game a try! There is a tutorial how to play here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-1NdujcsyjLs.html

A mixture of squash and tennis

It’s tennis but ultra ultra waspy

800 years old. The court is designed based on the city center, city walls and the shops around it. Hence the windows and slopes around the sides. There is a service side and receiving side. So they change sides to serve. Hitting the big windows in the back is a point. Hitting the small windows in the corner is a point. The only out is the ceiling or top windows. Serves must be off the slopes.

Kind of, but they are all slightly different as well, different sizes too. You can see why sensible people gave up on it in favour of actual tennis a long time ago. "Real" tennis reminds me of the "real" IRA: a bunch of entrenched fanatics holding onto something that has long become obsolete, and insisting that everybody else has got it wrong.

This was at the National Tennis Club in Newport, Rhode Island, one of around just 50 active tennis courts around the world.

Yeah, there's some obscure rules deciding when they switch, with some irritating stuff in there like hitting the ball beyond a line called the "1 yard worse than last line ", which is just one of the reasons sensible people adapted the game to an actually playable game.

I agree, most modern iterations of tennis would have evolved from this game :)

True for tennis, but squash is much more ancient in it's core. So you could say that it is the other way around. This medieval game comes from more ancient palm ball games that used a wall or several walls (similar to squash) .

@@AidarAmrekulov okay, that's very interesting. Thanks for the knowledge.

This was actually based on squash - a more ancient sport. And then Tennis developed from this

This is basically Padel (sport played in Spain).

@@AidarAmrekulov Real tennis has been around in this form since the 17th C. Squash came around in the 19th.

Why? Do you feel that way about basketball?

The idea is you win the serve by laying a chase (getting the ball to bounce twice on the serving side) and then you get to use that nasty corner! If you are very fast and have the right serve you can keep the good end of the court for a long time

The guy who's around 50 (Rob Fahey) was world champion for 22 years until he was beaten in 2016. Besides being incredibly good at the game he's extremely fit and strong, which explains why he retained the world championship for so long.

Rob Fahey incredibly held the world title from 1994 to 2016, and at the ripe age of 50 this year he is playing Camden Riviere (the younger player in this video) to challenge for the world championship title once more. The championship is played over 3 days in a "best of 9 sets" format and after day one Camden is leading 3/1 - you can follow the game play on 26th and 28th April on the IRTPA or Queen's club twitter - hopefully there will be some highlights for us to watch too!

@@realtennisfans7317 and indeed the man from Tasmania regained his crown. Well played son!

The game relies more on intelligence than brute force.

I am putting together some of the best clips from the world championship up on my channel, so far done 2 out of the 3 days of the final - feel free to check it out!

Interesting, apparently if hit them into far back galleries, win the point. Otherwise lose on most all of the side ones (would be too easy anyways I think) www.irtpa.com/the-real-tennis-court/

It’s a bit long to explain but the simple version is: If the server hits it, they can lose the serve. If the receiver hits it then they can win the serve Apart from the furthest gallery which wins the point for the server

No chance you see this reply but I play this game and I'm a nerd :P 1:10 - Skip to that point in the video and I'll explain from this camera position. The netted areas are called galleries. If the person receiving (at the end closest to the camera) hits the ball in to the long gallery behind the server, they win the point. The galleries on the right hand side on the servers side of the net (the far side). If the server hits the ball in to them, they lose. If the receiver hits in to them they may or may not win the point, depending on whether there is a chase in play and what it is if there is one. The rules of this game are mad if you couldn't tell! The galleries on the right on the receivers side of the net. If the receiver hits the ball in to them, they lose the point. If the server hits the ball in to one of them they may or may not win the point, again depending on the chase situation which I'm not explaining! The exception to this however is the last gallery, the one closest to the camera. If the server hits the ball in to that, any time other than with their serve, they win the point. The rules are mad but you get used to them quite quickly once you start playing.

lol, I love this story. For whatever reason, real tennis courts and jai-alai courts really skeeze me out. There's something unsettling about that many quietly chattering people gathered around in a very confined and reverberant space watching a gentleman's game.

Which video?

Poor people don't play this game. And by poor I mean "in danger of running out of money somewhere within the next fifteen generations". If your financial situation is that insecure, you're not going to bother with this game. For starters, you wouldn't be allowed to enter the grounds of the estate unless you were the gardener or the gamekeeper.

The "modern" day indoor courts would have been modelled on the medieval courtyards that the game was originally played from, and prior to that monastery cloisters - thus the sloping roofs etc. It does make the game fun to play though!

You could say that about baseball parks also. Not one is symmetrical

Why would it need to be? This is how it evolved (or didn't, maybe), until someone came up with lawn tennis, a different game altogether. Baseball fields vary, too, in their outfield dimensions and the contours and height of the fence: Fenway Park, Wrigley Field, Candlestick Park.

Fair point - although in the US they simply call it "Court Tennis" or "Paume / Jeu de Paume" in France. It's also been known as Royal Tennis or the Game of Kings due to it's popularity with the monarchs when it was first played in the UK -- so at least it's image has evolved since then :)

Can't please the PC crowd. I'm sure another person would be equally offended by "classic or original tennis" Am I correct in thinking that both tennis and squash derived from this? It looks like the rules are you can hit it on the full or one bounce? I'm going to look into this sport more.

Modern day lawn tennis is most certainly evolved from Real Tennis, in fact the original version of the game was simply called "Tennis" before the victorians came along and invested the one played on the lawn! (which is why a rebranding was required). The rules are similar to lawn tennis in the sense you can volley and hit the ball on the bounce. However the convoluted part is the "chase" system, where if one is at the serving end, they can completely miss the ball - but still win the point by winning the "chase." This is done by measuring where the missed ball bounced for the second time from the back wall (there are measuring lines on the court every yard from the back), the server then swaps to the receiving end and can still win the point if they can get the ball to to land at a "better" chase, i.e. closer to the back wall than the original chase. The server still has the option to "defend" the chase from being beaten by keeping the ball in play.

Don’t know anything about real tennis but I believe it’s an older game. Should we not then blame “tennis” for hacking the name? Should we have Called it “outdoor tennis” or something?

In Spanish, Real means royal and true/real, so the name of the game probably comes from the royalty and that's why it's called Real Tennis

These two are the best players in the world. They most definitely are 'real athletes' because pure fitness is only a part of the game - the skill level is immense. Many elite tennis players have tried real tennis and found its skills difficult to master. Also many top real tennis players came from other racket sports where they were junior/national champions, but found the richness of real tennis addictive.

Andrew Shields there is like 5 players known in court tennis... so it’s real easy to be the top 2. No sport is pure fitness, even weightlifting needs a variety of skills outside of big muscles. Those might be the smartest and quickest in the world of „real“ tennis, yet they would lose every game to a real player in actual real tennis. That’s because court tennis is only played by a few former royals or those who’d like to be one. Court tennis basically doesn’t exist outside of the former British commonwealth. That’s about as „real“ of an athlete as my brother when he plays LoL or the Austrians with their Hockern! Meanwhile actual tennis players have teams, they train daily to become the best players out of a pool of international athletes, competing in a controlled environment. In the end if they were real athletes, they wouldn’t have to call their sport „real tennis“ just to absorb a little bit of legitimacy off the actual real tennis.

@@mellowbobbin8684 obviously you haven’t played the game enough to understand how difficult it is to return some of the shots these guys are getting. Over 5,000 people play the game world wide and that number rises every year. To be in the top 25 players in this game requires immense time dedication and skill plus years of experience

These are the top 2 players in the entire world and are some of the most athletic people you’ll ever meet

@@mellowbobbin8684 you are quite the hater eh? I guarantee you if you dropped Jokivic in there right now he would get schooled by the old dude. It's the same as golf. A lot of "athletes" think that is an easy game until they try it and look foolish. This game is much more about angles, shot placement and anticipation than it is about pure fitness or power. Chess to Checkers there Champ.

Well it is 800 years old, the courts are similar to the French streets where it was first played

Is baseball stupid because players sometimes have to wait below a wall to catch the ball and throw to third base or home plate (that is, unless it landed above the home run mark, in which case it was all for nothing)?

@@ericforsyth yes

@@brianmannion7097: Okay, then I can't think of any sport which isn't.

@@ericforsyth I was busting your balls. No baseball isn't stupid. I just don't like this sport in the video. It just seems lazy. Its like what two kids could come up with to have fun with rackets in some abandoned area. Waiting for the ball to drop from a roof to hit it aimlessly back at the other guy. Real hand eye coordination. A real sport is something like actual tennis or 'GAA' handball. This is stupid.

Tried it and this game is HARD. The rackets are super heavy and are like swinging around a piece of weed you're about to put on a bonfire. The ball is also so heavy and barely bounces, so you have to anticipate moreso than just a split step like you do in tennis. The speed, angles, etc makes this game extremely hard to learn and master.