Why Tennis Scores Go 15, 30, 40
Medieval French monks played a version of tennis scored on a clock face — and one hand never quite made it.
The earliest recorded scoring system for jeu de paume — the French precursor to modern tennis — appears in a 1555 Italian treatise, "Trattato del Giuoco della Palla," by Antonio Scaino. The game was played in French monastery courtyards, and the scoring was tracked on a clockface mounted at the end of the court: points moved the hand to 15, 30, and 45. At 45 each player would be tied at the top of the clock, so a deciding point — "deuce" from the French deux, meaning two more points needed — was introduced. To fit deuce (50) on the clock, 45 was trimmed to 40, leaving a gap of 10 between the third point and game.
The word "love" for zero is almost certainly from the French l'oeuf — the egg, a shape that means nothing. The etymology is contested, but it appears in English tennis writing by the 1740s alongside the existing French score calls.
The International Tennis Federation codified the modern scoring structure in 1924, the same year tennis was dropped from the Olympics, and the clock-face origin became more historical curiosity than operational fact. Every attempt to simplify the system — including experiments with "no-ad" scoring in collegiate play and some ATP events — has left the 15-30-40 sequence intact in Grand Slam competition.
Make Recess yours.
Sign in to save the ones you loved, never see the same thing twice, and tell us what you want more of.