Real Tennis in Hobart – The Pioneers | Richard Travers | 2021 [NEW – SC]

A history of real tennis (also known as royal tennis) in Australia, beginning with the establishment of Australia's first court on Davey Street, Hobart in 1874 by Samuel Smith Travers — the author's ancestor — who went on to write Australia's first treatise on the sport in 1875.

Real tennis is the ancient predecessor of modern lawn tennis, played on an enclosed court with an irregular shape and rules that trace back to medieval France and Henry VIII's England. That Hobart had a real tennis court as early as 1874 — among the first in the Southern Hemisphere — is a surprising piece of Tasmanian sporting history most people have never heard of. Check out a rally here from the Hobart Real Tennis Club.

Written by Richard Travers and published in 2021, the book also covers Thomas Stone, Australia's first professional tennis player, includes a list of around 1600 people who visited the Hobart court in its first decade, and reproduces shipboard diaries from 1870s voyages to Australia from England — giving genuine depth for family historians as well as sports history enthusiasts.

At 152 pages and illustrated throughout, this is a thoroughly researched piece of social and sporting history specific to colonial Hobart.

BOOK DETAILS

Softcover.

152 pages.

Illustrated.

Published 2021.

CONDITION

New.

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