Individual Sports

Although its origins may be traced to the thirteenth century (according to some historians, to a much earlier date), it is usually held that 1874 marks the beginning of the modern game of tennis.

Three years later the All England Croquet Club, located in Wimbledon (a London suburb), held a tournament that was so successful that it was decided to make this an annual event. The first "national" tournament in the United States was held in 1876.

The United States Lawn Tennis Association was formed in 1881. At the University of California, "young ladies" were playing tennis by 1891; so were young men. Hazel Hotchkiss Wightman paired with Helen Wills and won the women's doubles gold medal at the 1924 Paris Olympics. Berkeley's physical education department has taught thousands of students to play tennis since the first courses were offered in the early 1900's.

Badminton is often called "the world's fastest racket sport." Evidence of early forms of the game may be found in China before the first century B.C. E. "Shuttlecock" was widely played in parts of England in the fourteenth century. The modern game dates from the late 1800's. The first "laws" (rules) of badminton were published in India in 1877. Badminton has been part of the curriculum at Berkeley since the 1910s. It is a popular form of physical activity for numerous students today, as is racquetball (a game invented in 1949 on a Connecticut handball court) and handball (whose origins may be found in several early cultures where a ball that rebounds off a wall is struck with the hand). Modern handball is usually dated to the founding of the Gaelic Athletic Association in 1884.