The arrival of tennis was closely aligned to the early sporting goods stores and clubs which already had an association with cricket. Since Cricket was English and quite popular in the colonies and even in the USA, the ease at which tennis sets could be included with orders that were being sent around the world anyway simply led to rapid distribution. Of course, this was also assisted by the fact that many tennis manufacturers were also cricket equipment makers.

The earliest known retail ad comes from Tasmania in January 1876, but the game flourished quickly as evidenced by these two Queensland ads, the first from The Courier Mail 16-11-1877 and 22-12-1877.

G.Prentice was involved in the local cricket market with his Queensland Cricket Depot in Edward Street and is most likely to have been part of the formation of the Lawn Tennis and Badminton club which met weekly on Wednesdays from early 1878.(happy to be corrected)

Most racquets came from the UK until the local industry developed. The major brands such as F.H.Ayres, Prossers, Lillywhite Frowds, F.A.Davis, Slazenger were all present and certainly some retailers also produced their own ‘housebrands’.

This ad below comes from the Maitland Hunter Valley region of NSW in July 1882 and is the earliest ad we have found with a picture of a tennis set.

This article/ad from 1909 Sydney provides some social commentary on tennis as it developed interest amongst the population.
Ayres and Slazengers were battling for market share with Ayres having lost the prestigious ball contract at Wimbeldon in 1902 after 20 years to Slazenger.

Players were being sought out to assist with sales of racquets and you will notice the Wilding racquet by Ayres. Anthony Wilding by 1909 had participated in the Australasia Davis Cup wins and was becoming a prominent player. He went onto win Wimbledon in 1910, 1911, 1912, 1913.  Players such as Wilding promoted their racquets at tournaments and received commissions on sales.

This ad (Argus,March 1918) comes from Alcocks, Melbourne well known for billiard tables and other sports. While you may not be able to read closely here it is most useful to find brand names and the period they were sold. This store went on to become the primary retail store for the Melbourne made Brewer racquets. The racquet photo below is the Austral Special indicated in the ad. This import is quite unusual in that has a more oval shape than normal. Until this ad was uncovered we had few clues to the history.

By 1933, we see the Australian brands appearing in ads. Note the Slazenger Don Bradman.
Not sure if this was locally produced but may well have been.

This MSD retail catalogue, below, is from 1938-39 and features Don Budge and Gene Mako on the cover. We are just beginning to learn more about a retail trading cartel which began in this era are under the guise of the ‘Combined Sporting Goods Association’. This body comprised both retail stores and the primary manufacturers and was a direct attempt to limit or prevent competition, which of course today would be highly illegal. Retail stores could veto rival sports stores from opening and manufacturers would simply not supply them directly. In turn, retail stores would only carry racquets from the member manufacturers (Dunlop, Alexander, Slazenger, Spalding) and even retail prices were agreed. You will find the top end racquets displaying the 5 star quality logo CERTIFIED BY THE ARMA (Australian Racquet Manufacturers Association). The set retail price was 75s, as per the newspaper ad launching the program in 1936. This is why other racquets from Brewer, and smaller companies failed to gain distribution beyond a few specialist stores or other non traditional retail outlets. Examples of their racquets are much harder to find for this reason along with the fact that manufacturing of wood racquets was highly labour intensive and with outputs of a couple of hundred per week many of the smaller firms would have struggled to deliver to a mass distribution network. Many Australian owned brands also developed markets overseas, particularly in the USA and examples with US distributor names sometimes appear on Ebay.

Mail order was also a big business as tennis became popular in all parts of the country. This is a rare example of a retail box.

Retailers not only sold branded product from key manufacturers. They often introduced their own brands or imported overseas product and had their name also inscribed.  These two were supplied to Melbourne Sports Depot MSD and the large general commodity retailer Myer.

Hartley were a specialist sporting goods store yet they introduced their own racquet which was probably made by Hedley.

Back in the 1950’s tennis retail stores looked a little different than today. Here are some wonderful photos recovered from the State Library of Western Australia , The Battye Library.

Sporting Goods Salesmen used to visit all the stores to obtain orders and one way a sales rep could show next seasons racquet designs was by carrying scaled down racquets usually around 12″ tall with all graphics and even strings all looking exact.

They are very rare and while this 18″(470mm)  example maybe slightly larger than expected it has been made seemingly in the traditional method with a different wedge insert into the throat, correct cord wrappings, thin strand gut, well drilled holes and graphics.

Another example of unusual tennis memorabilia comes with the large display racquets produced to increase instore branding.

We can guess that these may have first appeared as marketing and advertising was really starting to ramp up within the retail environment.

Here is an early 1970’s timber version of the Dunlop Max 200G Pro with a standard racquet for comparison. It stands 1.4 metres and you will find many modern examples in the tennis racquet stores.

In 1874, Major Walter Wingfield created marketing history by packaging racquets, nets, posts and balls into sets to sell as the first outdoor tennis sets. Early racquets were also lop sided however as the game progressed so did the desire to provide racquets more suited to the game and so began an amazing evolution of design, materials and ingenuity. Racquets were being made for ball games and Real tennis from the early 16th century so by the time lawn tennis came into being the skills of racquet making and stringing were highly developed.

Real (Court) Tennis uses lopsided racquets and the pictures below are of the oldest surviving racquet known dating back to 1858, courtesy of Rolf Jaeger (Tennis Heritage).The picture right is from the National Archive of Australia ref. NAA A6135, K19/5/81/4 and shows the very unusual court featuring the angled roof effect which is included in the field of play.

From 1874, the migration of tennis to other countries was quite rapid, as tennis sets like this one proved very popular. We know that tennis sets arrived in Australia soon after they were launched in 1874. A “Wingfield” set arrived in Queensland from the UK in August 1876. In Melbourne, a tennis set certainly arrived in Melbourne to the MCC (Melbourne Cricket Club) pre 1877 and we know that a retail store in Tasmania was advertising “new style” (non Wingfield design) lawn tennis sets in January 1876. The set pictured below shows a cork handled racquet, brass measuring tape, court makers (very rare) and a multi-press which holds more than one racquet. If you have a set let us know.

From the inception of lawn tennis racquet design evolved quite quickly in the first fifteen years from the lob sided style to the vertical shape which has persisted through to current times.  Mind you along the way many designers have reverted to unusual shapes as you will see under the unusual racquets section.

This photo below shows the progression.

From left…
a (lightweight) lobbed racket, circa 1876, by Henry Malings, a version of Real Tennis racquet
a Sphairistike racket by French and Co., circa 1875 and stamped accordingly
a (larger framed) lobbed racket by Jefferies, circa 1878. and
a more modern (in 1889) square headed and laminated racket by F.H.Ayres, circa 1886.

Racquet makers sprang up everywhere in the USA, France and the UK as the game blossomed. Often racquet making was an add-on business for example , you will find early wood racquets made by Winchester (famous firearms maker) and very often famous makers like F.H.Ayres, Horsman and Wright & Ditson were making other sporting goods for cricket and baseball.

Patents were taken out for all aspects of racquet design around the world. Head shapes, throat shapes, stringing styles, weight and even string tension adjustment. The diversity and the craftsmanship is what attracts so many racquet collectors into the hobby.

Today, the various wooden handles provide considerable interest to collectors. Up until the late 1920’s most racquets had wooden handles after which leather grips became more commonplace.

You could imagine how slippery a wooden grip might become, so ingenious designs included full cork, inlaid cork strips, grooves of varying designs and quite radical handles shapes to help prevent loss of control.

In addition to the famous fishtail, above, we have the bulbous, swallow tail, baseball, fantail and numerous groove patterns. Even when wooden handle shape was quite normal many designs focussed on the groove patterns varying by number, thickness or checker patterns.

You will notice also that the throat sections generally show a convex or concave shape. All through the history of racquet design these shapes are a recurring theme.

In April 2009, we received this photo of yet another new racquet handle shape which many collectors had never seen before.

Not only were wood shapes interesting, some of the racquets designed for the more fashionable players featured some very intricate detailing such as this carved handle, inlaid mother of pearl or intricate inlaid wood grips from the late 1880’s.

While wood racquets were the dominant choice of materials, from mid 1880’s tennis racquets made of metal began to appear. It would be fair to say that most people relate metal racquets only to the late 1960’s when Jimmy Connors started to use the very unique, Lacoste (France) designed T 2000 by Wilson.

This racquet by Hillman Herbert Cooper, courtesy of USA Collector Randy Crow, even includes a leather strap tension adjustment system.

Hobbies metal racquet with spring tension system.
Courtesy Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Museum.

Another Hobbies Model with cord grip

The most successful brands to be produced in metal came from the 1920’s in the form of the Dayton (USA) company which produced metal frame /wood handle racquets from 1923-to the mid 1990’s and the UK Birmingham Aluminium Company’s all 1924 all aluminium racquet called the ‘Birmal’  and like some of Hobbies product featured cord grips that you might expect to have found on early golf clubs.  The strings were often also metal wire offering players year round “all condition” equipment, where wood /gut was subject to damage in damp conditions.

Birmal Aluminium Tennis Racquet c 1924 (sold in Australia)

A Dayton (USA) metal head/strings with wooden scored grip

With the development of lighter and stronger frame materials, the size of the racquet head has grown to deliver a string surface area of up to 137sq.in. The reason a larger head area assists is due to the larger sweet spot which can be created making the game far more enjoyable. For those of you who may never have played with a wooden racquet try it some day for fun. You will certainly appreciate the added skill of bygone players who could serve, volley and smash with force not to dissimilar to todays racquets, albeit that modern materials do add power to players in the professional league.

Wooden racquets with larger heads were certainly experimented with.

This photo from Siegfried Kuebler’s book shows Frank Donisthorpe who used this oversized, racquet in Wimbledon in 1921 & 1922. It was 3″ all round larger than a standard racquet and was double strung.

Oversize racquets never really caught the public imagination until Howard Head, then working for Prince, made popular the oversized metal Prince Classic.

There were however some attempts to compete against the new materials using wood and wood composites in the 70’s.

Spalding produced a (made in Belgium by Snauwaert) Challenge Cup Pro which was all wood. Prince also produced the highly collectible Prince Woodie 110sq.in racquet which was a wood graphite combination. The photo below shows the differences between these and a standard woodie.

Below is a photo of a recently acquired Gamma Big Bubba 28″ 137 sq.in. which is legal. In the 1990’s makers also began experimenting with SUPER LONG models up to 32″ in length. The ITF was very concerned and in 1997 introduced rules regarding stringing, frame size and length in order to limit design.

It is amazing how the new graphite, titanium type materials allow larger frames with the strength to deliver sweet spots larger than a complete wood racquet. I hope all the young ones out there appreciate how much harder it was to hit and control a ball with a woodie and why many of the strokes seem more like a slice/push since the objective was to swing with the flight of the ball and use more weight transfer for power. This is still true for today but racquet strength allows for shorter swings and flick shots.

While creative design was certainly evident in the racquet shapes and construction methods, even the humble racquet press came in many shapes and sizes. Presses go back as far as the racquets themselves due to the fact that under enormous pressure from string tautness and combined with often damp or humid conditions racquets would warp or twist out of shape. Presses were essential for longevity of your frame and you will find many racquets have the caution printed on the butt cap, ‘ when not in use store in a press’. Although the ‘one press for one racquet ‘ system was predominant, some of the most highly collectable presses belonged to clubs which held multiple racquets for club players and many touring players had shapely 4-6 racquet presses featuring polished wood and large brass tightening screws.