Jeu de Paume: Holding Court in Paris

In backward April, baby trucks abounding with orange-red adobe lined up abreast Roland Garros, a ample tennis circuitous in the western outskirts of Paris.Throughout the grounds, workers were affective from cloister to court, anxiously laying down the clay, a admixture of ashamed asphalt and brick, and chalking lines.

They were advancing the signature attending for this month’s French Open.At about 120 years old, the Accessible is a admirable academy with affluent history, but its constancy pales in allegory with the bold of tennis that’s getting played in the city’s 16th arrondissement, about three afar northeast.

At 74 rue Lauriston, a calm Haussmannian architecture like others in the quarter, a assurance fabricated of two metal racquets hangs inconspicuously over the sidewalk.A brownish applique on the massive board foreground doors reads: Société du Jeu de Paume et Racquets.Inside the club, up two flights of stairs, is what the un-indoctrinated would alarm a tennis court, but the elastic floor’s brownish hue is absolutely the alone affinity to those acclaimed courts at Roland Garros.

Four two-story-high atramentous slate walls, three of which accept a angled roof active alternating them, beleaguer the ellipsoidal court.There’s a net, but it sags heavily in the middle.

Two white-clad men are on adverse abandon of the net, hitting a blooming felt-covered brawl aback and alternating with board racquets.The racquet active are the admeasurement of a baby skillet, hardly teardrop-shaped and strung tightly.The brawl sounds abundant advancing off the racquet and abatement constantly.Often the men play shots off one of the lengthwise walls and occasionally aim for ample openings in the walls, beneath which a alternation of analogously spaced white lines, akin football yardage markers, extend out above the floor.

They’re arena jeu de paume, a antique of a ancient era in Paris.

Known in English as absolute tennis or cloister tennis, jeu de paume, acceptation “game of the palm,” is the antecedent of avant-garde backyard tennis, which wasn’t developed until the backward 1800s.

Popularized by monks and villagers in southern France during the 11th and 12th centuries (who played with their bald hands, appropriately the name), paume was one of the country’s admired pastimes from the 14th to the 17th centuries.At the aurora of the 17th century, there were over 500 courts, from Pau to Chinon.

The sport’s mecca was Paris, area over 7000 citizens — kings, aristocrats and commoners akin — played at about 250 courts throughout the city-limits and suburbs.

Today, it’s absolutely a altered story.The aggregate of the world’s 8,000 or so players reside in England, Australia and the United States.Here in France, there are just three playable courts in the absolute country, two of which are in the Paris busline area: Société Sportive, the alone one aural city-limits limits, and Fontainebleau, the above château of King Henri IV and after Napoleon, anchored in a abounding suburb 40 afar to the southeast.

And admitting a few added debris of the game’s august accomplished still angle in Paris —including two courts congenital by Napoleon III in the Tuileries, now museums, a auberge on Île Saint-Louis, and the acclaimed salle at Louis XIV’s Versailles area the French Anarchy started— jeu de paume has abundantly achromatic from the city’s aggregate memory.

But for the about 170 Parisian associates of Comité Français de Jeu de Paume, the sport’s civic administering body, it’s still the 17th century.Driven by a affection for their altered sport, this baby but committed accumulation is befitting the bold alive.

“What’s absorbing for me about paume is that there are so abounding possibilities for anniversary shot,” explains Gil Kressmann, the above admiral of Société Sportive.Kressmann, a well-built, graying man in his mid-60s, was alien to the bold as a youngster in Bordeaux. “Each stroke, as a action of your position and that of your opponent, there are about an absolute bulk of solutions and you accept to accept the best in a amount of seconds.”

Entrance to the Société Sportive de Jeu de Paume at 74 rue Lauriston in Paris’ 16th arrondissement, the endure jeu de paume cloister aural the city-limits limits.In the 17th century, at the acme of the game’s acceptance in France, Paris had over 250 courts and 7000 players. (Jonathan Brand)

The accepted bold of jeu de paume acquired from a bold played by southern French villagers and monks in the 11th century. (Jonathan Brand)

Société Sportive able Rod McNaughtan hits a brawl during a lesson.The board racquets are re-inforced with graphite at the head, but that’s one of the alone abstruse advances in accessories the endure few hundred years. Note the hardly off-set head—meant to carbon an accessible palm.Jeu de paume in French agency “game of the palm.” (Jonathan Brand)

The Fontainebleau court, which is best than the one in Paris.No two are absolutely alike, giving a absitively advantage to home cloister players. (Jonathan Brand)

A cloister tennis brawl looks like a backyard tennis ball, but in absoluteness has added in accepted with a baseball.The centers are fabricated with cork, captivated in bolt and again accomplished with a blooming acquainted cover.They are close and drift off the attic rather than bounce.Currently the assurance are hand-sewn every anniversary by professionals at anniversary of the clubs about the world. (Jonathan Brand)

It was actuality at the acclaimed jeu de paume cloister at Versailles in 1789 that the Third Estate active the Serment de Jeu de Paume, or the Oath of the Tennis Court, and started the French revolution. (Courtesy of Château Versailles)

Paume, the adage goes, is to chess what backyard tennis is to checkers.At a glance, the bold does resemble backyard tennis — there’s a service, a return, the aforementioned scoring analogue (love, 15, 30, 40, advantage) and a abounding bout is the best of three six-game sets.

But with 13 walls, including a abutment alleged the tambour on the accepting end, over 50 altered styles of serve and circuitous rules like the chase, in which the brawl can animation alert on your ancillary after your accident the point, it bound becomes ablaze that jeu de paume is abundant added nuanced; it’s a bold of attention and wits.

“In backyard tennis, the guys who hit the brawl the hardest accept the advantage, but in paume, it’s not essential,” Kressmann says.

No two courts are alike.At Fontainebleau, the attic is a few meters best than its analogue in Paris, and the walls acknowledge abnormally as well.This is because the game, originally played outdoors in medieval marketplaces, confused central in the 14th aeon as cities became added busy and courts had to be congenital wherever there was room.

Thus, home cloister advantage and acquaintance triumphs over arduous athleticism.And because of the aggregation of attempt options anniversary time you adapt to bang the ball, the added cloister time you accept logged the better, behindhand of exercise level.

“Up until recently, a lot of of the apple champions were over 30 years old,” addendum Ivan Ronaldson, a above able at Fontainebleau and now at Prince’s Cloister in Washington, D.C., one of nine courts in the United States.

The accessories is addition of the game’s abounding appropriate attractions.The abundant board racquets, with account active meant to carbon an accessible palm, accept acquired little back their addition in the 14th century.

The aforementioned can be said for the balls, which attending like their backyard tennis counterparts but in absoluteness accept added in accepted with baseballs.Made with cork centers and acquainted covers, the assurance accept little animation and abrasion out easily.The professionals, or paumiers, duke sew the assurance anniversary week, just like their ancestors did beneath Henri IV, who created the game’s aboriginal affiliation of teaching pros.

“All the history like that which is abaft us is absolutely aces as well,” Kressmann says.“It’s an capital allotment of the game.”

In Paris especially, attention the sport’s affluent history in the city-limits — from King Charles V’s architecture of one of the aboriginal courts, at the Louvre in 1368, to the abolition of abounding above courts during Haussmann’s 19th-century addition of Paris — is just as important to abounding players as acrimonious up a racquet.

Yves Carlier, the arch babysitter at Château Fontainebleau and a affiliate of the paume club, has accounting all-encompassing histories of the bold in book anatomy and for the Comité’s Web site.And in 2008, the Société Sportive commissioned Parisian historian Hubert Demory to broadcast a abbreviate book on the bold and the club’s origins for its centennial.

Amid the abnormal cloister appearance and specialized equipment, jeu de paume is a bold that accept to be apparent to be believed

Much of what has been actual has helped to deflate belief about the bold in Paris that others accept approved to propagate; generally that jeu de paume was commonly an aloof game.

Some adduce the Oath of the Tennis Court, or Serment de Jeu de Paume, which took abode on Versailles’ jeu de paume cloister and launched the French Revolution, as affidavit of the game’s blue-blooded roots.

It is a accepted antecedent of annoyance for some accepted players like Guy Durand, the broker at the Fontainebleau club.“Jeu de paume has been alleged the bold of kings, but it was not,” he says.“And the Anarchy had annihilation to do with the abatement of the game; by that time abounding courts had become theaters or exhibition halls.”

Indeed, even by 1657 the amount of courts in Paris had collapsed to about 114, according to Demory’s book.By the time of the Anarchy in 1789, he notes, there were just 12 places to play.

Durand’s concern extends above the history books.Like abounding adolescent players, he is consistently on the anchor for above paume sites about France.Traveling through the Loire Valley recently, he came above a car barn that acutely had been a paume court.He noticed the tambour, still intact, as he collection by.

Durand, a restaurateur in Fontainebleau, fabricated an arrangement with the ambassador to altercate affairs and renovating the cloister for use, but the amount was overwhelming.

“To body a cloister from blemish it’s like one actor Euro to accomplish it nice,” he says.“And to clean an absolute structure, well, let’s just say it’s even more.”

The astronomic amount of creating new structures is just one of the obstacles to a rosier approaching for the game.Access to absolute courts, accessible acquaintance and the abrupt acquirements ambit of the bold aswell prove to be attached factors.But there are a few ablaze signs: the Comité receives bound allotment from the French government and there are agreements now in abode amid every club, including the one in Bordeaux, and bounded schools to alternation adolescent players.

And beforehand this year, 17-year-old Mathieu Sarlangue, a top abecedarian at the Société Sportive, won the Racquette D’Or, the French civic abecedarian championship, and breathed some beginning air into the game.

“If newcomers access to acquisition a acceptable adolescent abecedarian like Mathieu,” Kressmann joked to me in March, “it’s even bigger because they won’t anticipate it’s all old guys like me.”

But unless Roger Federer al of a sudden decides to adhere up his backyard tennis racquet for paume, the absoluteness is that this action will abide to reside on for years as it has actuality in Paris and the blow of the world, toeing the accomplished band amid accomplished and present.

The columnist has been a Comité-sanctioned abecedarian in Paris back February and estimates he ranks about amid 169 and 170.