DID YOU KNOW?

Brush up on your tennis knowledge with these interesting and fun facts

The French Open stadium, Roland Garros, is named after a World War One pilot.

A tennis ball weighs two ounces or 56.69 grams.

The tennis ball remains in action (i.e., in a state of movement) for only about 20 minutes in a standard 2.5hour match.

First played in 1877, Wimbledon is the oldest tennis tournament in the world. The US Open was founded in 1881, the French Open followed 10 years later, and the Australian was founded in 1905. These are the “Grand Slam” tournaments. The overall permissible length of a tennis racket is 29 inches.

Not only was Boris Becker only 17 when he won his first Wimbledon in 1985, he is also the only unseeded player in history to win the title.

Germany’s Sabine Lisicki holds the record for the fastest women’s serve in tennis history. During the Stanford Classic in 2014, Lisicki hit a serve at 131 miles per hour. Clocking in at 163.4 miles per hour, the fastest serve ever recorded in men’s tennis was delivered by Australian Sam Groth, at the Busan Open Challenger Tennis event, in 2012.

On court, Maria Sharapova has been officially recorded at a volume as high as 101 decibels.