Doug Gowan: Last News

Australian Open in full swing following the visa saga concerning reigning champion Novak Djokovic earlier in the month, focus can finally get back to the sport.While it may appear to be a simple game of out-thinking and over powering your opponent, the scoring system is one that will most likely not make any sense to the causal viewer.So with tallies of games and sets being counted in normal intervals of single numbers, why do individual games go from 'love' to 15, 30 and finally 40?A debate prompted by The Guardian has provided an explanation into the sequence, and explained how the French language came to play a lasting role in the terminology.Doug Gowan, from Hornsey, explained: "Tennis scores were shown in the middle ages on two clock faces which went from 0 to 60."On each score the pointer moved round a quarter from 0 to 15, 30, 45 and a win on 60. Somehow the forty five got truncated to forty when the clock faces dropped out of use."Zero was shown as an oval - an egg shape - 'l'oeuf' in French, giving us 'love' for no points.

Should Novak Djokovic have played the Australian Open? Will Roger Federer ever return? Will the French Open include a Covid vaccine mandate? Such sagas, the one attributed to Djokovic's 12-day battle to remain down under especially, have been enough to leave the average fan leaving mentally exhausted.So picking holes in a scoring system that historians argue back to the 16th century is probably not the priority of supporters and pundits now keen to focus on the action alone in Melbourne.But to many, the pattern of points has been accepted if not entirely understood. Going 15, 30, 40, and then game doesn't appear like a regulated pattern of numbers.However, now a debate prompted by The Guardian has seemingly provided an explanation into the sequence, and French terminology used.A reader enquiry about the issue prompted Doug Gowan, from Hornsey, to explain.