To win a game, a tennis player must score at least four victories in draws, but the score is not kept in the usual order of numbers (1,2, 3 points), but for each won draw it is announced that the player has 15, then 30, then 40.
And these numbers are not points, they are some abstract names of the stages of the player's approach to victory in the game.
They are just a score that is announced to fix who is closer to winning a game (a game is the sixth part of a game, a set, you have to win several games). With each won game this score is increasing, and it is in steps of 15, 30 and 40, then either win or, if each participant has forty, play to a gap of two wins in a row.
This score is a legacy of the ancient rules of the ancestor of modern tennis, invented about 12-13 century French monks amusement called "game of the palm" (jeu de paume - jeu de paume). In this game one had to hit a leather ball over a stretched net or a rope until his opponent made a mistake and did not miss or hit it wrong.
The game was played in specially built "halls," similar to wooden barns with high ceilings, or in open areas.
The game became hugely popular in later centuries. An English traveler who visited France in the late 15th century wrote: "The French are born with a racket in their hand... This country is dotted with ball-playing halls, of which there are more than churches, and more players than visitors to English pubs."
Each player's court had a distance from the net of 60 pières (a French measure of length equivalent to the English foot, that is, the length of a foot or short stride, about 32 cm). On the field, parallel to the net, lines were marked at distances of 15, 30 and 40 pie/steps from the edge.
After each successful draw, the player had the right to move to the next line, closer to the net, and thus gained a serve advantage over his opponent.
If the first two lines reduced the distance to the net every time about a quarter, the third line made not 15 steps from the net, and twenty, otherwise it was too close.
Over time, the gesture-de-poem divided into different techniques: playing with an open hand, playing with the palm of the glove, bat and racket. The racket allowed for powerful and fast shots over the net, so the rule of moving the player closer and closer to the net became a thing of the past.
But the score remained, and in modern tennis one still counts lucky draws: 15, 30, 40.
There are alternative versions of why tennis has developed such a scoring system. For example, the money version.
A French coin circulating in the 13th-18th centuries had 60 sous (sous is a kind of silver or copper nickel). An ecu was counted for a game win, so a quarter of an ecu was added for each of four lucky draws (15 sous were counted for one lucky draw, 30 for two).
For three victories they counted not 45 sous, but 40, allegedly because the number forty is more convenient to shout out.
The flaw of this version is that the ecu is actually a large coin, gold or silver, and a whole family could live on its value for several weeks. It is unlikely that a victory in just one game (which is a matter of minutes) was rewarded with such a substantial sum. After all, to win a match you had to win two or three times six games - that's a fortune in gold.
A similar version is that the clock face was divided into fourths, hence the score of 15 and 30, but there's also a problem with explaining why the next number isn't 45.
In any case, the French consider only the version with the supply lines to be true, and the versions with money and watches to be inconsistent with the historical facts.
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