Court tennis (internationally known as real tennis, in Australia as royal tennis and France as jeu de paume), is known as the sport of kings. It is the oldest racquet sport in the world and where all others, including modern tennis and squash, are derived from. With less than 50 courts remaining in the United States, England, France and Australia, and only ten here in the US, court tennis does not amass a large following. 

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Court tennis has been played for more than eight hundred years. In the beginning, court tennis was a version of handball, played in alleys, courtyards and streets of rural France. By the fifteenth century, the racquet was invented and the current,
asymmetric shape of the court—designed to resemble a street with awnings and shop windows and doors—was standardized. Tennis was a wildly popular game throughout Renaissance Europe. Almost every King of England got on the tennis court regularly and the oldest standard court today is Hampton Court Palace outside London, officially built in 1530. But tennis was also a game of the masses: Paris had more than 250 courts in the seventeenth century; today, only one remains.