每日背诵第四期18
Turn the TV on to one of the cable sports channels anytime and there's a pretty good chance you'll see two or four powerfully built young people grunting and yelling as they smash a rubber ball across a net. Such is the modern style of tennis, once the genteel afternoon pastime of the idle rich. Lawn tennis, to give the sport its full title, developed from real tennis, an indoor game that dates back to twelfth or thirteenth-century France, when balls were hit with the palm of the hand. Rackets weren't developed until the sixteenth century, when the game became popular among aristocrats and was played in a walled court.
打开电视，转到某个体育频道，你很有可能看到两个或两对体格健壮的年轻人，在网两侧相互回击着一个橡皮球，一边打口中一边念念有词，不停地喊叫。这就是现代网球。在过去，它可是富贵人家用来消磨午后悠闲时光的活动。这项全名为草地网球的运动，源自十二、十三世纪法国的“宫廷网球”。当时还是室内游戏，玩者徒手以掌心击球。直到十六世纪球拍才问世，而此时网球已在贵族间蔚为风行，比赛场地的四周也隔起墙来。
(短文节选,本期开始连载：网球网罗你的心)
