每日背誦第四期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.
打開電視，轉(zhuǎn)到某個體育頻道，你很有可能看到兩個或兩對體格健壯的年輕人，在網(wǎng)兩側(cè)相互回?fù)糁粋€橡皮球，一邊打口中一邊念念有詞，不停地喊叫。這就是現(xiàn)代網(wǎng)球。在過去，它可是富貴人家用來消磨午后悠閑時光的活動。這項全名為草地網(wǎng)球的運動，源自十二、十三世紀(jì)法國的“宮廷網(wǎng)球”。當(dāng)時還是室內(nèi)游戲，玩者徒手以掌心擊球。直到十六世紀(jì)球拍才問世，而此時網(wǎng)球已在貴族間蔚為風(fēng)行，比賽場地的四周也隔起墻來。
(短文節(jié)選,本期開始連載：網(wǎng)球網(wǎng)羅你的心)
