Tennis can be traced as far back as the ancient Greek game of sphairistike (Greek: Σφαιριστική), and is mentioned in literature as far back as the Middle Ages in The Second Shepherds' Play, in which shepherds gave three gifts, including a tennis ball, to the newborn Christ.Sir Gawain, a knight of King Arthur's round table, plays tennis with a group of giants in The Turke and Gowin. Another mention came in the late 16th century, when William Shakespeare mentions "tennis balles" in his play Henry V, when a basket of them is given to King Henry as a mockery of his youth and playfulness.Major Walter Wingfield borrowed the name of this Greek game, in order to name the recreation he patented on February 23, 1874. It was soon converted into a three-syllable word rhyming with "pike" and afterwards abbreviated either to sticky or the mock-French stické. At the suggestion of future British prime minister Arthur Balfour, Wingfield eventually decided on "lawn tennis," a name that he had also patented for the game.

Its establishment as the modern sport can be dated to two separate roots. Between 1859 and 1865, Major Harry Gem, a solicitor, and his friend Augurio Perera, a Spanish merchant, who both lived in Birmingham, England developed a game that combined elements of both the game of rackets and the Spanish ball game pelota, and played it on Perera's croquet lawn in Edgbaston.In 1872, both men moved to Leamington Spa, and with two doctors from the Warneford Hospital, founded the world's first tennis club to play pelota on the lawn behind the Manor House Hotel (now residential apartments).The Courier of 23 July 1884 recorded one of the first tennis tournaments, held in the grounds of Shrubland Hall (demolished 1948).

In December 1873, Major Walter Clopton Wingfield devised a similar game for the amusement of his guests at a garden party on his estate of Nantclwyd, in Llanelidan, Wales. He based the game on the older sport of indoor tennis or real tennis.