game, known under this name in the U.S., and as tennis, or royal tennis, and sometimes real tennis in Great Britain, played usually indoors by two or four players with a ball and rackets on a rectangular, cement court 110 ft (33.53 m) long and 38 ft (11.58 m) wide. The ball is made of tightly bound cloth and is slightly smaller than a lawn tennis ball. The racket, 27 in. (68.5 cm) long, has a head strung with heavy gut. The court is divided by a net into the service side and the opposite, or hazard, side. As in lawn tennis, the object is to score points by skillfully hitting the ball over the net with the racket. In court tennis, however, players may also make the ball first strike the walls surrounding the court, or the roof of the shed, known as the penthouse, that extends around three sides of the court. They may also score points by other means, such as driving the ball into certain openings in the penthouse walls. The games in court tennis are scored as in lawn tennis. A set in court tennis is won by the player who first wins eight games; the match goes to the winner of two out of three or three out of five sets.

Court tennis is believed to have originated in 14th-century France, where it was known as jeu de paume (“game of the palm”). Worldwide it is now played on fewer than 30 courts. Championships were organized in the U.S., where the game was introduced in 1876.