Impress your friends

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  Players used their hands to hit a ball against a wall in a 12th-century French game called ‘lawn tennis’. It was developed using rackets and garden courts

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  Men’s tennis started at the Athens 1896 Games and women joined at Paris 1900, when Britain’s Charlotte Cooper became the first female Olympic champion

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  At Atlanta 1996, the hosts took 3 of the 4 golds as Lindsay Davenport and Andre Agassi won the singles, and Gigi and Mary Joe Fernandéz won the women’s doubles

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  At the Athens 2004, Chile won its first Olympic gold medals in any sport when Nicolás Massú triumphed in the men's singles and doubles, with Fernando González

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  American sisters Venus and Serena Williams are the only professional tennis players to have won four medals – and all of them are gold

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  Considered the greatest of all time, Roger Federer won doubles gold in 2008 and singles silver in 2012, making Rio 2016 his last chance to win the Olympic singles title

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  The USA’s John Isner beat France’s Nicolas Mahut 6-4, 3-6, 6-7, 7-6, 70-68 at Wimbledon 2010 – played over three days, it is the longest ever tennis match

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  Australian Samuel Groth officially hit the fastest service of all time, clocked at 263kmph, during an 2012 ATP Challenger event in Busan, the Republic of Korea

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  Rafa Nadal beat Roger Federer 7-5, 4-6, 7-6 (12-10) in a 2007 exhibition match called ‘The Battle of the Surfaces’ – played on a court of one half clay and one half grass

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  American Jennifer Capriati is the youngest Olympic champion in history: she was 16 years and 132 days old when she won the women’s competition in Barcelona 1992

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  Britain’s John Pius Boland went to Athens 1896 as a fan but was convinced by Greek player Dionysios Kasdaglis to dispute the tennis – Boland beat Kasdaglis in the final

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  British brothers Hugh and Reginald Doherty were to meet in the Paris 1900 semi-finals, but Reginald refused to play. His younger sibling reached the final, and won

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  When a player does not have any points their score is called ‘love’ – it’s nothing to do with romance, but in reference to the egg-like shape of the number 0 – ‘l’oeuf’ in French