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LONDON – Men wearing all white clothing aggressively struck fuzzy, yellow balls with a sort of stringed racquets yesterday in what many are calling tennis.

Tennis, a venture many natives of the island of England seem to term “wembeldon,” is a strange spectacle to most and apparently part of a rare leisure interest of a small group of enthusiasts.

The game seems to center around two competitors in white clothing hitting the aforementioned yellow ball over a short net, situated halfway between them, back onto the other competitor’s territory. Each seems to wish to hit the ball into an area which makes his opponent’s return impossible, an uncooperative strategy leading to many pauses in proceedings.

Often fast-paced, the game requires its partakers to expend copious sums of vigor while pursuing the yellow target. White, a ostensibly inapt color given that the playing surface is composed of grass, is worn possibly to keep players cool in temperatures that touched scorching levels of 77 degrees, unprecedented heat on the secluded island off the coast of France.

All the while, a figure poised in a heightened chair speaks a clandestine language into a microphone, which frequently delights or disappoints onlookers seated around the event. The man or woman stationed in the lofty seat clearly commands respect and may be a person of importance in the participants’ family, given that “love” is often mentioned within a string of otherwise unknown argot.

A secondary activity to the central endeavor seems to be a spaced line of participants staged along the back walls on either end of the “court,” a borrowed term not to be confused with the legal use. These participants it seems are competing amongst each other in a contest to determine who can remain still the longest, and from time to time one is likely eliminated when shifting slightly to avoid one of the small yellow spheres bounding in his or her direction.

A contestant frequently repositions himself to the opposite end of the “court” while his adversary does the same, a ritual that may derive from the Middle Ages martial game of jousting, which required knights to originate at alternating ends of a track.

Many in the American sports world wonder how such a game is unknown to the United States, where sports are so common.

“It’s marvelous to see these unadulterated sports discovered in primitive cavitations,” said Washington Post sportswriter Tony Kornheiser. “I doubt this game is interesting enough for anyone in America to pursue, though.”

A most curious diversion, interesting to Americans or not, tennis, or wembeldon, seems to carry with it a great deal of prestige to the few acquainted with it and boasts a vast assortment of delectable victuals for a seated observer to relish.

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