But that’s not all the Dutch have up their sleeves: one more possibility stems from the lof in the phrase “iets voor lof doen,” which means to do something for praise. There's a less popular theory that we’ve managed to twist the Dutch or Flemish word “lof,” meaning “honor.” The idea is that the player with zero points is simply playing for honor-because he or she certainly isn’t playing for a win. Most tennis historians believe the French translation of ‘egg’ is probably the most likely theory.” L’oeuf is French for “egg,” you see, so the thought is that over the years, we’ve slowly butchered the pronunciation into “love.”Ĭarillo agrees: “It’s the goose egg, exactly. You know how sometimes when a team in any sport comes up empty-handed on points, it’s said that there was a big ol’ goose egg on the scoreboard? Some people believe that a similar French expression is the reason zero points is called “love” in tennis.
Here are a few of them, along with input from sportscaster and former tennis pro Mary Carillo (pictured above with Rafael Nadal after his win in last night's U.S. We've now got a couple of days to stop thinking about cricket, get away in Melbourne and enjoy the lead-up to Christmas.Love? 15-30.40? What's the deal with tennis scoring? There’s no shortage of theories. "We've got facets of the game that need major work. At the minute, Australia have scored 400 twice, we've had batting collapses and we've dropped catches. "We've just got to up our game in all three areas. If we can match them then we believe we can win Test matches here. We know that Australia have played really well. "We've got to believe we can turn this round," Wood said. It's not like that at all."Įngland head to Melbourne needing a win to keep their hopes of regaining the Ashes alive. Wood added: "I don't think there's any friction between the bowlers and the captain. Speaking after the defeat in Adelaide, Root said England's bowlers bowled the wrong lengths and "needed to be braver" but Wood says "probably the way Rooty phrased it maybe isn't the way he totally wanted". Wood featured in the first Test but missed out in the second, with Broad and Anderson returning for the day-night game. Not just words or cliched words, we actually set out what we're going to do in Melbourne practice-wise, what we're going to do differently." "We've talked in depth about how things can get better. "Stokesy and Joe Root spoke to the group about… basically a bit of a kick up the bum saying 'this isn't good enough'," Wood said. Wood revealed that the players met for a 'very honest chat' following the defeat in the second Test, with senior players including captain Joe Root, Ben Stokes, Jos Buttler, James Anderson and Stuart Broad all having a say. Silverwood, who took over as coach in 2019, has won one of his past 11 Tests in charge, but says he is still the right man for the job. "Hopefully it comes at the right time for us to catch a spark." "To hear speak like that - not because he's under pressure or anything - but to hear him speak like that rather than just being his usual coaching self, he was actually annoyed and wanted a change. "We obviously review the game, chat about what we did well, what we didn't do well, but this time it was sterner from Chris Silverwood," Wood said.