Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct word or phrase that best fits each of the numbered blanks from 26 to 30. Spectacular, played today on all kinds of surfaces by tens of millions of people, for fun or in competition, tennis has spread (26) ______ over the world. Designed and codified in England in the 1870s, it is the direct descendant of jeu de paume, invented in France in the 11th century. The developments of this mediaeval ...

Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct word or phrase that best fits each of the numbered blanks from 26 to 30.

Spectacular, played today on all kinds of surfaces by tens of millions of people, for fun or in competition, tennis has spread (26) ______ over the world. Designed and codified in England in the 1870s, it is the direct descendant of jeu de paume, invented in France in the 11th century. The developments of this mediaeval (27) ______ , originally practised with bare hands, like the invention of the racket in the 16th century and the special scoring system (15, 30, 40, game), led directly to tennis, (28) ______ its name, from the French word “tenez!” (in the sense of “here it comes!”), which you said to your opponent as you were about to serve.

The popularity of tennis in England quickly (29) ______ that of croquet. Indeed, barely three years passed between the publication of A Portable Court of Playing Tennis by Welsh Major Walter Clopton Wingfield in 1874, the defining work in terms of codifying lawn tennis, and the holding of the first Wimbledon tournament in 1877. The decisive element introduced by Wingfield was the use of a rubber ball, (30) ______ could bounce on grass.

(Adapted from https://www.olympic.org/)