Holding the Mauritius Open, which starts on November 27 with the final taking place on December 5, will be a major boost for the sport on the island. While tennis has gained in popularity in recent years thanks to the colourful characters of the modern players and the extensive coverage it receives on television, it still has a long way to go to catch up with the likes of athletics etc.

The Mauritius Open, which is part of the ATP Challenger series and is being organised by Africa Tennis Tournaments ? a subsidiary of British American Investment - can help change all that.

Everything about tennis, except its essential rules, has changed from the way it was played 100 years ago, when balls, clothes, players and spectators all were white. Andre Agassi?s baggy shorts and Serena Williams? bright, skintight halter tops are the latest fashion, far cries from the days when decorum demanded pleated white trousers and ankle-length dresses.

Women, like Serena Williams, routinely serve at 110 mph - quite a departure from hitting the ball in safely with spin. The likes of Pete Sampras served more aces in a match than turn-of-the-century players did in a season.

Middle class professionals, not upper class amateurs, rule the courts, and hundreds of thousands, eeveen millions, of dollars, not merely silver cups and platters, are at stake at the major tournaments.

The Grand Slam events, once small, provincial affairs, now boast multiple stadiums and draw tens of thousands of fans each day, along with worldwide television audiences and millions in corporate sponsorships.

Rackets are bigger, lighter and stronger, crafted from space-age composites rather than wood. The once-ubiquitous racket press, with its nuts and bolts and washers in four corners to keep wooden rackets from warping, is a curiosity found only in antique shops. Optic yellow balls made white ones obsolete 30 years ago.

Even the lawn in ?lawn tennis? has disappeared, except for Wimbledon and a few other events, replaced by hardcourts (such as those at Petit Camp where the Mauritius Open is being played from this weekend) and clay.

Although a few wrinkles in the rules have come along, most notably the tiebreaker, tennis still has the same quaint scoring -- love, 15, 30, 40, deuce, advantage. The dimensions of the court and the height of the net haven?t changed. Faults and double-faults bedevil players today as they always have.

Cyclops, the electronic eye, guards the service lines at the bigger tournaments, but linesmen still squat in every corner of the court and matches still are called by the umpires perched high in their chairs.

The pride of tennis, and its curse, through the century has been its heritage as a sport of the upper crust.

The modern game descended from ?a portable court? patented in 1874 by Britain's Major Walter Clopton Wingfield and sold as a kit, complete with poles, pegs, netting, four tennis bats, a bag of balls, and ?The Book of the Game? with its six rules.

Laid out on lawns that had been used for croquet, the game was quickly and enthusiastically taken up by the Prince of Wales, Lords and Ladies of the British Empire and members of Parliament. Sweden?s King Gustav V, Russian royalty and French aristocrats joined in the rage.

The class lines remained in place when the game travelled across the Atlantic to high society in America. For decades, only genteel amateurs - those who could afford to play for nothing - won the trophies, ran the tournaments and locked the country club gates to blacks, Jews and others.

But that all changed with the advent of the Open Era in 1968, and in later years players like the Williams sisters emerged from public courts.

The first U.S. Open champion in that year turned out to be Arthur Ashe, a black man who could never have gained access to most tennis clubs in earlier decades. In the 1970s, tennis Hall of Fame writer Bud Collins observed in his encyclopedia of the game, ?tennis became truly the ?in? sport of the great middle class, first in the United States, then abroad.?

?In a single decade, the sport threw off and trampled its starched white flannel past and became a favoured diversion of the modern leisure class - attired in pastels and playing tiebreaker sets in public parks and clubs. ... All this was inspired by the advent of open tennis.?

If only that had been envisioned early in the century by those who controlled tennis, the history of the game, its greatest players, and, perhaps, part of modern culture, might have turned out different.