Greg Munoz is a bit spent. The 32-year-old tennis coach has been teaching dozens of teenagers forehands all day. Now he's standing in what looks to be the courtyard of a medieval French monastery, gripping a tiny racquet the size of his hand, about to play another kind of tennis: court tennis.

Real tennis, rahhther, as the English say.

It's two minutes before his match at the Regency Sport & Health Club in McLean, and Munoz is inhaling a burger and soda. "Tired out yet?" he pleads to his British opponent, a 21-year-old Cambridge University student. (Major: Anglo-Saxon and Norse-Celtic languages.)

"I'm keen and eager," David Woodman says, ready to pounce.

And pounce he does. Woodman, along with three mates from England, is spending the week honing his game against Washington's inner sanctum of court tennis players in preparation for next week's Van Alen Cup, a biennial event pitting the four best under-22 players from Great Britain and the United States. McLean's Bradley Allen, a rising sophomore at Harvard University, is one of the U.S. representatives at this year's tournament, being held in New York City.

Real tennis -- known by the Aussies as "royal tennis" and by the French as jeu de paume -- is a sport nearly a millennium old. Over the centuries, it has evolved into a dizzyingly complicated game that is played by some 10,000 people around the world, who have a grand total of 45 courts on which to display their skills. The one in McLean, built five years ago to satisfy the tiny but rabid subculture of court tennis enthusiasts in the Washington region, is only the 10th court for real tennis in the United States.

The sport bears some resemblance to its popular offspring, lawn tennis -- currently garnering headlines at Wimbledon -- but is so much more, devotees contend. Yes, there is a net. And yes, people hit a ball with a racquet. And yes, one gets points for hitting the ball off certain parts of the wall.

Wait a minute, there's a wall? Is this tennis or is it squash?

"It is often said that court tennis is to lawn tennis as chess is to checkers," said Haven N.B. Pell, 56, a Washington investment manager who spent eight years trying to get a court built here so that he could relive his Harvard days beating up on teams from Princeton and Yale.

Histories abound on the sport, most agreeing that it started nearly 1,000 years ago with bored French monks swatting a rag around during their downtime. By the mid-1300s, the kings of France and England had restricted the game to the aristocracy so that commoners would concentrate on their archery, crucial to a monarchy's military.

Shakespeare mentioned the game in his play "Henry V," and it is told that Henry VIII lost himself in a match at Hampton Court at the very moment that Anne Boleyn, elsewhere, was losing her head. France's Charles V had a court installed at the Louvre palace in 1368, setting in motion a sports stampede: 232 years later, the Venetian ambassador in Paris reported that the city had 1,800 courts.

Modern-day enthusiasts at the McLean court acknowledge that the sport's -- how shall we say, refined? -- associations make them feel as much self-conscious as eccentric.

"I don't really fit the mold of an aristocratic player," Nick Shoemaker, a scruffy-looking 23-year-old who is making a documentary on go-go music, said after getting pummeled this week by one of the Brits, eight games to none.

Aside from "taking my dogs for a walk, I haven't exercised in four or five months," he said, finishing off a can of Miller Genuine Draft as he lounged at the rear of the service end, in the dedans, a netted opening that gives spectators a sightline and receivers a place to hit the ball and automatically win a point.

The game's complexity begins with the court itself. Considerably longer than a lawn tennis court and about as wide as a traditional doubles court, it has four sides, or walls, off of which players whack the ball. Parts of the court include the grille, the penthouse, the tambour, the winning gallery and the chase lines.

The handmade balls weigh slightly less than a baseball, with some variations. The racquet, or bat, is made by only one company in the world, according to the U.S. Court Tennis Preservation Foundation.

The McLean court, called the Prince's Court, features a towering glass wall, 18 feet high and 80 feet long. Spectators get an intimate view of the game, while the players get to observe the spectators lounging on $20,000 worth of Crate & Barrel leather sofas. (And, of course, playing chess.)

Socializing is key, in fact. The world of court tennis is so tiny that strangers who meet strangers who play court tennis are immediately chums. "It really is the most accommodating social scene. When we go to Newport, there's always an extravagant party, and they always ask, 'Who are you staying with?' -- not what hotel," said Ken Karpinski, president of the Prince's Court.

The only nagging question for Karpinski and others who fancy court tennis is what to do about the balls. A court tennis ball is made of crushed wine corks bound in plastic wrap and cotton tape, which is then hammered into a round shape, tied with string and encased in felt. Everything depends on the core of corks, though. "But we're not having any luck with the champagne," Karpinski said, "so we'll have to go back" to regular wine.

Right-o.