Lawn tennis is a good sport, being based on the ancient of court tennis, which probably came up in Egypt or Persia some 2500 years ago．Major Walter Wingfield thought that something like court tennis could be played outdoors on lawns, and in December 1873, he introduced his new , which he called Sphairistike, at a law party in Wales．The sport became popular very rapidly, but the strange, difficult name disappeared almost at once, being replaced by the very and logical term 'lawn tennis'.
By 1874 the was being played by British soldiers in Bermuda, and in the early months of that year a young lady named Mary Outerbridge returned from Bermuda to New York, bringing with her the equipment necessary to play the new ．With the help of one of her brothers, she laid out a court on the grounds of the Staten Island Cricket and Baseball Club, and there, in the spring of 1874, Miss Outerbridge and some of her friends played the first of lawn tennis in the United States.
And just two years later, in 1876, the first United States lawn tennis tournament(锦标赛) was held--at Nahant near Boston.
Mary Outerbridge is important in the history of lawn tennis because ______.