Racquetball is a fast game played on an enclosed indoor court,
with a racquet and ball, popular in North America since the early 1970s. The
game was developed by Joe Sobek in 1949 in the United States from a combination
of squash and handball.
The racquetball racquet is a shorter, lighter version of the one used in
tennis. The lively, hollow rubber ball is about the size of a tennis ball.
The rules are basically similar to handball rules, and versions exist for
two players (as in singles), four players (as in doubles), and three players
(as in cutthroat). The first side to score 15 points wins a game. In a match,
two games are played. If each player or team wins one game, an 11-point
tiebreaker is played to decide the winner of the match. The United States
Racquetball Association, located in Colorado Springs, Colorado, is recognized
by the United States Olympic Committee as the U.S. national governing body
for the sport.
Racquetball has it's roots from two other sports:squash
and handball.
In 1949, a tennis pro from Conneticut, Joe Sobek, was looking for a fast
paced sport that was easy to learn and play. He designed the first strung
paddle, devised a set of rules based on those from squash and handball and
named his game, "paddle rackets".
His invention caught on quickly because it was a fun and easy game to learn,
but most importantly racquetball inhereted 40,000 handball courts at the
YMCA's and JCC's across the country. During the late 1960's, it began to
become feasible to build racquetball clubs, aka court clubs, due to the
sport's steady rise in popularity. Before that time, fitness clubs had pretty
much been your Jack LaLane "medicine ball and pulley-weights out of
the wall" type clubs. Another factor contributing to the rise of the
sport was the fitness boom of the 1970's which took the nation by storm.
The fun and easy-to-learn aspects of racquetball, the alreay existing and
newly build court clubs and the fitness craze...with these main factors
in place, the setting was perfect for racquetball and the sport was one
of the fastest growing sports by the early 80's. However, during the early
80's the country experienced a recession and inflation and interest rates
rose rapidly making it more difficult to build new racquetball clubs or
even maintain existing ones. Furthermore, racquetball had saturated the
market and new trendy activities such as aerobics and advanced fitness machines
began to compete with racquetball for the time of the club member.
The golden era of racquetball ended in the mid-80's and a new industry took
it's place...the FITNESS INDUSTRY. Club owners had to realize that they
were not in the racquetball industry but in the fitness industry and had
to provide as wide an array of fitness activities as possible to maintain
their membership base even if it meant converting racquetball courts to
new fitness areas.