racquetball

First, you need a racquetball court, which consists of a big room with some lines drawn on the floor. These lines consist of a rectangle about two shoulder-lengths wide which stretches all the way across the middle of the room. This rectangle has two very small rectangles inside of and perpendicular to it. These are positioned very close to the walls. The line marking the back edge of the big rectangle also travels halfway up the side walls.

Serving

The serve occurs from anywhere within the big rectangle and between the two small rectangles (which I will call the serving box. That means it's legal to serve from the middle of the room, but not from very close to the wall. The serve must hit the front wall, but it may not hit another wall, the floor, or the ceiling before it clears the back line of the serving box. The serve may not hit the back wall before the ball bounces. The server may commit two of these faults before the serve is lost.

Receiving

The receiver must hit the ball to the front wall before it bounces twice. Other than that, there are no rules governing how many walls the ball can hit after the serve has been successful. The ceiling is also fair. After he returns the ball to the front wall, the other player becomes the reciever. This exhange, from serve until the ball bounces twice, is called a rally.

Scoring

I believe that the accepted way to score is much like the method used by volleyball, which means the server serves until he commits two faults or allows the ball to bounce twice. Then the other player gets to serve. Points are only awarded to the server. However, this can take a long time for two evenly matched players, so I prefer the ping-pong method of scoring, in which the players take turns serving, each getting 5 serves per turn. A point is awarded on every serve to the person who wins the rally. The game is generally played to 15, but the winner must win by 2 points.

Other Stuff

If it's hard to tell whether or not the ball hit the floor first before hitting the front wall, a good rule of thumb is that the ball will squeak if it hits the floor first, because it is generally spinning towards the players. If you get hit with the ball while you are the receiver, your opponent wins the rally. If the receiver hits you with the ball, you are free to beat him savagely in the head with your racquet. Then, you both must agree whether or not the ball could have made it to the front wall had you not been standing in the way. If there is any doubt, the rally is redone. If there is an open observation port at the top-back of the room and ball goes out, the rally is also redone.

Have fun!

From The Back of the Box.

You are a raquetball player, and you have been challenged by a formidable opponent. The frenzied game begins with the crack of the raquet against the first ball which recoils from the backboard at ninety miles an hour. Are you fast enough to return it?

We were asking someone in the business office of the gym about reserving a racquetball court when the manager chose to join in the conversation. He declared that Racquetball was invented here in San Diego in the 1970's by a guy at SDSU. An interesting bit of trivia for us, so he thought. And it would be. If it were true...

Having just refreshed my memory on the rules here in this node, I thought it'd be cool to double check that bit of trivia and add it here if it were correct. Apparently it's not.

Racquetball was invented by a man named Joe Sobek (1918-1998) in Greenwhich, Connecticut in the year 1949. He fashioned short raquets, selected a rubber ball that had the proper size and bounciness, and came up with the rules for a sport he originally called Paddle Rackets.