Four wall paddleball

Four wall paddleball, or paddleball, is a popular court sport in the Upper Midwest of the United States (particularly in Michigan and Wisconsin), on the West Coast of the U.S. (particularly in southern California) and in the Memphis, Tennessee area. It is played with a paddle and small rubber ball on a standard handball or racquetball court, with similar rules to those sports.

Four wall paddleball was invented in 1930 by Earl Riskey, a physical-education instructor and later Director of Intramural Sports at the University of Michigan. The paddleball trophy, awarded annually to the person who has done the most for the game, bears Riskey's name.

The university's Intramural Sports Building was built with a large number of squash and handball courts, and the school's tennis players often practiced on them during bad weather. Sometimes they used wooden paddles from paddle tennis instead of tennis rackets for their workouts. Riskey thought that a game played with paddles on a handball court might be a good addition to the intramural program. The courts at the Intramural Sports Building in Ann Arbor are still the site for many national championship tournaments.

Other sports (notably paddle tennis) used paddles, but the ball proved more difficult to create. Riskey found that if the fuzzy surface was removed from a tennis ball, the resulting ball had a suitable bounce for the game. Dime-store rubber balls were also used. The choice of ball remains one of the most contentious issues of the sport today. There are standard paddleballs (made by Ektelon), but the sport is also played with a racquetball. This difference changes how the game is played. For instance, when playing with a standard paddleball the ceiling ball is an impractical shot; however, when playing with a racquetball the ceiling ball is the shot of choice.

Paddleball can be played with two players (singles), three players ("cut throat"), or four players (doubles). The rules of paddleball are similar to indoor racquetball, and both sports are played on the same 40-by-20-foot (12.2 by 6.1 m) court. The most-significant differences between paddleball and racquetball are:

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