Racquetball

Racquetball

Racquetball racquet and ball
Highest governing body	International Racquetball Federation
Characteristics
Contact	No
Team members	Single or doubles
Mixed gender	Yes, separate tours & mixed doubles
Type	Racquet sport
Equipment	Racquetball ball, racquetball racquet
Venue	Indoor or outdoor racquetball court
Presence
Country or region	Americas
Olympic	No
Paralympic	No

Racquetball is a racquet sport played with a hollow rubber ball in an indoor or outdoor court. Joseph Sobek is credited with inventing the modern sport of racquetball in 1950, adding a stringed racquet to paddleball in order to increase velocity and control. Unlike most racquet sports, such as tennis and badminton, there is no net to hit the ball over, and, unlike squash, no tin (out of bounds area at the bottom of front wall) to hit the ball above. Also, the court's walls, floor, and ceiling are legal playing surfaces, with the exception of court-specific designated hinders being out-of-bounds.

Racquetball is very similar to 40×20 American handball, which is played in many countries. It is also very similar to the British sport Squash 57, which was called racketball before 2016 (see below for a comparison).

Joe Sobek is credited with inventing the sport of racquetball in the New Britain, Connecticut YMCA, though not with naming it. A professional tennis and American handball player, Sobek sought 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 of squash, handball, and paddleball, and named his game paddle rackets.

In February 1952 Sobek founded the National Paddle Rackets Association (NPRA), codified the rules, and had them printed as a booklet. The new sport was rapidly adopted and became popular through Sobek's continual promotion of it; he was aided by the existence of some 40,000 handball courts in the country's YMCAs and Jewish Community Centers, wherein racquetball could be played.

In 1969, aided by Robert W. Kendler, the president-founder of the U.S. Handball Association (USHA), the International Racquetball Association (IRA) was founded using the name coined by Bob McInerney, a professional tennis player. That same year, the IRA assumed the national championship from the NPRA. In 1973, after a dispute with the IRA board of directors, Kendler formed two other racquetball organizations, yet the IRA remains the sport's dominant organization, recognized by the United States Olympic Committee as the American national racquetball governing body.