How do we get more people to play the game? How do we get more people (non-gamers and gamers) to watch the game? The two biggest dilemmas facing each other in racquetball.
I have watched the evolution of the sport from the point of view of owning a racket club for twenty-nine years and have seen the dynamic improvement in technology and the tremendous advancement in physical abilities exhibited by top players. How can they keep getting better and better? I congratulate you. However; As we get older, most of us can’t keep getting better. However I see the age demographic has increased and in fact the most common player entering the sport today is one who played ten or fifteen years ago left it to have a family or a career remember what a great sport the racquetball and he wants to play and get fit. We can only imagine what that’s like for someone who thought he was pretty good, he’s out of shape, facing a bigger racket and a ball that travels much faster than he’s ever seen. Pretty daunting I guess, and many never go back a second time.
Dilemma number one: How do we make the game fit for the vast majority of players who are the ones just starting out, the ones trying to get their game back, the ones working hard to improve but moving slowly, the ones who just want to enjoy the sport? or those competitive players who can’t take the time to play well and stay in shape. Let’s be honest; Racquetball is a very demanding sport for those who take it seriously. You can’t just walk on the pitch two or three times a month, play your best and not suffer a couple of days after every game. After a while, people start to choose between pain and golf. Personally, I think the reason more women don’t play racquetball is because it’s so demanding.
Perhaps the answer lies in developing a level of play that is less physically demanding but develops skills that are as admirable as serving the ball at 150 miles per hour. Those skills are, of course, touch, strategy, trickery, quickness, and maybe even cutting the ball if we get rid of the ridiculous “carry rule.” The answer could be to slow the ball down and keep it in play to create longer plays. You might even see more of some of the oldies diving if they could get close enough once in a while. It could also improve television viewing and even allow non-gamers to appreciate watching sports. I know from taking a lot of non-players to see the sport at its highest level that they can’t follow the ball let alone know what’s going on and they get bored and don’t enjoy it.
I’m not suggesting that making another “dead” ball will accomplish the above. The goal here is to give slower players more time to get to the ball, making rallies often last longer and more opportunities for sophisticated shot selection. The ball should bounce but more slowly. Can this be done? I think so. Make the ball bigger. Possibly this innovation, if perfected, could also lead to another advantage of making the ball easier to watch on television.
I know most of the readers of this are probably advanced players and love to see the sport played at its fastest level like I do, but think about yourself a few years from now. Your skills, speed, and stamina will one day decline, but if the game becomes one of skill rather than stamina, players might be able to compete more successfully at older ages, not to mention there might be some longevity benefits. elbows, shoulders and knees.
This is not a radical idea, but a proven one, as one of the oldest and possibly most popular sports in the world, table tennis, recently faced the same problems as racquetball. Table tennis players had begun to increase the thickness of the quick sponge layer on their paddles, making the game too fast and difficult to watch on television, so fast that changes were needed to keep the viewer engaged. . In 2000, the International Table Tennis Federation instituted several rule changes intended to make table tennis more viable as a televised spectator sport. First, the 38mm balls were officially replaced by 40mm balls. This increased the ball’s air resistance and effectively slowed down play, resulting in longer rallies and greater spectator appreciation.
In 2001, the International Table Tennis Federation made another change to the rules of play and service to increase excitement and interest in the match, which led me to the other racquetball dilemma.
Dilemma number two: how do we make games more dramatic, exciting and suspenseful for the viewer?
Here, there is also a model tested in table tennis. To create more suspense and excitement, they changed the game from 21 points, change of server every five points, to games of 11 points, win by two and change of service every two points. This certainly made games faster and minimized the serve advantage. Matches are played to any odd number of games, usually five.
This scoring method results in faster point fluctuations, it also minimizes the server advantage, and the “win by two” requirement creates additional suspense and excitement for viewers. Another benefit is the flexibility in the number of games played. He would finish in five-game single-elimination tournaments and three-game round-robin tournaments. Lastly, the most important benefit relates to Dilemna Number One, by shortening games, skill becomes a more important factor than stamina, allowing weekenders, unconditioned, newbies, families Old men and hopefully more women enjoy the game simply because the sport is a little less demanding and even more fun.
I know that more advanced players simply because of their aggressive nature may oppose these ideas just like the Chinese opposed changes in table tennis. They felt it was an effort to stop his dominance of the sport. Yet today China still dominates because superior skill and athleticism will always excel just as it does in racquetball.
I invite you to look up some table tennis clips on YouTube.com and see how the ball can be seen even at speeds of over 100 mph and from long distances, all without the benefit of lighting or professional photography. USA Table Tennis, a sports organization that faced many challenges and problems similar to those we face today, made adjustments, it has remained an Olympic sport since 1988 and now claims to be the most popular racket sport in the world.
Should we keep asking the same questions and getting the same answers as always? get more kids into the sport, promote racquetball in high school and college, get more women playing, get major sponsors, get racquetball on TV and to the Olympics, hoping one day we’ll get a different outcome. Not likely.
Maybe it’s time for a change in racquetball.