Paddleball
One-wall paddleball and four-wall paddleball are the names given to two related but different games. Onewall paddleball, played almost exclusively in the five boroughs of New York City, is much like handball, only played with a wooden paddle. Four-wall paddleball, invented in this century, differs significantly.
History
One-wall paddleball is essentially the Irish game of court handball in the United States. By 1940, some 95 percent of all New York City parks offered one-wall handball facilities. At some unknown point thereafter, innovative players began to use wooden paddles instead of bare hands.
By 1980, New York had an estimated 200,000 paddleball players, whose main difficulty was finding courts. None of the three “associations” in the city survived; one-wall paddleball’s popularity is matched by its resistance to formal regulation-a principal charm for aficionados.
Four-wall paddleball, in contrast, was invented by Earl Riskey in 1930 at the University of Michigan,probably inspired by his observation of tennis players’ offseason practice on indoor handball and squash courts. Some used regular tennis rackets, some made do with wooden table tennis paddles. Riskey envisioned a new game, which combined elements of tennis with a handball-style court and regulations.
When Riskey inaugurated the game,he found a regulation tennis ball too heavy and too sluggish. Experimentation revealed that he could remove the fuzzy covers of tennis balls by soaking them in gasoline, which yielded a core with the appropriate weight and action. Piercing this core with a needle reduced the pressure to produce an appropriate action. A more sophisticated version of the ball was being commercially produced by 1950.
Four-wall paddleball was energetically promoted by its inventor and enthusiastically taken up by many at the University of Michigan. During World War II it was designated as one of the activities under the U.S. Armed Forces Conditioning Program.After the war, the game was taught at many sports and youth clubs that were either exclusively devoted to the sport or to a variety of the “lesser” racquet games.A National Paddleball Association was formed in 1952. That association, still extant, sponsored a national tournament in 1961, and by the 1970s tournament play was regularly scheduled.
Rules and Play
One-wall paddleball can be played against any available wall fronted by a hard and level area. The “regulation” court is 10.4 meters (34 feet) long by 6.1 meters (20 feet) wide. The wall against which the ball is hit runs (16 feet) high along one end of the court. Custom is loose with regard to the paddle used in one-wall paddleball, though it is generally 20 centimeters (8 inches) wide by 40 centimeters (16 inches) long. Paddle surfaces may be taped; rough surfaces are discouraged. Any number and size of holes may be bored through the paddle. A player wins with 21 points unless his opponent has already scored 20, in which case the game continues until one player wins by a 2-point margin.
The four-wall paddleball court is identical to a racquetball court: 12.2 by 6.1 meters (40 by 20 feet), with front and side walls 6.1 meters high. The back wall is no less than 3.7 meters (12 feet) and the ceiling provides a fifth playable surface. Four-wall paddleball may be played by two, three,or four players. A two-player game is a “single,” a threeplayer game-with each player rotating against the
other two-is called “cut throat,” and a four-player game “doubles.”
One-wall paddleball, like handball, has preserved its raffish, urban character. All of the city’s ethnic groups play, though currently the best players are said to be Hispanics and African Americans. Facilities are available, though urban problems have taken their toll on upkeep, and few commercial indoor courts exist for winter use.
Four-wall paddleball has not thrived numerically; probably fewer than 10,000 four-wall paddleball players practice in the United States, far below the 200,000 playing one-wall paddleball in New York City alone.The major obstacle to the flourishing of four-wall paddleball was most likely the rise in popularity of racquetball.
Yet the devotees of four-wall paddleball remain and, as with many of the “smaller” sports, its tournaments exhibit what one player calls a “family reunion” spirit, more dependent on sociability and shared history than on competitive or commercial aspiration.
