The Latest Racquet

Saul Bellow loves the game. Elvis Presley has his own court. The football teams at Notre Dame and Michigan State practice it as part of their training programs. Illinois Governor-elect James Thompson and Wayne Rogers have learned it and, at a California club partially owned by OJ. Simpson, so have many others. In fact, nearly 3 million people have taken up racquetball--an indoor racquet game played on handball courts--in the past six years, making it the new boom sport of the tennis-conscious '70s. To accommodate it, new courts are rising as quickly--and conspicuously--as the welts caused by the hollow, rubber racquetball.

In 1970, only 50,000 souls played the game, braving the clan-ridden handball courts of big-city gyms with their truncated tennis racquets. It was tough going; prying loose playing time on a handball court made getting in to the Royal Enclosure at Ascot seem relatively simple. Still, racquetball aficionados persisted, hooked on the sport's caroming speed.

Whooshing Sphere. Racquetball was invented by a Connecticut tennis pro in the late '40s when he substituted a sawed-off tennis racquet for the wooden paddleball racquet and put strings in the handball-derived game. Played on a four-wall court 20 ft. wide, 40 ft. long and 20 ft. high, the 2 1/2-in. ball must be returned to the front wall before it bounces twice. Floor, ceiling* and walls are fair play for the whooshing sphere; the ultimate shot--the handball-style "kill" --is a ball aimed at the right angle of front wall and floor, a shot that virtually rolls away.

In the crowded confines of the racquetball court, beginners need not chase errant shots as tennis players must, and singles, not doubles matches are the rule. The ball comes zinging back like a small cannon ball, and an opponent's 18-in. stringed racquet can be a hazard, often inflicting racquetball's most distinctive mark--waffle-face. It is hell in a very small place.

Despite injuries, racquetball is an excellent fitness game. The speed of the sport produces maximum exercise in minimum time; tennis players report a more vigorous workout in 45 minutes of racquetball than in several hours of tennis. So when commercial developers built the first racquetball clubs in suburban Chicago and Minneapolis four years ago, tennis players came streaming in from the cold. Today there are 510 court clubs--as distinguished from the old handball haunts--and more are under construction, mostly in the Midwest and the West; high real estate costs have limited development in the East.

Fully a third of the new players are women. Strategy and "court sense"--the subtleties of caroms and positioning --can serve to neutralize male advantages in strength. One Chicago woman, however, reports a feminine disadvantage: "Women are more reluctant to push and shove the other player than men, and that sort of aggressiveness is necessary in this game." Age does not seem to be a factor. The top woman player in the country is 40-year-old Peggy Steding, a professional racquetballer from Odessa, Texas. She has won every major title in the past four years, routinely whipping opponents young enough to be her daughters.

Steding is among the draw of eight women and 16 men who tour the twelve-city professional circuit. Purses start at a penurious $8,000 per tournament, so few will get rich. But plans are under way to seek television coverage of top events in hopes that the tube will swell coffers as well as create new players. In fact, some of the newer courts have been designed with spectators and TV in mind; their walls are made of unbreakable, transparent glass.

* In squash, a close cousin, played on a smaller court with different equipment and rules, the ceiling cannot be used.

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