Meet Squash's Drunk/Belligerant Grandfather

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you the sport of Racquets. If you're familiar with Squash you're familiar with the grandchild of Racquets. In fact, Squash was formally called "Squash Rackets" in its early stages to differentiate the two. It is the fastest racquet sport in the world and also the most deadly.

Racquets was first played in English debtor prisons in the 18th-Century Racquets was an adaptation of the ball game Fives. As players left the prison, they brought the game with them. From prison, it spread to outside pubs, alleys, and eventually to prestigious English schools such as The Harrow School.

This is the court at The Racquet Club of Philadelphia, many consider it to be the best court of its kind in America (there are admittedly only 7 in North America). The court measures 30x60ft and at least 30 ft tall. The front, side, and back walls are single sheets of black slate while the floor is made up of large tiles of the same slate.

Apparently Imgur doesn't do well with panorama photos. The large red stripe at the bottom of the front wall is called "The Tin." As in squash if you hit the ball into the tin you lose the rally. Although it's called The Tin it isn't made of tin, it's actually a big fabric cushion to stop the ball from flying back at the players.

This is the view from the from wall. The two larger boxes outlined on the floor are where a serve must land to be considered a legal serve. The two smaller boxes are the service boxes. The server must have one foot inside that box in order to have a legal serve. The gallery above is for spectators. The smaller room in the upper right hand corner is called "The Marker's Box." The marker's job is to tell players if a ball is safely playable. The ball that this sport is played with is incredibly hard and moves very quickly (up to 150 mph) so people have died while playing if an opponent takes a risky shot. It is the marker's job to shout "play" to inform the players below that the rally may continue. Lets (another squash term) are VERY common in this game but you have to "cover" the ball. Covering is where you show that you could have hit the ball without actually hitting the ball for the safety of your opponent.

This is the thick prison like door that you use to access the court.

Admittedly I stole this from wikipedia, this is a plan of a racquets court so you understand the dimensions.

This is a Racquets bat. It's about six inches longer than a standard modern squash racquet but bares a strong resemblance to the old school racquets of the hardball squash era.

This is a covered racquets ball that's ready for play. To give you an idea of how hard this ball is, imagine a golf ball, take the dimpled cover off the golf ball so that you're left with just the hard core, take that core and wrap it in two layers of gauze tape and you have a Racquets ball. Below is a sample of how you make the core ready for play.

This is what an unwrapped core looks like. Underneath that yellow cover is a tightly knit core of sticky strings, sort of like the inside of a baseball.

You cut two layers of gauze tape of similar lengths and stick them together, making sure to get as many dimples and bubbles out from between the layers as possible.

From there you place the ball in the center of the tape and begin the process of wrapping the ball. You do that by pulling opposite corners up to the top.

Halfway done. you want to try and leave room for what will eventually become the "seams" of the ball.

When all the corners are pulled up your squeeze the seams together make what I call the dumpling. I think they look like Chinese pork dumplings you'd get at a dim sum restaurant.

From there you take a pair of curved scissors and cut the excess tape. The ball is technically ready to play but players will often smoosh the ball against the wall and their racquet head to smooth out any air pockets and the cuts from the seams before use so that the surface is as smooth as possible.

Ready to play!

Here is a link to the Racquets World Championship First Leg that was held at the RCOP in 2015. The reigning world champion of the sport is a guy named James Stout who is actually a Bermudan-born player. He is being challenged by Will Hopton. At the time Hopton was the #2 ranked player in the world. The World Championship is decided in a two-legged challenge, the first leg in the US at a court of the player's choosing and the second leg in the UK typically at The Queen's Club in London. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdyHnorYfco&t=138s

Believe it or not they also play this sport in a doubles format! See here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jU4v_8zT0MA

Wikipedia Article for further sauce: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rackets_(sport)