Racquetball

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Racquetball

Racquetball racquet and ball
Highest governing body	International Racquetball Federation (IRF)
Characteristics
Contact	No
Team members	Singles or doubles
Mixed-sex	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
World Games	1981, 1985, 1993, 2009, 2013, 2022

Racquetball is a racquet sport and a team sport played with a hollow rubber ball on an indoor or outdoor court. Joseph Sobek^[1] invented the modern sport of racquetball in 1950,^[2] 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.^[3] Racquetball is played between various players on a team who try to bounce the ball with the racquet onto the ground so it hits the wall, so that an opposing team’s player cannot bounce it back to the wall.

The sport 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).