History
Joseph G. Sobek invented racquetball over a period of several years, though he didn't give the sport is name. A squash teaching pro who worked for a rubber company, Sobek had trouble finding worthy squash opponents, so he began playing handball at a YMCA in Greenwich, Connecticut. That was too hard on the hands, though. In 1949, Sobek and some friends began using a wooden paddle to spare their hands; they called the new sport paddleball.
Sobek then designed a short, strung racket. He had 25 of them manufactured in November of 1950 and sold them to members of the Greenwich Y. Now called paddle rackets, the new sport proved fairly popular, but the ball was too lively.
So Sobek began searching for a better ball. He found it in a dime store, an ordinary children's ball of red and blue rubber, manufactured by Spalding. He bought quantities of the balls at several stores and that kept paddle rackets going for a while. Later, Sobek found a company to manufacture hollow rubber balls to his specifications.
Many of the Greenwich players were executives who, when transferred to other parts of the country, brought paddle rackets with them. In 1952, Sobek founded the National Paddle Rackets Association, codified the rules, and had rules booklets printed.
For about 15 years, Sobek was a one-man ambassador for the sport he'd invented. He sent out promotional kits, including balls and rackets, to YMCAs and other organizations across the country and offered exhibitions and clinics in areas where the sport was adopted. Many handball players disliked the new sport, because it was taking over their courts. Some of them, however, became converts to paddle rackets.
In November of 1966, Sobek was at a Memphis YMCA to do commentary on a paddle rackets match, which was followed by handball match, with commentary by Robert W. Kendler, founder and president of the U. S. Handball Association (USHA).
Kendler was evidently taken by paddle rackets, though it was something of a delayed reaction. In 1969, he organized the International Racquetball Association (IRA), giving the sport a new name that had been coined by Bob McInerny, a tennis pro from San Diego.
Sobek's solitary efforts had created a core of about 50,000 racquetball players. Kendler used the power of the USHA and its official publication, Ace, to promote racquetball as well as handball. By 1974, there were an estimated 3 million players in the United States, and that grew to about 10 million in 1988. As a result, racquetball expanded well beyond handball courts. Between 1972 and 1990, thousands of racquetball courts were built to capitalize on the sport's rapidly growing popularity.
Growth then leveled off and a decline set in. Some racquetball centers were forced to close and some were converted to other uses. Since the late 1980s, participation has been more or less stable. According to the U. S. Racquetball Association, about 5.6 million Americans play racquetball and more than 1.6 million of them play 25 or more times a year.
Kendler left the IRA because of a dispute with the board of directors in 1973 and founded two new organizations, the U. S. Racquetball Association and the professional National Racquetball Club. Neither of them proved particularly successful and they both went bankrupt in 1982.
However, the IRA carried on successfully without Kendler. In 1979, it became the American Amateur Racquetball Association and in 1997 it took its present name, the U. S. Racquetball Association (USRA).
The first national championship tournament, for men's singles only, was held in Milwaukee in 1968, under the auspices of Sobek's National Paddle Rackets Association. It was called the Gut-Strung Paddle Rackets National Championship. The IRA took over the tournament in 1969, when it was staged in St. Louis.
The first professional tournament was conducted by the IRA in 1974. Six years later, the men's pro tour was established and the Ladies Professional Racquetball Association (LPRA) was organized. The International Racquetball Tour was founded in 1990 to conduct the men's professional tour, which includes more than 30 events throughout North America.
The International Amateur Racquetball Federation, now the International Racquetball Federation (IRF) was founded in 1979 with 13 member countries. There are now an estimated 14 million racquetball players in more than 90 countries worldwide. World championships have been conducted biennially since 1981.
