Racquetball

[Aonex]

Does anyone here play racquetball as well as tennis? I've never tried racquetball and was interested to see what people thought of it. Would playing racquetball mess up my tennis game (not that it's any good anyway), but at least ruin my strokes?

 

[@wright]

It will kill your tennis game if you play tennis alot and then start playign racquetball. Tennis will make you good at racquetball, but racquetball will make you horrible at tennis because the ball is so small and the strokes are so wristy. It's fun, but I only played when I was taking time off from tennis.

 

[NoBadMojo]

respectively disagree w. @wright. racquetball can help your reflexes and hand/eye stuff and conditioning, and your first step to the ball, which is all good for tennis. you gotta hit the ball flat or slice stroke so no way you could play w. a western forehand. if you just use your tennis strokes out there, but flatten the stroke out, its not gonna kill your tennis game. it may improve it. granted, that isnt the best way to play rball, but i think of it as a reasonable form of x training..but then again, i try and play all the racquet sports. if you arent good at tennis, give the rball a try..you may like it even better because you arent always picking up balls. ed

 

[tykrum]

I was concerned about the same thing with racquetball. But since I could play for free at college, I decided to give it a try and I am really happy that I did. It didn't mess up my tennis game at all, and I hit with a very western forehand and two handed backhand, and switched to a contenental shot in racquetball. Still, your same skills translate to racquetball, and the most fun part is that you can hit the ball as hard as you want in racquetball when you really can't in tennis. Unless you are Fernando Gonzalez that is. If you are really worried about using your wrists too much, just hit shots without flicking your wrists, like you are hitting a continental forehand and place the ball. I wouldn't be too worried though, I'm sure you will enjoy the sport.

 

[Deuce]

Locking yourself in a small room with an opponent who wants to beat you and is constantly swinging a racquet around, while a ball careens wildly about the room, doesn't strike me as being very enjoyable.

 

[Phil]

I started playing racquetball before tennis. Once I started playing tennis, I played r-ball in the winter months and tennis from April to November. I found that r-ball can help your tennis in the following ways: overall fitness, footwork, court positioning/coverage and general court "sense"-i.e. as you must constantly recover back to the middle and the primary strategy in the game is to dominate the middle and move your opponent around the corners/sides. For strokes, it won't help, and, in the long run, may hurt. I found that as a tennis beginner, it didn't hurt my strokes; it probably would now.

 

[SEVASTASE]

i played on the tour(tennis), then i played squash at A level, than raquetball at A level. they do not harm each other, but it's tough to play them intermitently.

 

[jjvarona]

I used to play tennis when i was around 10 but now I play racquetball. I still play tennis every once in awhile with my little brother and it doesn't hurt my (racquetball) swing. I think racquetball is a great game and encourage everyone to at least try it out.
Deuce- the game is very enjoyable. it is very fun and quite different from tennis. I love using different angles and all the walls to hit different shots. If you have not tried it, i recommend you at least give it a shot and keep an open mind.

 

[@wright]

Deuce, it certainly doesn't sound too enjoyable with that description! It is a pretty fun sport though, and decent tennis players who play racquetball will find it easy to hit their spots on the wall. The other thing is you don't want to hit with too much topspin in racquetball because it gives your opponent more time to get to the ball. You just usually want to slap it flat near where the wall meets the floor.