High-Voltage Racquetball

Whack! Born in the Sixties and just ending a wild growth spurt in adolescence, racquetball is the world's fastest-rising sport. It won't be played at the 1984 Olympics (it's several countries short of the 25 required for eventhood), but the little blue ball will probably make its first international bounce at the 1987 Pan American Games.

Meanwhile, back in the friendly confines of 30,000 American courts, the one-and-a-half-billion-dollar racquetball industry serves 10,000,000 panting participants. As it gets older, the game seems only to be getting better. A recent industry survey reveals that for the first time, more than half of all racquetballers play at the A and B levels. What that means is that the level of play is rising faster than a well-struck ceiling shot. Now that they out-number the duffers, that hard core of 5,000,000 A and B players is looking to ascend competitive ladders at clubs all over the country.

But as Butch and the Kid might have said, peering through Plexiglas goggles, "Who are those guys?" Who are all those ardent A and B players swinging airplane-grade-graphite racquets and darting around on white-soled shoes? Are you one of them? If so, you've reached a point at which you're better than most C players and the novices, but are you really that good?

The answer from racquetball insiders is: No, you're really not. You probably crush your weekend competition and do pretty well at home-club tournaments. But then you sign up for an intraclub or city meet, falter badly and lose to inferior—but more methodical—players.

Does that scenario sound familiar? If so, what's the matter with you?

What's the matter is that, all too often, even good players make too many unforced errors, miss shots they know they should put away and ground balls they know they'd return against their regular home-club competition.

What can be done? Can our vast army of A and B players find salvation in better fundamentals?

"Of course!" says Chuck Sheftel, head of the American Professional Racquetball Organization. "Even though the quality of play has risen markedly in the past two years, there's plenty of room for improvement."

Part of the problem, according to Sheftel, is that racquetball is such an easy game to pick up. After five minutes of practice, most tennis players, squash players and even ping-pongers find they can keep a racquetball winging around the court with surprising skill. "Racquetball is such a forgiving game," he says, "that fun has begun to pass for proficiency. A lot of that B- and A-level proficiency—those wild charges in which a shot is barely returned to the front wall—is built on poor foundations. Many players have never worked on their fundamentals: forehand, backhand, hard serve, soft serve. They came to the courts with minimal instruction. If a player like that has a knack for handling the racquet and chasing the ball and, God forbid, wins, that's when you have a problem. You get a player who will improve only up to a certain point. Bad habits will harden into his or her regular game."

You can guess what happens then. Against solid competition, such a player won't get (continued on page 186) High-Voltage Racquetball (continued from page 138) away with scattered shots and weak returns. His fatal, unforced bobbles skipping down the floor become demoralizing. He'll lose to even a lesser player—possibly to a beginner who runs no better than Tip O'Neill but who has control. The serious A or B player must, like the pros, learn to control that eccentric little spheroid.

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The trend in pro play now is "serve and kill." We'll come back to the serve after setting your game's foundation, but keep in mind that if you learn to serve well, you won't have to worry so much about kill shots. A deceptive serve can hold your whole game together. At the same time, if you learn to kill efficiently, you won't have to rely so much on the serve.

How should the erratic A or B player shore up his game's foundation? He should start with the two biggest building blocks of all—the forehand and the backhand.

Hitting Forehands

The forehand is racquetball's basic stroke. It is generally a player's most potent weapon. You'll use it 70 percent of the time against players who can't place the ball to your (probably weaker) backhand.

Racquetball is a sideways game, and the forehand is a sideways stroke. In execution, it's like the golf drive and the baseball line drive. If you're a right-hander hitting a forehand to the front wall, you're facing the right wall. Your legs are a long stride apart, knees slightly flexed, body coiled like a spring. As the ball comes toward you, bring the racquet way back. Pro coaches call that E.R.P.—early racquet preparation. If you're serious about killing, you should try to become an early-draw Wyatt E.R.P. As your arm pulls the racquet back, your elbow comes up until it's ear-high. Your front foot should point to the place you want to hit the ball. As the ball comes into your hitting zone—which can be any height from ankle to shoulder—uncoil your body and throw all your weight onto your front foot. At the moment you hit the ball, your racquet strings must be parallel to the front wall.

The most difficult of racquetball's secrets comes into play right here, at midswing. Your wrist, which has been cocked backward to get the racquet up high, must uncock and snap through at the moment of contact with the ball. If you do it right, the ball lashes out for an unreturnable kill shot or a passing shot that comes off the wall so fast your opponent stands transfixed.

The wrist snap is worth hours of practice to any A or B player who really wants to improve. Once you master it, kill shots and hard passes will come into your arsenal naturally, not as lucky surprises. Five-time national champ Marty Hogan does wrist curls with ten-pound weights to strengthen his wrists. "The wrist is 70 percent of my game," he says. He'll also sit around with a newspaper held by its corner with his right hand. Using only his fingers, he rolls the page into a palm-sized ball. Try it—it's harder than it sounds, and it's terrific work for the racquet wrist.

Charlie Brumfield, the Babe Ruth of racquetball, says the wrist snap is 50 percent of his game. Both he and Hogan liken it to a snap throw across a baseball infield or the snap of a wet towel. This year's national champion, Mike Yellen, says, "My wrist is finally snapping like a cobra." His cobra defanged Hogan's in Chicago and again in Atlanta earlier this year, breaking Hogan's five-year hegemony. With a flick of the wrist! What all these superstars are after is a snake-fast uncocking of that racquet wrist—the kind that enabled a 125-pound golfer like Ben Hogan to drive 280 yards. Dr. Bud Muehleisen, racquetball's first great coach, has his students practice the vital wrist snap by dropping the ball just off the front foot and hitting it "using only a full wrist cock and very little follow-through:"

Hitting Backhands

For the backhand, a right-hander will face the left wall. Your body action is pretty much a mirror image of forehand preparation. You should allow a little extra elbow room, since the backhand wind-up brings the racquet arm all the way across the body. As always, your front foot should point where you want the ball to go.

Professionals have been arguing for years over whether or not to alter the basic forehand grip when hitting a backhand. Hogan compensates by changing his body position a little. Most pros find it easier to rotate the forehand grip about a quarter inch—moving the thumb a quarter inch toward the floor during the backswing. The amount of grip correction is something each player will have to work out for himself. If your natural grip sends the ball rifling straight to the floor, for instance, move your thumb down a fraction of an inch so that your racquet's strings are parallel to the front wall when you strike the ball. Obviously, some experimentation should be done in practice sessions.

The simple drop-and-hit exercise—a fundamental drill—can be the best way to decide how or whether to alter your basic shake-hands-with-the-racquet grip. Keep dropping and hitting backhands with various grips until you can consistently hit with your strings parallel to the front wall.

Like most sports, racquetball is a game of inches. A racquet that's a fraction off parallel at impact makes the difference between a winning kill and a sad, short skip to the floor. Let's take an example: If you're 20 feet from the front wall and you hit the ball with your strings parallel, the ball is certain to stay on line. You'll get the shot you want. However, if you make a mistake in as little as five degrees of angle, the same shot will hit the wall two feet from where you wanted it. Since the ideal target is the lowest two feet of the front wall, that five degrees means life or death. Get those strings parallel at impact!

The higher you raise the racquet on your backswing and the more you coil your body, the more power, ball speed and accuracy you can generate. The idea in refining your swing—whether forehand or backhand—is to find the smoothest groove you can. The only way to do that is with practice. The more often you repeat the motion, the closer to the groove you'll come. Eventually, you'll cut down on those unkindest cuts, the unforced errors.

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Now that you've grooved your swing with dedicated practice, is there anything else to keep you from filling Hogan's or Yellen's shoes? There's plenty, but much of it can be boiled down to five important reminders. That's not so bad, is it? That's only half as many as there are Commandments, and these are easier to keep:

• Glue your eyes to the ball. Not literally, of course. Goggles are still the recommended eye protection. But to hit consistently good shots, you have to remember sportscasting's hoariest cliché: "He missed it because he took his eye off the ball." Keep your eye on the ball as you're hitting it. Then watch the point of impact for an extra beat after you hit it. Gluing your eyes to the ball prevents last-second lurches of the head and the shoulders that throw off otherwise good strokes. Handball immortal Paul Haber once said, "I always keep my eye on the ball—even during time outs."

• Hit with a smooth, swift arc. While stroke analysis breaks the swing down into many parts, the sum of those parts should be a long, smooth swing of the racquet. Contact the ball at mid-arc and never swat, muscle or punch a shot. Everyone takes the occasional uncoordinated swat when he's on the run, but it's important to work the tendency toward short, choppy swings out of your game. It takes only a moment to set up sideways and stroke, using the whole body. The cardinal error of many jocks who come to racquetball from other sports is hitting with only the shoulders and the arms, which account for a mere fifth of your body's power.

• Look up and live. Good players utilize the ceiling for offense as well as defense. Ideally, the ball hits the ceiling about six feet from where the ceiling joins the front wall. Then it skitters down your opponent's weaker side, bounces just past the serve zone and dies in a deep corner. The very best kind of ceiling shot is the "wallpaper ball," one that hugs the wall all the way back, forcing your foe to break his racquet on the wall while going for a return.

• Keep an eye on your overhead. This is a bromide that works as well for racquet-bailers as for retailers. The overhead smash, which is hit much like a tennis serve, has recently caught on with the pros. It's ideal for hitting hard ceiling shots. It is also a formidable kill shot from deep court if you hit it past your opponent into a front corner. Good eye contact is essential to the overhead, since it is executed higher than other shots, often making you stare into distracting ceiling lights.

• Love thyself as thyself. It's impossible to carry out all these instructions every time. Even new champ Yellen hits one off his foot now and then. So give yourself credit for trying. When you do miss, don't get consumed with self-loathing. Anger often brings on a second miss, then a third. Swallow the anguish; concentrate on the ball. Anger from one shot carried over into the next point is choking. Choke and your game dies at B level.

Racquetball's good news is that you really can master all the techniques we've been talking about. The bad news is that your challenges will only increase with success. The good A player will challenge the toughest competition at his home courts, seek out tournaments, even get a pro to test him to the limit. In practice, the pros think nothing of trying a bothersome shot 200 or 300 times. For the A player, a series of 25 forehands, 25 backhands, 25 serves, a round of overheads, ceiling balls and attempted kills should be de rigueur .

And then there's conditioning. While some wiry junior players of either sex can wrist snap 125-mph boomers right out of the crib, most of us need wrist curls or Hogan's newspaper crinkle to strengthen our wrists. For stamina, a two- or three-mile jog or a long swim every other day is perfect. Nautilus and Universal machines, used regularly, will strengthen your legs and pump up the power you apply to the ball at the moment of truth.

For the new player—the once-a-weeker with no great desire to climb his club's ladder—racquetball is simply a great way to pass an aerobic hour and burn as many as 800 calories. Running, swinging and changing directions all the time make for a great deal of fun. Serious A and B players, though, understand that it's necessary to jog, swim and even pump some iron in order to play at higher levels. Their fun comes with winning.

If you're serious about the game and heed the instructions we've talked about so far, you'll soon be a better player. You'll be having a great time on the court. If you want to refine things even further to take that big step to stardom, read on.

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Most players develop a hard first serve and fall back on a lob second serve. They seldom vary the pattern. Generally, such players are orderly people, the kind who fold up their sweaty gym suits and practically blister-pack them for transport home. Predictable servers can be easy prey. You don't want to be one of them, so try to get away from the routine of hard serve, soft serve—all to your opponent's backhand. Try to develop a tricky bag of serves.

Most servers start from a static stance. Right-handers will park themselves about five feet from the left wall and let fly. Try something different—serve on the move, the way the pros do. Start from the same position or even a couple of steps closer to the left wall. Toss the ball three to six feet out. Take one or two strides into it, then whip it left, right or in a Z around the court. (The Z serve is hit head-high four feet from the right corner of the front wall. It follows a Z pattern and dies on the last, short leg of the Z, in the deep left corner.) Serving on the move will throw off your opponent's timing, balance and preparation, leading to service winners for you.

The ambulatory serve also gives you the last-second option of hitting a surprise serve to your opponent's strong side. If you serve past your own body to his left, you'll momentarily (but legally) obscure the ball from your victim's view. That is not a screen ball, which you'd have to do over. You will have to keep your serve a legal 18 inches from your body as it passes you coming off the front wall. If you don't, that is a screen ball.

Don't neglect alternating speedy serves with soft, high lobs and Z serves. The garbage serve can also be a deceptive winner. It was originally practiced with garbage cans in each rear corner—the server would lob a serve that bounced once and fell into one of the cans. It works even better without the cans. With an occasional garbage serve, you can literally drive your opponents up the wall.

After you've got a diversified repertoire of serves, turn to the back wall to find another friend. Hugh Morgan, the 49-year-old publisher of National Racquetball and a B player on the rise, says it was the rear wall that wooed him from tennis to racquetball. "That wall keeps the ball from skittering away to the next court," says Morgan. "It speeds up your entire exercise program, compared with tennis. After the rear wall stops driving you crazy, it becomes a good friend. I moved from C to B in a few weeks when I stopped crashing into it on a wild charge, hoping to retrieve a shot before it hit the rear wall and went God knows where."

"The first thing to realize about the rear wall is its inherent danger," says Jean Sauser, racquetball pro for Ektelon and the author of five books on the game. "If you hit a drive or a lob off the front wall and it doesn't die politely in deep court, it will spurt up and out from the rear wall and a good player will put it away for a winner. You will be dispensing setup after setup. Plums, they're called."

Squash champ Heather McKay had back-wall trouble for an entire year when playing then—racquetball champion Shannon Wright. It wasn't until she stopped giving Wright squishy plums off the back wall that McKay began winning. "That racquetball is bouncy," she observes. "I learned to keep it low in the back court."

Sauser recommends conquering the rear wall with solo practice: "You stand about five feet from the back wall and toss the ball into the rear corners alternately, letting it spurt back at you. Then—backhand and forehand, left and right—you practice returning the ball to the front wall as briskly as possible."

Just for starters, this simple drill will give you instant exercise of judgment, practice on your shifts in footwork and familiarity with the back wall's vagaries. You can advance the drill by tossing the ball off the back wall or into the corners at various heights and speeds. Your body will quickly become accustomed to whirling around and getting set fast for a good return. The mental calculations are almost the same as those a hockey or billiards player makes in adjusting to a carom shot.

Another shot to practice comes up in every racquetball game. Your opponent has boomed one back. It bounces on the floor and hurtles past you too fast for you to hit a forehand or a backhand. Now you must instantly think of the back wall as the front wall. Hit the ball hard into the back wall, about chest-high and at a slight angle—so the rebound doesn't hit you. The ball will traverse the court and will finally reach the front wall. It's only a save and may be a plum for your opponent, but it's better than a miss. A third of all points lost in racquetball involve the back wall. Get to know it and you'll have a friend for life.

As in tennis, of course, the idea in racquetball is to place the ball out of your opponent's reach more often than he can place it out of yours. If each shot were perfect, racquetball wouldn't be much of a sport. Still, it is possible to flirt with perfection. Most A and B players attending pro tournaments are awed by the number of times the pros kill the ball with perfect roll-outs. They're astonished by the frequency with which the pros go for it.

You can go for it, too, taking risks and racking up kills. Emboldened by improving control, the serious A or B player should become more daring, more aggressive. If you've practiced your way into a grooved, consistent swing, chances are you'll soon be surprising yourself with successful kills that come from low, sweeping swings at velocities that increase as you master that crucial wrist snap.

Almost as effective as the roll-out kill shot and easier to learn is the pros' second-favorite shot, the pinch. Instead of heading directly for the front wall, the pinch goes into one side wall or the other. Then it rebounds to the front wall and angles away from the opponent, whose body is set for a straight-back drive or a passing shot.

Pinches are great change-up shots. Using them is good strategy when you have been slugging it out from center court during a long rally. Just wait for a chance to get set, thrust that compasslike front foot toward one of the side walls and, with backhand or forehand, smack the ball hard into that side wall for the pinch.

The pinch kill is a shot that hits the side wall within a few feet of the front wall, kisses off the front wall and skips or rolls away for a winner. You can also hit pinch kills from front wall to side wall, using the same technique. Until your proficiency is formidable, you won't want to try them as often as the more mundane pinches, but they're good secondary weapons.

Now that you know how to climb the ladder to greatness, what happens when you stumble into a slump? All athletes hit them. Most just keep playing until things improve, often not even knowing what they're trying to correct. If you find yourself in a slump, chances are you can blame it on one or more of racquetball's mortal sins—an erratic swing, planting the front foot too soon, hitting only with the arm and shoulder, a mistimed wrist snap, offering too many plums off the back wall, not killing or pinching enough and taking your eye off the ball. If you can combine a lot of enthusiasm with a little dedication, you can recognize those problems and start correcting them. Your slump can be over by the time the other guy comes back from the water fountain.

One more thing—don't forget to warm up. Tight muscles can only inhibit the kind of swing you want to develop. So try a few stretches and knee bends, then rally awhile before you begin keeping score. (The pros warm up until they sweat.) Now go to the head of your racquetball class.