Sport: Racquets’ Return

Racquets, fastest of all games played on foot, nearly twice as fast as squash racquets, is also one of the rarest. In the U.S., where a few hundred play it, only eleven racquets courts exist. Game requirements: a four-walled cement court about twice the length of a squash court; a hard ball (the size of a ping-pong ball, but the consistency of a baseball, it shoots and caroms from wall to wall so rapidly that a marker is needed to call “play” after each fair shot); a supply of racquets, since an average player breaks a racquet a game; players with stamina, timing, fast footwork and a lightning eye.

Eight war-rusty U.S. players and four Canadians paired off last week at Manhattan’s swank Racquet & Tennis Club for the first National Doubles Championships since 1941. Everybody’s footwork and timing was off. But prewar champion Bobby Grant was still one of the most paralyzing hitters the game had ever known. Teamed with Clarence Pell Jr., he whacked shots that nobody even saw until too late, won easily from Richard Leonard and Joe Brooks (see cut) in the finals, 16-13, 15-4, 15-3.