This is an interesting article in the US Squash Magazine from August this year – The Little Secret Game. The writer, James Zug, was introduced to UK style racketball by an English coach and loved it. “Earlier this summer, I went to my local club and got on the squash court with Richard Millman, an Englishman who has been coaching in the States for a quarter century. We played hard for about an hour. It was a big, sweaty workout. There were a lot of rallies up and down the side walls and volleys into the nick and cross-courts and lobs. We had only a couple of lets and one stroke. It was a great match. But we weren’t playing squash”. It was, of course, UK racketball. Zug has written a history of squash and found some interesting facts about racketball. The British Racketball Association (BRA) was founded in 1984 and was merged with the older Squash Rackets Association in 1998. In 2009 English Squash renamed itself English Squash and Racketball “to preserve its commercial interests” and in recognition that the sport was a life saver for many clubs after the squash bubble had burst. Now, of course ESR have just changed its name to English Squash on the basis that racketball is just a variant of squash and ‘we are all one squash community”. They claim not to be abandoning racketball but are in consultation with other international squash bodies on renaming it. We’ve been here before apparently. In the past suggestions have included big ball squash, big squash, or even squabble! It will be interesting to see what they come up with. Zug thinks it could be the next big thing in America. Having watched a bit of American Raquetball on Youtube I would say (apart from the resistance of vested interests) it would be no competition.