This is a game for 3 or more players which uses the front half of the court and one rear quarter thus leaving the other rear quarter from which to serve and as the out of play safe area for the non-players to wait for their turn.

This description assumes the serve is from the right hand service box and the right hand rear quarter is the safe zone. Non-players should stand against the rear wall behind the service box so as not to interfere with the service.

A player does a normal serve into the opposite rear quarter where it is received by another player and the rally commences. The rallies must take place in the 3/4 court, all of the front half of the court and the left-hand rear quarter where the service was received. The rally continues until a fault. If the ball lands first bounce in the right-hand rear quarter (the safe zone in this example) or on the short or centre line around it, the ball is called out.

When a rally is completed the winner positions herself to receive the serve in the left-hand rear quarter. The loser goes to the safe area and joins the queue or non-players. The next in line non-player becomes the server and serves from the right-hand service box to commence the next rally.

Rally winners always receive serves. If a player wins a succession of rallies (and therefore points) they continue to receive serves until they eventually lose a rally and join the queue in the safe zone. Rally losers join the end of the queue of non-players and the front of the queue delivers the next serve.

Each rally won scores a point. Each player is responsible for keeping their own score. When one of the players reaches an agree score (often 7 or 9) the game switches to the other side of the court. In this case the serves would be taken for the left-hand service box and the left-hand rear quarter becomes the safe zone.

Non-players should keep tight to the back wall. Although if a ball enters the safe zone on its first bounce it is called out and the rally is over, if the ball bounces short of the safe zone and is therefore still in play, the player attempting to return it could do so from within the safe zone. If there is any danger of a non-player interfering with the player’s swing than a let should be called. In no circumstances should a back wall boast be attempted!

This game is useful for a number or reasons. It enables 3 or more players to share a court and get a good game. It gives players a break to recover when they lose a rally and join the non-player queue. While in the safe zone that can observe the two players rallying and hopefully learn from their successes and failure,look for strengths and weaknesses and try to exploit these when playing.

I would say this variation of the game works best with 3 or 4 players as larger numbers makes the safe zone rather crowded and the time as non-player can become quite long, especially if the rallies are lengthy. If there are only 3 players and they are all reasonably experienced and mobile, the full court could be used (i.e. no safe zone). In this case the non-player is an attentive and active participant in that they need to follow the rally and make sure they keep out of the way and not impede the players in any way. If in doubt, lets should be called. As in the 3/4 game described above, the rally winner continues to receive serve and the rally loser becomes the non-player until its his turn to serve again.