When less is more (or fewer is greater)

To win a racquetball game, you have to score more points than your opponent. So over a racquetball match winner will usually score more points than the match loser. But not necessarily, as you can lose games big and win close, which could produce a total score that is not in your favor even though you win more games.

In 14 International Racquetball Tour (IRT) events last season, the player who won the match had few points than his opponent 11 times. But this season in 2 IRT events, this has happened 6 times already.

The lowest point difference between players so far this season has been in Javier Moreno's win over Chris Crowther by scores of 11-7, 1-11, 11-8, 1-11, 11-4, so Moreno scored 6 fewer points than Crowther, but still carried the day.

That's almost as efficient a win as possible, as Moreno scored only 35 points in winning the match (33 is the minimum necessary to win a match of that's best of five games to eleven points).

The Moreno-Crowther match is also remarkable, because they scored only 76 total points over five games. Last season only two five game matches had fewer than 76 points (and two more had 76 points).

Just more evidence that the expected doesn't always happen in sports.

Follow the bouncing ball....