Last week the International Racquetball Federation (IRF) announced rule changes for their events moving forward. The changes are across three areas: (i) divisions offered, (ii) appeals, and most importantly, (iii) the scoring system. We’re going to address these areas in reverse order, so let’s start with scoring first, as it’s the most drastic change.
Rally scoring
The IRF is switching to rally scoring, so each rally will result in a point (unless there’s a hinder). To score a point previously, a player needed to serve and win the rally. Now points can be won by either player or team regardless of who served. Other sports - volleyball and squash, for example - have made this change previously.
In meetings at last year’s IRF World Championship, it was announced that this change was likely to happen, and the rationale was that multi-sport games wanted sports to have time certainty for their competitions. That is, a large organized games (e.g., the Olympics) wants to know how long matches are going to take, so as to better plan their competition schedules. With sports that play with a time limit (e.g., soccer & basketball) one has a sense of how long things will take, but in sports with a scoring limit (e.g., volleyball & squash) how long a match takes can be less certain. Rally scoring is proposed as a way to bring certainty to match length, and the hope is that matches will take less than 60 min.
The IRF explicitly states this in their announcement: “many times our matches are too long… That negatively affects … Racquetball in Olympic Chain tournaments [read: multi-sport games].” They also suggest that people unfamiliar with racquetball find it difficult to follow scoring under the previous rules.
We’re not opposed to rally scoring in principle, but whether matches are actually too long is a judgment call. Also, changing your sport because other entities demand it is really a ‘tail wagging the dog’ situation, even if the desired goal (inclusion in multi-sport games) is a worthy one.
The nature of racquetball is different from other sports that have gone to rally scoring. Volleyball matches have a lot of sideouts, so when teams needed to serve to score, it took a long time to accumulate points, as serving isn’t a big advantage in winning rallies. Squash is similar, as high level players rarely serve aces. Serving in racquetball, as in tennis, is a major advantage.
Also, racquetball rallies are brief. Generally, a racquetball rally lasts 5 sec. Ideally, a strong serve forces a weak return, followed by rally ending shot. Repeat as necessary. Thus, it’s like a sprint. Squash is more like a series of marathons with the serve just starting the rally. Tennis is in between: aces are common, as are long rallies.
With that in mind, we were concerned that rally scoring was going to be done with the existing best of three games format, which would mean matches that would be far too brief. Even though racquetball is like a sprint, you want there to be many sprints, not just a few.
Thankfully, the IRF will use a best of 5 games format with games to 15 points, although they’re keeping their win by 1 point rule, which The Racquetball Blog has long been opposed to (if you’re not going to win by one at the start, then don’t play win by one at the end). But then if a tie-breaker is needed, the 5th game will be to 11 points and win by 2 points. For a change that is supposed to make things clearer for the general observer it’s strange to change the breaker in two ways from the other games, although win by two, so yay!
Tie-breakers in volleyball are to fewer points - 15 rather than 25, and in squash, a fifth game tie-breaker is to 11 points just like the first four games. Both volleyball and squash play with a win by 2 rule, as does every other sport that plays to scoring limit. Racquetball is the scoring unicorn.
In moving to rally scoring, players will be allowed only one timeout per game, which is a reduction from the two previously allowed. That could make a difference in when to call a timeout. Previously with two timeouts in a game to 15, a five point difference was a common guide as to when to call a timeout, but that might not be a good rule of thumb if you only have one timeout.
Thus, you might want to wait longer before calling a timeout, when you only have one. But with rally scoring you expect each game to be briefer, so maybe you don’t want to wait longer. Maybe you want to call it sooner. Certainly, when you are behind in rally scoring, especially behind late, it can be difficult to come back. Reducing the timeouts complicates things.
Appeals
Players may make two appeals per game, but the play they want to appeal must be the last action of the rally. Thus, no more playing a rally out and then appealing the serve, for example, or playing through what could later be appealed for as a hinder. This means players need to be certain of what they think happened.
Both reducing timeouts and changing what can be appealed reduce the input a coach may have during a game. Fewer timeouts means there are fewer chances to talk to the player, and with players having to stop during a rally to make an appeal immediately after the action in question, it’s difficult to also look back to a coach for input on whether to make an appeal.
But in general, allowing appeals for only the last action in a rally - that is, immediate appeals - does clarify what is being appealed, and is easier to follow. Too often observers - and perhaps line judges and the referee - aren’t clear on what is being appealed when the appeal happens at the end of the rally for something that happened several shots earlier.
New divisions
Finally, the IRF will be adding divisions to some of its competitions. Specifically, there will be Mixed Doubles at events. This will help make racquetball “more inclusive and interesting for women to play.” Mixed doubles has been played in competitive tennis and badminton for many years, but not often in racquetball, although some years back, World Juniors did have Mixed Doubles divisions.
Speaking of World Juniors, the IRF will be including U21 at World Juniors beginning in 2022. This will be part of the World Cup divisions along with U18 and U16, which means that U14 will no longer be part of the World Cup divisions. U14 will be included in the Espirit Cup along with U12 and U10.
Introducing U21 is intended to help retain players who have aged out of what was previously their junior years, but perhaps have not developed enough to make their senior National Teams. This is a good goal, although all sports lose athletes in the years 18-22, as that’s a period when the lives of people change, so what was once a priority may no longer be a priority. That includes sports, and it doesn’t matter how skilled the person was at the sport. But if offering another competitive opportunity for racquetball players could keep more people playing, then it’s a good thing to do.
Ramifications
Will other racquetball organizations change to align themselves with what the IRF is doing? In years past, there was little interest from the pro tours in doing so. For decades, the International Racquetball Tour (IRT) used a best of five games to 11 win by 2 match format that made it different from both USA Racquetball and IRF events. The Ladies Professional Racquetball Tour (LPRT) also used that format for many years, although they’ve used several match formats over the years.
In recent years, both pro tours moved to the best of 3 games format, and the LPRT did so specifically to be consistent with IRF matches. We’re OK with the pro tours being different. We didn’t think it was a problem when they had different match formats than the IRF. But if people are interested in consistency across the sport, then maybe the IRF changes will be picked up by other organizations. However, the rally scoring format is a big change that could freak out some traditionalists, so it may be resisted.
Overall, we think the IRF rule changes are positive. The rally scoring match format may need some adjustment - perhaps every game should be to 15 and win by 2? We think the IRF is open to making adjustments after an initial year of rally scoring, because they can’t really be certain how this is going to shake down. But adding clarity to the appeal process as well as some additional divisions in competitions will be a good thing.
Follow the bouncing balls…..
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