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What keeps the average sedentary young executive from toning up at court tennis is mainly that there are only twelve courts in the U. S., and a proper court costs some $100,000, must be plastered with a secret British cement apocryphally said to be made from silt from the bed of the Thames. Courts are 110 ft. long, 38 ft. wide, with a net-covered recess behind the server's court called a dedans, in which the spectators sit. On the left of the server's court, and continuing along the same wall beyond the low-slung net into the hazard court, are other recesses called galleries and doors. Behind the receiver is another slot called a grille. Sloping down toward the court over these recesses and over the wall behind the receiver is a shedlike roof called a penthouse. The server serves the ball with a mighty cut, the deadliest trick being to make the ball backspin when it hits the penthouse roof and drop to the court "like a poached egg, limp, lifeless and with little bound." If this fails and a rally starts, the players may try to sink the ball in certain of the apertures for points.
Craftiest player in the U. S., and perhaps in the world, was the late Jay Gould, whose father imported the world's best professionals to teach him the game and who was supreme in this country from 1906 through 1925. Ogden Phipps is the game's current U. S. ranking amateur.
A racquets court costs only $50,000, has no royal recesses, is a 60-by-30-ft., four-wall court in which its few devotees play the fastest racquet game of all. The bats have small circular heads with long shafts, cost about $8, break at an alarming rate. The balls, worth about 60¢, are made of tightly wrapped strips of cloth wound with twine and covered like a baseball, are slightly smaller than a golf ball, have put players' eyes out. With recovering, costing about 10¢, balls can be made to last for 100 years. Played like four-wall handball, kin to pelota, pallone and other Basque games, it was probably originated by bored debtors in Fleet Street prison about 1800. Like court tennis, it was soon taken over by the notably solvent, is now the luxury of a comparative handful in the U. S. on 14 courts in exclusive clubs. Main U. S. racqueteer is a Manhattan broker, Robert Grant III.
Squash tennis and squash racquets are played on the same size court, are pretty much the same game, a foreshortened variety of racquets with not so much breakage. Courts can be built for as low as $3,000. Squash racquets is played with a shorter, sturdier variety of racquets bat. The ball looks about like a handball but is lighter.