Prof. Msgr. Vladimir Felzmann aka Father Vlad 

still working to help God make this World a better place 

Tennis traces its origins back centuries, to the introduction of racquets in the 16th century in England and before that to the 12th century of France, where the basic parameters of tennis were defined. The modern era of the sport started in 1875, when a club in England codified the “Rules of Lawn Tennis,” and those rules were adopted by London’sAll England Lawn Tennis & Croquet Club in 1877 for a tournament that we now know as Wimbledon. Tennis is a global sport, popular in every continent, with pro tour events held around the world.

Pickleball is a racquet sport played with solid faced paddles and customized plastic balls with holes drilled for aerodynamics. Pickleball is primarily played on hard courts, often using one side of a tennis court with pickleball’s lines chalked out. Pickleball can be played on clay, hardwood floors, and other surfaces, but its plastic ball does not generally bounce high enough to provide a decent playing experience unless played on a harder surface like a tennis hard court. Like Tennis, pickleball courts have two sides split by a net, with lines painted onto the surface to mark the playing area in general along with service zones and a feature unique to pickleball called the “Non Volley Zone.”

Pickleball was invented in the mid-1960s by three neighbours from Bainbridge Island outside of Seattle, Washington. The families, looking for activities to occupy their bored children on summer break, cobbled together various pieces of equipment from around the property (including ping pong paddles and a baseball whiffle ball) and used an existing badminton court outline already chalked onto their driveway. The name was coined by one of the mothers, calling the sport “Pickle Ball” in an homage to the term “Pickle Boat” in crew racing (which is a boat comprised of non-starting oarsmen, thrown together for a competition). Pickleball is most popular within the United States and Canada, but is experiencing growth around the world, especially in Australia, China, and parts of Europe.

There are similarities Between Tennis and Pickleball. Both sports are net-based racquet sport games that utilize ground strokes, volleying, and a combination of power and control to succeed. Both make heavy use of spin at various points in the game. Both Pickleball and Tennis are played on flat surfaces with defined playing lines and service areas. Both feature singles and doubles play.

The primary differences between the two sports are the playing dimensions of the courts, service, scoring, and playing rules, and the equipment used.

Tennis uses a larger court, a 36x78 foot court, with a taller net (which ranges from 36” high at mid-court to 42” tall at the posts). Tennis courts typically include doubles alleys, while pickleball courts do not have such lines or differentiate between a “singles” court and a “doubles” court construction.

Pickleball uses a much smaller court; a 20x44 foot footprint (which is the same size as a standard international badminton court, from which the court was adapted). A pickleball net is 34” at the centre and 36” along the poles. A pickleball court is small enough that two (and sometimes four) can fit into the footprint of one tennis court.

Tennis uses service lines that are adjacent to the net, and a tennis serve is generally done with an overhead motion that aggressively puts the ball in play. You have two serves to get the ball in. Tennis is scored in games and sets with its unique 15-30-40-game points calculations. Pickleball service boxes extend from the non-volley zone line all the way to the baseline of the court. Serves must be struck with an underhanded motion and contact cannot be made above the waist. Serves in pickleball were not intended to be offensive weapons, though they have become so in the modern adaptation of the game. Players get just one serve in pickleball; if the serve is missed, then the service attempt is forfeited. 

Points are scored while serving, and games are generally played to 11 or 15, with by two. Doubles scoring is unique in pickleball, where the server number is included in the score. For example, a server may call out the score by saying “7-5-2.” This indicates that the serving team is leading 7-5 on points, and that the server is the second server. Pickleball has both singles and doubles, though the far more popular method of play is doubles.

Pickleball’s court is unique in that it contains a section nearest to the net called the “Non Volley Zone.” These 7-foot boxes on either side of the net, nicknamed “The Kitchen,” are areas where players cannot be standing within while hitting the ball out of the air. This zone, which doesn’t exist in Tennis, prevents players from poaching balls and slamming them while standing at the net, which introduces a level of patience in pickleball that isn’t seen in its cousin sports.

Tennis uses a stringed racquet. Tennis racquets have evolved from being made of wood, to using various types of metals like aluminium and graphite, and are not mostly comprised of composite metals designed to reduce weight but maintain durability. Tennis racquets are significantly longer than pickleball paddles, averaging 27 inches for most adult racquets and maxing out for legal uses at 29 inches. Tennis uses a 14-psi pressurized rubberized-core ball covered with felt in adult or regular play, which can be propelled at high rates of speed by the stringed racquets (power players can easily hit tennis balls 135-140 MPH on their serve). 

Pickleball paddles feature a solid face construction and have gone through a similar evolution as Tennis racquets. Pickleball began using wood paddles that utilized sandpaper on the face to impart spin (not unlike older table tennis paddles), but now mostly feature waffled cores with composite or carbon-fibre faces that impart necessary spin. Pickleball Paddles are significantly shorter than tennis racquets (capped at 17”) and have maximum total surface area guidelines. 

A pickleball is made of plastic and has varying numbers of holes based on whether the ball is meant to be played indoors or outdoors; outdoor balls have more, smaller holes, while indoor balls have fewer, larger holes. There are playing variations between the leading balls on the market; some are stiffer and play faster (but will crack more quickly), while others are softer and play slower (but which go out-of-round or become warped/lopsided more quickly). These variations are significant enough that some players’ games are more well suited to faster versus slower balls, and slower balls will result in prolonged rallies during play.

If you’re a tennis player who enjoys the serve-and-volley game, or enjoys playing doubles, then Pickleball will be a great sport for you to try. Pickleball does not require the athleticism that tennis does when playing doubles, and it has become a very popular and social sport for retirees and former tennis players who have aged out of the sport athletically. Singles pickleball requires significant athleticism and has become a common entry point for new pros trying to convert from tennis.

Korfball(Dutch:korfbal) is a ball sport, with similarities tone ball and basketball. It is played by two teams of eight players with four female players and four male players in each team. The objective is to throw a ball into a netless basket that is mounted on a 3.5m (11.5 feet) high pole.

The sport was invented by Dutch school teacherNico Broekhuysenin 1902. In the Netherlands there are approximately 500 clubs and more than 90,000 people playing korfball. The sport is also played in Belgium and Taiwan, and in nearly 70 other countries.

In 1902,Nico Broekhuysen, a Dutch school teacher fromAmsterdam, was sent to Nääs, a town in Sweden, to follow an educational course about teaching gymnastics to children. This is where he was introduced to the Swedish game "ringboll". In ringboll one could score points by throwing the ball through a ring that was attached to a 3m pole. Men and women played together, and the field was divided into three zones. Players could not leave their zone. 

When Broekhuysen returned to Amsterdam he decided to teach his students a similar game. He replaced the ring with a basket (for which the Dutch word iskorformand), so it was easier to see whether or not a player had scored. Broekhuysen also simplified the rules so that children could understand and play the game. Thus, korfball was born. The main idea was the same as ringboll, but the new sport now stood on its own.

The oldest still existing korfball club never to have merged with any other club is a Dutch korfball clubH.K.C. ALO fromThe Hague, Netherlands. H.K.C. ALO was founded on 1 February 1906. 

Korfball was featured as a demonstration sport in the Summer Olympics of1920and1928. 

TheInternational Korfball Federation was founded in 1933 in Antwerp, Belgium.

Korfball is played in 69 countries including the United States, China, England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Australia, New Zealand, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Ukraine, Greece, Serbia, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Malawi, India, The Netherlands, Belgium, Nigeria, Morocco, Ghana, Russia, Germany, Taiwan, Turkey, Hong Kong, Portugal, Pakistan, India, Sweden, Hungary, Philippines, Indonesia, Italy, Spain, France and Romania. 

Korfball has been played in theWorld Games since 1985. IKF World Korfball Championships have been held every four years since 1978. The leading nations are the Netherlands, Taiwan and Belgium.

Hong Kong hosted its first international tournament, the IKF Asia Oceania Korfball Championship, in 2006. New Zealand hosted the IKF Asia Oceania Youth Korfball Championships in 2007.

Korfball is played inside in winter and outdoors in spring, summer and autumn.

The size of the indoor court is 20m ×40m (22yd ×44yd), as are most outdoor courts. The court is divided into halves called zones. In each zone is a 3.5m (11ft) tall post with a basket at the top. This is positioned two-thirds of the distance between the centre line and the back of the zone. 

The ball is very similar to the one used in association football, with a circumference of 68.0-70.5cm (or diameter of 21.75-22.45cm), a weight of 445-475 grams, and a bounce height of 1.10-1.30 meters when dropped from a height of 1.80 meters.

A korfball team consists of eight players: four female and four males. 

An international korfball match typically consists of two halves or four periods, with the length varying depending on the competition. When the match consists of halves, the duration is typically 25 minutes, with periods typically between 7 and 10 minutes, with a one-minute break between the first and second periods and between the third and fourth periods. At half time the break is five or ten minutes. 

Four players of each team are in one zone and the other four are in the other zone. Within each zone, a player may only defend a member of the opposite team of the same gender.

At the beginning of the match, one team chooses a particular half of the court. That half will be that team's defending zone, with "their" basket in it. Players score by throwing the ball through the opposing team's basket. After two goals, the teams change zones: defenders become attackers and attackers become defenders. In between those zone-changes, attackers cannot set foot on their defending zone or vice versa. At half time the teams swap halves of the court.

The rules prevent physical strength dominating the game. Blocking, tackling, and holding are not allowed, nor is kicking the ball.

Once a player has the ball, that player cannot dribble or walk with it; however, the player can move one foot as long as the foot on which the player landed when catching the ball stays in the same spot. Therefore, tactical and efficient teamwork is required, because players need each other in order to keep the ball moving.

A player may not attempt to score when defended, which occurs when the defender is in between the opponent and the basket, is facing his/her opponent, or is within arm's length and attempting to block the ball. This rule encourages fast movement while also limiting the impact of players' height compared to their opponents.

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