Standard Tennis vs. Paddle Tennis

Paddle Tennis
Photo by Oliver Sjöström on Unsplash

As senior manager of brand partnerships with SHE Media in New York City, Beecher Scarlett builds upon a long and successful career in the television industry. He has served as an account executive with NBC Universal, TVGN, and 20th Century Fox. Outside of the professional arena, Beecher Scarlett is an avid paddle tennis player.

From deck tennis to pickleball, more and more people are playing variations of tennis. Created by Frank Peer Beal in Albion, Michigan, paddle tennis began as a children’s playground game in the late 1800s. Although the rules of paddle tennis play are, by and large, quite similar to traditional tennis, the paddle tennis court and equipment used are substantially different.

While a tennis court measures 78 by 27 feet, the much smaller paddle tennis court measures 50 by 20 feet. Court details, such as the distance from service line to service line, are also different.

Paddle tennis players also use entirely different equipment than tennis players do. Unlike traditional tennis, which requires a stringed racquet, paddle tennis, true to its name, requires players to use a solid paddle that may contain small perforations. Although paddle tennis players use standard tennis balls, these must include a puncture hole in order to reduce internal pressure. When dropped from 6 feet, a paddle tennis ball should bounce off the court to a height of 31 to 33 inches.

The Origins of Lacrosse

A sales account executive for 13 years, Beecher Scarlett served as a vice president at the TVGN network in New York City. When away from work, Beecher Scarlett coaches youth lacrosse, a game with roots going back hundreds of years. 

The sport’s origins are unclear. Europeans in North America in the 1630s observed Native Americans playing a game in which they carried a ball to a goal in a netted racket. Little is known about these early games' rules, styles of play, or strategies. Some believe the game may date back to Central American peoples.

Many Native American tribes played what came to be known as lacrosse, including those in the Southeast, western Great Lakes, and around the St. Lawrence Seaway. Some accounts mention competition in what became California and British Columbia. It is known that the game had significance beyond simple recreation. Some peoples used it to settle disputes, and it is still used for healing.

Three types of sticks were popular. The longest sticks were used by the Iroquois and New England tribes and are considered the basis of the modern lacrosse stick.

White Canadians adopted the game in the mid-19th century. Queen Victoria watched a match in 1867 and said the game was “pretty to watch.” At the turn of the 20th century lacrosse was played in the Summer Olympics. In 2017 it was estimated that some 826,000 Americans played lacrosse.