Move over, pickleball.
Steve Bellamy, founder of the Tennis Channel, is launching a new racquet sport, called typti, with backing from hotel heir Tony Pritzker, motivational speaker Tony Robbins and Star Trek actor Chris Pine, among others.
Typti is played on a pickleball court, but uses a foam ball rather than a hard plastic one. Although the ball doesn’t travel as fast, Bellamy said in an interview, the sport allows for extended rallies and longer strokes than pickleball, which tends to revolve around choppy, compact shots close to the net. Like tennis, typti uses a racquet with strings.
Typti players in action.
“If tennis and badminton had a baby, it would be typti,” Bellamy said.
The entrepreneur, who served as president of Kodak’s motion picture film business for nine years, has about 80 investors for his new company Typti Inc., including actor Kyle MacLachlan, director JJ Abrams and comedian Tiffany Haddish.
He declined to say how much he’s raised.
Loading
The effort is an attempt to expand upon the growing interest in pickleball, which was created in 1965 and surged in popularity decades later during the COVID-19 pandemic as people looked for outdoor activities. There are now tens of thousands of such courts globally.
Because of its foam ball, typti is less noisy than pickleball, the din of which often draws complaints from neighbours. Like that sport, Bellamy said, typti is relatively simple to learn and easy on the body.
Typti’s backers plan to operate a professional circuit with prizemoney starting at $US100,000 ($149,000).
Bloomberg
AloJapan.com