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Totem tennis

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"Swingball" redirects here. For the cricket technique, see Swing bowling. Racquet ball game This article is about the game in which the ball is hit with a racket. For the game in which the ball is hit with the hand, see Tetherball.
Two children playing swingball

Totem tennis (also known as tether tennis or swingball) is a game where two players use racquets to strike a tennis or sponge ball which has been attached with string to the top of a vertical pole. The pole is either driven into soft ground or anchored with a heavy base.

Illustration of tether tennis (1904)

Tether tennis has been known since the early 1900s.

The British company Mookie Toys claims that in 1993 it acquired the global rights for the Swingball brand, the product sold since 1974. In Mookie Toys Swingball, there is a helical coil of wire at the top of the pole and the competitors hit the ball clockwise or anticlockwise around the pole to make it go up or down the coil, the winner being the person who gets the ball to their end of the coil, top or bottom.

Other commercial swingball toys have a rotating component to attach the string, so that it does not wrap around the pole.

The mother of British tennis star Andy Murray asserts that part of Andy's success may be attributed to swingball he used to play at their home in Scotland in early childhood.

The game was once sold in the United States under the name Zimm Zamm.

References

  1. Davies, Liz. "Too young for grandchildren thank you very much..." Abergavenny Chronicle.
  2. Emma Elizabeth Walker, "Beauty Through Hygiene: Common Sense Ways to Health for Girls", 1904, pp. 53-55
  3. "About Mookie Toys". mookie.co.uk. UK. Archived from the original on 2014-10-31. Retrieved 2014-10-31.
  4. "Swingball" Archived 2014-11-01 at the Wayback Machine at the outdoortoys.org.uk website
  5. Ferguson, Brian (February 8, 2012). "Andy Murray: I owe success to swingball". The Scotsman. Retrieved September 5, 2014.

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