The big advantage of table tennis over lawn tennis is that you always know if the ball was in or not. There are no arguments. There’s either a “ping” as the ball hits the table, or there’s a “pong” when the ball hits the floor. There is no middle ground.

Lawn tennis suffers from this lack of precision. Heated exchanges arise over whether or not a shot was “in”: relationships are broken, lifelong friendships severed – all of which may detract from the flow of the game itself.

The solution is simple. Take a normal tennis court, and dig a three foot wide, three foot deep trench around it, following that strict yet tenuous chalk line ever so carefully. Players enter via a drawbridge that is immediately raised when they’re both on court

Then let the game commence. Robbed of all ambiguity, misplaced balls simply end up in the trench, thus lending no further momentum to the otherwise endless arguments.

Of course, with this set-up the game does become a little more dangerous. One can imagine the initially empty moats quickly filling up with the tangled corpses of broken ex-players who reached a little too far for that difficult return.

We solve this potential problem by installing trampolines in the trenches. Angled slightly towards the court. So not only are over-zealous players assured a soft landing, expert players can also anticipate the trajectory of the ball and use the trampolines to strategically ensure a death-defying smash from thirty feet above the court.

Extra points for gaining enough loft to slap Cliff Richard in his box.
-- lostdog, Nov 23 2007

I didn't know Cliff Richard wore a box.
-- DenholmRicshaw, Nov 24 2007


So where do stand when you serve or do you bounce on the trampoline?

Also I hate to take the easy way out, but couldn't you just put in a 12" pressure sensor tape around the court? Not that I am against a good moat.

Or if you want something more whimsical, how about a 1" deep moat of thick pudding that would catch the balls if they go out?
-- MisterQED, Nov 24 2007


in table tennis, tho, the ball can hit the edge of the table and go off at an unreturnable angle -- and the pro's often raise their index finger to acknowledge that the point was scored poorly...

also, seems like you don't really need have a drawbridge -- just cover the trench with a metal grate -- and the "clang" noise should indicate when a ball has gone out of bounds. And then you can call Tennis "Cling-Clang" instead of non-table ping-pong.
-- mhh5, Nov 26 2007


[DenholmRickshaw] - I'm fairly sure that Cliff Richard wears a box at all times, in a vain attempt to persuade people that he actually has genitals.

He's probably just all smooth down there, like an Action Man or Barbie doll.
-- lostdog, Dec 02 2007


Fill the trenches with spikes and I'll give you a bun (I hate tennis)
-- simonj, Dec 03 2007


Instead of a moat, you could just line the perimeter of the court with a velcro surface. Tennis balls are naturally fuzzy, so they won't bounce as far if they hit the velcro.
-- Cuit_au_Four, May 16 2008



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