Welcome to a hard-hitting look at the earliest women amateur and professional racquetball champions, with photos from a dozen personal collections and museums dating back into the 1960s. Back before women’s lib freed blindfolded ladies passing surreptitiously through men’s locker rooms onto the back courts of YMCAs and JCCs and onto the ‘Women’s court’. Private racquet clubs were yet a gleam in some man’s eye, and a handful of the largest biceped women vied with men in the Big Four annual tournaments across the nation: National Singles and Doubles, and National Invitational Singles and Doubles.

The history of women’s racquetball moves like the Pacific from a bashful lap on the shore to a tempest against sea walls. The initial 60s decade was a doldrums on back courts, when a few frustrated college coeds and girlfriends or wives tagged along to practice and tournaments. In the 1970s, females burst upon the racquetball scene and, indeed, were the primary factor in the sport’s meteoric rise. Where the gals went, the guys followed.

The first women’s divisions were held early in the decade, as draw sheets spread on the walls from the lobby to the first women’s locker rooms. Heads turned and many young champions were produced. In mid-decade, the first sponsored player, Kathy Williams—who graces these pages—finally raked in the cash. Janelle Marriott started the first women’s pro tour… and hits a smashing forehand at mid-book.

The Kickoff shot is the first group photo of the WPRA pros at the Long Island, NY, stop, with their hair styles and fashions of the era. The book proudly features 36 photos with one hundred of the best of the early best of the women players, and I am happy to say that I knew and/or trained nearly all of them from California to Alaska to Maine to Florida. I take responsibility for the story captions marshaled from hundreds of emails, Facebook messages, letters, interviews, and our memories.

The shots, snapped by the early sport’s best photographers, vary from classic portraits of the first national champions—Jan Pasternak and Peggy Steding—through a belly dancer and Playmates of the glitz era of racquetball in the 1970s, and on to the ‘prima donnas’… as the 1980s champions referred to one another. In balance, see actress Lana Wood’s stunning grip at the Greatest Racquetball Show on Earth and an action shot of a forehand-backhand by the Canadian ‘Siamese twin ‘ team—who carried home at least one championship cup.

This is a fun, yet nonetheless scholarly, photoessay. Thirty-six shots of the top guns of early racquetball, and all proceeds go to the US Open. From the gallery of time on these pages, may you bring their winning strokes and ways to your game!