Racquetball doesn't have too many large scale events.  I'm really perplexed as to why, but I believe it mainly comes down to money.  The logistics involved with setting up a grand slam event is huge.  With Outdoor racquetball, I would think that it would be easier to squeeze into existing venues.

This past weekend there was a Venice beach event.  Ektelon and WOR put it on and and Shawn Royster at Royster productions videoed everything in High Definition with 10 camera's rolling.  To me this sounded like the first grand slam outdoor exhibition.  It seemed like the matches went well and the crowds were there and there was only one accident with Son Nyugen get a racquet to the face.  Son ended up with a few stiches but no worse for the wear so all in all a successful event...right?

While I'm glad everyone played well and Son's OK, I'm also really interested in the crowd. Whats the court look like? Where was it positioned? Were there bleachers? Where did people watch from? How close were you to the other event? Did they not care that you guys were doing something that potentially stole their viewers, or was it cohesive? Was the ball more visible through the HDTV content, with the built court? While everyone keeps calling it an event, I'd hope that someone else out there was treating it more of an experiment to see if it would be feasible to pull more of these events off in other high traffic locales.

My main points would be:

• Would having racquetball and another sport together increase both sport's attendance?
• Was the high traffic helpful in attracting people, and how long did those people stick around?
• Was anyone polled about anything? (Would you pay for a ticket to watch this? How interesting is the game to you? Would you like to learn the rules? Have you ever played?)

When Son got hurt 1/3 of the crowd was lost. Nothing against Son's injury, but did they just get bored with nothing going on? How much time elapsed? With 300 people watching, and losing 100 of them...that's huge. These types of things could happen in the future and there needs to be a plan (maybe another match going, or bring another match on, or maybe make the models dance around on trampolines).