Road tennis
A Bajan invention
Forget Wimbledon, Barbados’ national sport is tennis without the lawn. Road tennis was invented in Barbados in the 1930s as a street version of tennis that was accessible to those that lacked the privileges of race, class and wealth. Its popularity has spread to other Caribbean islands and even to parts of the US and Canada, and it’s taught in schools now.
A mix between (lawn) tennis and table tennis, it’s a fast-moving game. Using oversized wooden table-tennis bats, the two opponents bounce a tennis ball (minus the fur) before batting it across an eight-inch “net” (often a wooden plank) – as in table tennis, on a 20-feet x 10-feet (roughly 6m x 3m) court. A match is best of three sets – a set being the first to 21 points.
Courts were originally painted on the road. These days, there are more dedicated painted cement courts – at Bush Hall, in the suburbs of Bridgetown, where the national championships are held, by the fish market at Oistins and at Dover Beach in St Lawrence Gap, for example. Just follow the noise when evening competitions are happening and you’ll get caught up in the excitement.