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Step aside, pickleball.
Tennis Channel founder Steve Bellamy, with the support of hotel heir Tony Pritzker, motivational speaker Tony Robbins and Star Trek actor Chris Pine, is launching a new racquet sport called typti.
Typti is played on pickleball courts, but uses a foam ball instead of hard plastic. Although the ball doesn’t travel as fast, the sport allows for longer rallies and longer putts than pickleball, which tends to revolve around wavy, compact shots close to the net, Bellamy said in an interview. Like tennis, typti uses a stringed racket.
Typti players in action.
“If tennis and badminton had a baby, this would be typical,” Bellamy said.
The entrepreneur, who was president of Kodak’s motion picture business for nine years, launched his new company, Typti Inc. It has nearly 80 investors, including actor Kyle MacLachlan, director JJ Abrams and comedian Tiffany Haddish.
He declined to say how much it had increased.
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The effort is an attempt to expand on the growing interest in pickleball, which was created in 1965 and has exploded in popularity decades later during the COVID-19 pandemic as people seek out outdoor activities. There are now tens of thousands of such courts around the world.
Typti is less noisy than pickleball due to its foam ball, and its noise often draws complaints from neighbors. Like that sport, typti is relatively simple to learn and easy on the body, Bellamy said.
Typti’s backers plan to run a professional circuit, with prize money starting at US$100,000 ($149,000).
Bloomberg
