Typti, a new sport blending tennis and badminton that’s played on pickleball courts, launched at California Smash Pickleball and Social Club in El Segundo on Monday, Jan. 19.
Steve Bellamy, founder of The Tennis Channel and Typti, was on hand with celebrity supporters to help build the racquet sport to a national pastime — like how pickleball has increasingly become in recent years.
Typti will use the exploding pickleball infrastructure, such as indoor courts like California Smash, to build the sport.
“Star Trek” star Chris Pine, comedian Tiffany Haddish, Academy Award-nominated actor Barbara Hershey, actor and professional tennis player Vince Van Patten, NFL star Marcellus Wiley and “Knots Landing” television star Donna Mills were among the celebrities to help launch Typti on Monday.
Calabasas Pickleball Club will host the first tournament on Feb. 25. In the first year of the the sport’s professional division, there will be more than $500,000 in total prize money, with that expanding to more than $1 million in year two.
“Drive a little bit that way, and there’ll be another one, drive a little bit farther, there will be another one, and I want these to survive by having a second sport that plays on top of them,” Bellamy said about the growth of pickleball courts. “It’s very similar to skiing and snowboarding. Snowboarding came in 1986 and it literally saved skiing, because all those mountains were about ready to go out of business.”
The “most successful pickleball clubs are the ones that have corn hole and have other things that happen other than just pickleball,” Bellamy said.
There is a lot of new technology that went into creating Typti, Bellamy said, with a custom-made racquet, foam ball and a new scoring system for the sport.
A challenge in the future for players, however, might be the equipment, Bellamy said. Typti uses a 22-inch strung racquet with a 3.5-inch diameter channeled foam ball, which is “nearly noiseless,” as compared to pickleball, which uses a paddle and a hollow plastic ball.
“Basically, people have closets full of other gear and now here’s another racquet,” Bellamy said at the event. “The racquet was very important. I spent years prototyping racquets to get the right combination of racquet and ball. We did it. But it does require a different racquet; you can’t swap.
“You’re taking giant rips and big strokes,” he added about Typti, compared to pickleball.
California Smash, meanwhile, opened in the fall, and founder Brett Drogmund said Monday that racquet sports are “making a huge resurgence” and the new pickleball courts are allowing sports to evolve.
“If somebody wants to adopt something new, we’re totally open for it,” Drogmund said. “This looks like a little bit of a faster game, so I’m all for it.
“The more people can get that can be active and get involved, we totally support that.”