Soft tennis

Soft tennis, in which a hollow, soft rubber ball is hit over a net with a racket, is a ball game that diverged and developed not long after the emergence of lawn tennis – the modern game of tennis. It uses courts of the same size as lawn tennis and rackets similar in shape to lawn tennis. It can be played in either singles or doubles, but the latter is far more common. The sport started in Japan and has spread to the rest of Asia as well as Eastern Europe. The ball is made out of the same rubber used by lawn tennis balls, but it is not covered with felt. This makes the balls lighter and subsequently more susceptible to wind. They also spin far more easily than lawn tennis balls.

The development of this sport is unique within the context of racquet sport in that it has developed almost exclusively as a doubles sport. In the course of its development, positional specialization increased, but in recent years, all-around play has been introduced mainly from overseas leading to diversification of the sport. In the mid-1990s, singles was officially adopted and has continued to the present day. In 2003, there was a major rule revision and the game became far more similar to lawn tennis.