Racketlon has seen great success in the last decade, expanding from our sport’s traditional heartland of Europe to other continents.
Among other highlights, India hosted the World Tour Finals at the iconic Willingdon club in Mumbai; India, USA, Hong Kong all staged international tournaments and sent very strong squads to the World Championships; and New Zealand and Australia have hosted international tournaments.
One continent that is, alas, still relatively unexplored terrain in racketlon terms is Africa – and so we are happy to report that, after a long, COVID-affected hiatus, South Africa is making waves on the racketlon scene again.
Last year, the University of Cape Town hosted the SAT South African Open, which smashed the record of biggest Satellite tournament ever! Of the 76 entries all but John Spinks and Graham King hail from South Africa.
So does this herald more involvement for the Rainbow Nation in future World Championships and the international racketlon community?! We sat down with finalist in the Elite Category, Roscoe Kerby, to find out.
“I think it would be an amazing experience and fantastic to play some of the international guys. It was great that Jon came down to play at the South African Open and we’d love to play against the guys from Great Britain.”
However, South Africa is of course a very long way from Europe. Indeed, from any other international racketlon tournaments at present, which presents logistical difficulties, so Roscoe suggested that Racketlon South Africa should look and sponsorship and government funding, with the help of an official FIR invite.
He added, “I am very excited to potentially have South Africa in international racketlon and very excited for the future of racketlon. I hope that it does grow and I hope padel doesn’t steal too many players. So very excited to grow racketlon hopefully in South Africa and globally!
Roscoe’s love of racket sports starts from childhood, having begun tennis at the tender age of just four.
He explains, “My mom was a tennis coach. So I started at the young age of four and I just fell in love with it. I played competitive tennis from as soon as you could, basically.”
“I think under-nine was probably the first tournament and then I got into squash quite early on as well, probably around 11/12, and I played provincial for both tennis and squash.
“I also love table tennis. I was big into the table tennis. That was more of a of a hobby. But I was fortunate enough to be in the table tennis classroom for our registration class, which was cool. So I got to play table tennis every day in high school.”
He picked up racketlon early, at just 12, and has had the bug ever since.
“I love all the racket sports,” he says. “Starting a bit of padel as well recently and I did all the racketon tournaments all the way from under-12 all the way through to the under-21 and now the Open. I’ve been very involved with racketlon and just love it. I think it’s a fantastic sport.”
In the South African Open, he progressed top of his group (there were four groups of four), dropping only one set (to Graham King in a 11-10, 10-11, 11-5, 11-0 win).
He then beat Geevarghese Panicker in the semi-final 10-11, 11-7, 11-1 to set up a final with Jon Spinks, who had, by lucky coincidence, arranged a holiday to South Africa anyway, landing in Cape Town, then heard the news of the tournament and joined.
Disappointed with his badminton, Roscoe lost 21-8, 21-4, 12-21, 12-21, but credits great play from the Brit and really enjoyed the tournament, saying, “I really loved the tournament. I always do. Thank you to Patrick Kalous and Graham King for all their effort towards organizing it. They were fantastic.”
“Patrick’s always been very involved and he’s a fantastic organizer and a great racketlon player himself and so is Graham obviously, being one of the world’s best seniors.”
Here’s hoping the success of the tournament can help the Rainbow Nation find some international racketlon gold, literal (medals) or proverbial. There are talks ongoing, so watch this space…
