We were discussing which sport allowed the greatest velocity of the ball, and while I guessed lacrosse, a friend insists it is hai alai. Does anyone know?
Your friend is right. 180mph - nearly twice as fast as the quickest bowlers in cricket; more than one-third up on the fastest tennis servers.
There was a previous thread Sports That Attain Highest Speeds (non-racing). Waterman posted a link saying that badminton had the highest recorded speed of 199 mph, with jai alai coming in second with 188 mph, and tennis third with 163.6 mph.
Wiki claims badminton has speeds up to 206 mph:
Badmitton is faster? I still would prefer to be hit in the head with a shuttlecosk than a jai alai ball.
I’m having a really difficult time picturing this. Are we talking about the game you play with your cousin at the reunion where you use cheap rackets to knock a little plastic winged thing back and forth over a net stretched out across the backyard?
I’d rather be hit by a photon.
In essence yes but internationally this is a serious sport and some people can really thwack that birdie. A German friend of mine was nationally ranked there & twisted her ankle playing, which was a little funny to us at first (badminton injury!) but the more she told us about the game the more obvious it became that it’s a serious sport with some real athletes, not just for picnics.
I visited a German friend of mine in Muenster once, and she invited me to play badminton with a group. My thought was the same as yours. We played at a health club on an indoor court. Those people are serious. I totally got my ass kicked. A serious badminton game moves as fast as racquetball, although I must say I am shocked at the speeds quoted here.
I can’t see why it’s big problem. The raquets are pretty long an a shuttlecock weighs next to nothing. The design of the shuttlecock means that they will get real slow real quick, making the game actually playable at a reasonable pace.
What about golf? How fast is the ball moving when it leaves the tee?
Of course, a badmitton birdie isn’t exactly a “ball”, either, so the claim as stated by the OP is still intact.
If you fire a projectile at at 45-degree angle to the vertical, it’ll hit the ground again at a distance d given by d = v[sup]2[/sup]/g, where v is the initial velocity and g is the acceleration due to gravity. An exceptionally good golf drive will carry the ball around 400 yards, and if you plug that in it corresponds to an inital velocity of about 130 MPH.
Of course, there’s oodles & oodles of complicating factors that I’m neglecting here, most notably air resistance and head/tailwinds. You could conceivably add another 10-20% to this velocity to account for these, but I don’t think you’d get up to 180 MPH.
It’s always struck me as funny, but the backyard game is about as close to professional badminton as wiffleball is to professional baseball. I remember watching some badminton during the 2004 Olympics, and it didn’t look anything like what I remember playing.
True, but you hit it, so it’s sort of ball with accessories.
Exactly. I think the speed quoted must be instantaneous at the moment it leaves the racket, after which it decays quickly. In jai alai those speeds are sustained.
A more interesting question might be, what sport has the fastest ball when it hits you? Or even more interesting, what sports ball has the highest kinetic energy when it hits you? 
It’s my understanding that a golf ball actually travels further than what would be implied by ballistic flight at its initial speed, due to a turbulent lift effect produced by the dimples. Or, to state it the other way around, its initial speed is less than would be implied by ballistic flight at its distance.
Paintball balls don’t count, then?
Paintballs can move at 300 ft/sec or more which is over 200 mph. Speeds are usually kept a little lower for safety.
Sigh :rolleyes: