# Speed of hai alai ball **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 19, 2006, 1:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/speed-of-hai-alai-ball/357393 "2006-05-19T13:29:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Don\_t\_fight\_the\_hypothetical](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/59ef9b/32.png) [@Don\_t\_fight\_the\_hypothetical](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Don_t_fight_the_hypothetical)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2006, 12:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/speed-of-hai-alai-ball/357393/21 "2006-05-20T00:44:00Z")
Slightly OT. [From here](http://www.golfdigest.com/search/index.ssf?/equipment/gd200305herofit.html): > [@](#): > > Tiger’s ball speed is 180 mph. When the folks at Nike Golf tested him with graphite shafts a while back, his ball speed jumped to nearly 200 mph. ---
**Author:** ![jeffgorc](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ec9cab/32.png) [@jeffgorc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jeffgorc)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2006, 2:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/speed-of-hai-alai-ball/357393/22 "2006-05-20T02:46:15Z")
[QUOTE=garygnu] Sigh :rolleyes: [/QUOTE] Give me a break! Just thought it would be interesting give actual paintball speeds for comparison with the speeds already mentioned even if it was brought up tongue-in -cheek. I think it is a valid answer to the original question. ---
**Author:** ![audiobottle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/bc8723/32.png) [@audiobottle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/audiobottle)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2006, 4:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/speed-of-hai-alai-ball/357393/23 "2006-05-20T04:35:16Z")
[QUOTE=CookingWithGas] 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? 😃 [/QUOTE] After reading this thread I looked on [youtube.com](http://youtube.com) to see if I could find a video of people playing jai alai. I did find a video of the Jackass guys gettng nailed with oranges thrown by some jai alai players. I’m thinking that just having somebody throw an orange at you normally would hurt a bit. [Check out](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foPt1M9Ys4I&search=jai%20alai) Steve-O’s knee after getting knocked down by one. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2006, 5:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/speed-of-hai-alai-ball/357393/24 "2006-05-20T05:41:09Z")
Two posts so far have spelled the word “badmitton” because it’s sometimes pronounced that way. Why the /n/ sound drops out before /t/ is a mystery, because that doesn’t happen with any other words in English with the -nt- consonant cluster. In Hebrew, however, historical -nt- is regularly assimilated to -tt-. Compare Arabic _anta_, Hebrew _attah_; Arabic _sunbulah_, Hebrew _shibboleth_. Where Proto-Semitic had /n/ before a consonant, Hebrew assimilated it. ---
**Author:** ![Eleusis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f4b2a3/32.png) [@Eleusis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eleusis)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2006, 8:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/speed-of-hai-alai-ball/357393/25 "2006-05-20T08:26:27Z")
[QUOTE=audiobottle] After reading this thread I looked on [youtube.com](http://youtube.com) to see if I could find a video of people playing jai alai. I did find a video of the Jackass guys gettng nailed with oranges thrown by some jai alai players. I’m thinking that just having somebody throw an orange at you normally would hurt a bit. [Check out](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foPt1M9Ys4I&search=jai%20alai) Steve-O’s knee after getting knocked down by one. [/QUOTE] Yeah, I’ll take 90mph baseball over a 210mph shuttlecock any day. ---
**Author:** ![Eleusis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f4b2a3/32.png) [@Eleusis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eleusis)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2006, 8:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/speed-of-hai-alai-ball/357393/26 "2006-05-20T08:29:37Z")
heh… there might have been sarcasm built into that last post, but it wasn’t enough… Suffice it to say I would take the _shuttlecock_ at almost any speed. 😃 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/speed-of-hai-alai-ball/357393.md?page=1)