Jai alai Jai alai Jai alai (; Basque: ) is a sport involving a ball bounced off a walled space by accelerating it to high speeds with a hand-held device (cesta). It is a variation of Basque pelota. The term, coined by Serafin Baroja in 1875, is also often loosely applied to the fronton (the open-walled playing area) where the sport is played. The game is called "zesta-punta" (basket tip) in Basque. The Basque Government promotes "jai alai" as "the fastest sport in the world" because of the speed of the ball. The sport once held the world record for ball speed
Jai alai with a 125–140 g ball covered with goatskin that traveled at , performed by José Ramón Areitio at the Newport Rhode Island Jai Alai, until it was broken by Canadian 5-time long drive champion Jason Zuback on a 2007 episode of Sport Science with a golf ball speed of . The court for jai alai consists of walls on the front, back and left, and the floor between them. If the ball (called a "pilota", "ball" in Euskara) touches the floor outside these walls, it is considered out of bounds. Similarly, there is also a border on the lower of