The game begins when the frontcourt player of the first team serves the ball to the second team. In doubles, each team consists of a frontcourt player and a backcourt player. The court is divided by 14 parallel lines going horizontally across the court, with line 1 closest to the front wall and line 14 the back wall. The ceiling on the court is usually very high, so the ball has a more predictable path.
Similarly, there is also a border on the lower 3 feet (0.9 m) of the front wall that is also out of bounds. If the ball (called a pelota in Spanish, pilota in Standard Basque) touches the floor outside these walls, it is considered out of bounds. The court for jai alai consists of walls on the front, back and left, and the floor between them. The sport is played worldwide, but especially in Spain, France, and in various Latin American countries.
The game, whose name means 'merry festival' in Basque, is called cesta-punta ('basket tip') in the Basque Country. The term jai alai, coined by Serafin Baroja in 1875, is also often loosely applied to the fronton (the open-walled playing area) where matches take place. ə l aɪ/: ) is a sport involving bouncing a ball off a walled-in space by accelerating it to high speeds with a hand-held wicker cesta.
