ST. LOUIS, Mo.  NASCAR fans had reason to snicker a few years back when it was announced that rapper Nelly, whose real name is Cornell Haynes, had bought into a Craftsman Truck racing team. 

"There hadn't been a lot of hip-hop in the pits before Nelly," said driver Andy Houston.  "We wiped sarcastic grins off a lot of faces," Houston added as he smiled through a set of Iced Out Custom Removable Teeth--the dental adornment rappers call "grillz"--that Nelly gave him to celebrate a second-place finish at Darlington Raceway.

Now Nelly says he is turning his attention to another sport where minorities have been conspicuous by their absence--platform tennis, often referred to as simply "paddle."

Paddle has been called the ultimate WASP sport, and is played primarily at private clubs where blacks were historically excluded, and are now underrepresented if they are admitted.  The game is played on an outdoor surface one-fourth the size of a regulation tennis court, with 12' wire fencing surrounding the court that enables players to hit balls off these walls, as in squash or racquetball.

Players use wimpy-looking 18" wooden rackets to hit a spongy rubber ball, with scoring as in regulation tennis.  Doubles play generally involves two cute couples with names like "Brad" and "Cindy" on one side and "Chip" and "Becca" on the other.  After one team wins a match, the couples retire for an evening of drinks and wife-swapping.

"I'm gonna bust up the whole paddle racket," said Nelly, adding that he intended no pun.  "We need to get a couple 'LaToya's' out there with a couple 'Jamaal's' if you know what I mean."

Nelly scored a big hit in 2002 with the single "Hot in Herre"--the last word representing rapper-spelling of the word "here".  His popularity took a downturn after he was depicted in a music video swiping a credit card through a woman's buttocks. 

"I know wherre I went wrong before, but therre's nothing I can do about the past," Nelly said as he slipped into a turtle neck, wide-wale corduroys and a down-filled vest before a match at The Racquet Club in Ladue, Missouri.

To restore his image, the rapper has agreed to appear in public service announcements sponsored by the American Society of Financial Planners that stress the proper use of consumer credit.

Copyright 2006, Con Chapman