It is absolutely necessary. Sports such as racquetball, tennis and badminton may seem relatively harmless, but they involve objects moving at 60 miles per hour or faster. There is a chance that you might hurt your eyes, so a little bit of protection cannot be wrong.
You better do. Many eye injuries come from pokes and jabs by fingers and elbows, particularly in games where players are in close contact with each other. Basketball, for example, has an extremely high rate of eye injury.
Of course you can protect your eyes in this way, but I refuse to wear goggles cause I think they look dumb on me. Honestly, the first priority is to play cool for doing sports. At least it is the way how it works for me.