Greatest American Squash Player?

Did Doubles Players Leave Frying Pan for Fire ?

The doubles world was rocked in the off-season when the ISDA's top players played hardball off the court with tour owners and  orchestrated a mass exodus with the goal of launching an independent, player-owned tour beginning this fall.  

From the outside view, however, the new SDA Pro Tour looks more like a US Squash subsidiary than an independent body.

Here are some notes that indicate the players may have less control than they thought.

1) The office phone for the tour (212) 268-4090 is actually US Squash's Headquarters.  

2) US Squash's website lists US Squash as the sanctioning body for two early SDA Pro Tour tournaments: Maryland (here) and Philadelphia (here).

3) The page also says the US Squash Code of Conduct is applicable code for the tournament.  

4) On SDA Pro Tour's Members Page, if you want to find a partner to compete in a pro tournament, you are asked to email: doubles@USSquash.com.  

5) On the newly formed SDA Pro Tour's website, at the bottom of each web page 'Preston Quick (US Squash)' is listed as the tour manager.

Adding insult to injury, the players don't even own their website. SDAProTour.com is owned by Denver Colorado's Harrow Sports (here) - not the players. 

 

If a separate group is running the tour and is the official sanctioning body of the tour, one is left to wonder what the players own or control ?

Drug Martyrs

Drug Martyrs

“From the Editor”

By Ian McKenzie

Squash Player Magazine 2012 Issue No. 4

Sport, by definition is competitive, recreation not so. In this competitive activity rules are crucial and behind them we have a set of ideals (or principles) on fairness. The competition must be fair or, as some say, there must be a level playing field.

One area where competitors can gain an unfair advantage is to use performance enhancing drugs. The principle is easy enough to agree to, but defining these drugs and testing for them is a different matter. 

I am surprised that marijuana is viewed as a performance enhancing drug, but would tend to bow to experts’ views.  After all, they are the experts. I am uneasy with this, but I assume they must know what they are doing.

However, I am even more uneasy when I read the World Anti-Doping Agency Code, which in deciding whether to ban ‘a substance or method’ (in paragraph 4.3 of the code) sets out the criteria, one of these being WADA’s determination that the use of the substance or method violates the spirit of sport described in the “Introduction to the Code”. This includes such concepts as ‘fun and joy’ and ‘health’, which does lead me to question whether the banned substances are really included to stop ‘performance enhancement’ or violate some other ‘principle.’

Squash loyally signed up to the protocols with an eye, of course, on its Olympic bid, but I am uneasy that the main outcome is that we ban young people from our sport for occasional use of recreational drugs which are nothing to do with trying to gain an unfair advantage. Let’s hope the sacrifice is worth it. To call them ‘drug cheats’ is unfair, though, isn’t it? How about drug martyrs?

To subscribe to Squash Player Magazine, please call +44 (0) 20 8597 0181

or email editor@SquashPlayer.co.uk

Ted Gross: Publisher of Daily Squash Report

Ted Gross publishes the Daily Squash Report. He played squash at the University of California at Berkeley, on the pro tour, and for the U.S. National Team. He's lived on both coasts and has a unique perspective on the evolution of American squash.

- - -

1)      Who introduced you to the sport of squash?

The great Dick Crawford at the University of California at Berkeley.

Dick had been a top high school quarterback in the state of Michigan and had no racquet sports experience. He became a Physical Education professor at Cal, learned squash out of a book, and built a club program that changed the lives of hundreds of Cal students.

It took a few years to figure it out, be we eventually realized Dick was paying for pretty much everything out of his own pocket – the travel, the awards banquets, the uniforms, the tournament fees, the equipment, and on and on.

He treated everyone with the same degree of interest and enthusiasm, whether they were always going to be D players or had a chance to turn pro.

Dick had the greatest heart of anyone I’ve known in squash.

1974 Cal Squash Team

Back Row (Left to Right): Dick Crawford, Ted Gross, Rob Kritzer, John Lau

Front Row (Left to Right): Tom Rausch, Scott Chandler, Nick ?, Scott Lambert

 

2)      You started playing hardball?

Yes, not only was it hardball, but for the first few years we used the original hardball, which was a larger, heavier ball that required a heavier racquet. 

By the mid-1970’s most players had switched to the 70+ ball, and it soon became the standard. The most memorable thing about the original heavy ball was that if you got hit with one you developed a colorful and substantial bullseye welt that seemed to last forever.

3)      Do you regret that hardball squash has faded?

No. Hardball doesn’t work with today’s racquets.

The pro game died at the right time, because match play was starting to get ridiculous, with guys going for back wall nicks and wailing on frontwall-backwall groundstrokes that the opponent had to chase down from behind. The finesse was squeezed out of the game by the advances in equipment.

However, the elimination of hardball courts around the country hurt the average recreational softball player in my opinion. I personally couldn't stand softball on the narrow court, but the fact was it was a better game and a better workout for most club players than softball on the official court.

4)  Is softball less exciting a game to watch than hardball squash?

That's close, but I would have to say yes.

The very top softball pros are awfully exciting to watch, but the average pro match was more exciting to watch with the hardball, in my view.

You consistently had WPSA qualifying and early-round hardball matches that were highly dramatic.  From a viewing standpoint, hardball had the speed and sound of the ball going for it, plus the fact that players could end rallies in dramatic fashion by definitively rolling the ball on the floor or ripping it into the corners. There were also, in my opinion, more dramatic moments within the individual point in hardball than in softball.

The scoring system, which lent itself to overtime sudden-death drama, also helped, as did the three-referee appeal system. Players appealed a high percentage of calls, which was sometimes obnoxious, but it added a human element to the proceedings.

In 1980 we sent a team to Pakistan for the Hashim Khan Championships and I got to watch Jahangir as a teenager beat Mohibullah Khan Jr. and Qamar Zaman for the first time, coming from two games down in each match. The final with Zaman, who had won a British Open and may have been the best racquet magician of all time, was spectacular, and the second greatest match I ever saw.

The greatest though was Jahangir versus Tommy Page in hardball a few years later at Town Hall in New York City.

5) As a player, how did you feel when the WPSA and ISPA merged to become the PSA?

I thought it was the right move whose time had come.

6)   You played College Squash at U. Cal Berkeley.  Hardball squash?

Yes, everything was 100% hardball. My only exposure to softball back then was through Barrington’s entertaining and inspirational book, “The Book of Jonah”.

7)      Did you travel the country playing or was it regional?

We stayed on the west coast except for an annual trip back east to the Intercollegiates.

Our finest hour though was a match against Stanford before the annual Cal-Stanford football game.  The game represents a bitter rivalry between the schools that has gone on for over a hundred years.

This particular game had Rose Bowl implications, and both teams were strong and there were several future NFL players on the field that day.

We went down to Palo Alto in the morning and took care of business, and at halftime of the football game the PA announcer said, “And ladies and gentlemen, earlier today, in squash, it was Cal 7, Stanford 2” (or whatever similar score we dominated them by).

Stanford Stadium in those days held over 100,000 people, so at that moment approximately 50,000 fans let out a massive, sustained cheer. Of course most of them had no idea what the sport was, but that didn’t matter.

1977 Cal Squash Team

Back Row (Left to Right): Dick Crawford, Gary Walter, Ted Gross, Bruce Bettencourt, Steve Morton, Drew Sorenson, Paul Gessling

Front Row (Left to Right):  Kris Surano, Dave Helson, ?, Dave White, Bob Jones, Andre Naniche

8)      As a west coast based squash fan, do you believe there is an east coast bias in squash?

No.

9)      You played on the 1981 USA team that finished 7th at the World Teams. Please tell me a little about that experience representing your country in international competition.

It was a lot of fun, and in retrospect a great honor.

We didn’t get much support from US Squash back then because all four team members were professionals and US Squash had not yet made the leap to embrace the pro game.

There were 21 countries in the world championships that year in Sweden, and we were the only team that had to pay its own way and the only one that had no coach. I remember the Canadian guys had expense accounts and would sometimes sign for us for food in the hotels.

We qualified into the final-eight playoff and ended up at a famous arena in Stockholm, and for some reason the King of Sweden took an interest in us and sat in the front row watching a couple of our matches.

10)   Was it difficult switching between the softball game and the hardball game? Where did you train?

It wasn’t difficult at all, because most of us had to give lessons to supplement our incomes, and the lessons became pretty much equally divided between hardball and softball.

I worked and trained at the Uptown Racquet Club on East 86^th Street in New York City.

Back then, the place felt like the center of the universe.

11)   Based in NYC while playing? How did you enjoy the city?

I lived in a 5-story walk-up, so after a full day on the courts I didn’t want to go back out for any reason. But invariably at night I’d be stretched out on the couch, totally relaxed, maybe a Rangers hockey game on, and the phone would ring.

Something would be going on – something was always going on – and I’d find myself getting up and going back out against my better judgment.

New York got the hooks into you and didn’t let up.

12)   Did you move to train for squash or other reasons?

For squash. 

The game was exploding, and the opportunity was there. The WPSA had Xerox and IBM as sponsors. 

13)   Were there many international courts at the time?

At that time, in the late 70’s-early 80’s, the only wide courts I was aware of in the US were all in New York: 2 at Uptown, 1 at Broad Street and 1 at Park Place.

There were 68 public courts in Manhattan back then, spread over 9 clubs. Anyone could walk in, pay an hourly fee, and play. 64 of the courts were hardball. 

1981 USA National Squash Team

Left to Right: Ned Edwards, Stu Goldstein, Bill Andruss, Ted Gross

14)   You played on the WPSA tour for six years. How many tournaments a year?

We played 15-20 tournaments a year. Most were in the northeast, many were in Toronto, some were in the midwest, a few were on the west coast, and a couple were in Mexico.

It was a great era - we were treated like celebrities at every event.

15)   You won the Slazenger Open almost immediately upon joining the tour? Was that your greatest success? Other good wins?

I can’t remember much of my competitive history anymore. It’s mostly a blur. I rely on my old friend Rob Dinerman to fill me in.

Rob will say, “Remember in Montreal in ’81, when you were down 2-1 to so-and-so, and at 12-all in the fourth he just caught the top of the tin on a reverse, and you eked out that game and then won in five?”

And I’m thinking: No, I don’t remember that – I don’t remember the match, the opponent, or the tournament!

16)   What was your lifestyle back then? (coaching, tournaments, married, etc.)

At first, having just finished college, it was exciting to be able to earn good money teaching an unlimited number of lessons.

After a while, like most WPSA pros, I came to my senses and reduced the lesson load to the bare minimum necessary to survive.

On a social level, it was a good time to be a squash pro in New York.

 

17)   Could you make a living on the WPSA Tour?

No. The top two or three guys could, but that was about it. Everyone else had to scramble to make it work.

18)   Why did you retire?

I woke up one day and it hit me that flying to Minneapolis in February wasn’t as appealing as it once had been. 

I couldn’t help thinking of Don Meredith on Monday Night Football: Turn out the lights, the party’s over.

19)   Which players are you still in touch with?

I love running into or talking to any of the old WPSA guys. To an extent, we ran our own tour, and it was a small enough group that there is a fraternal bond that everyone is aware of on some level.

In the early years, Sharif Khan was the heart of the tour, and at the end it was Mark Talbott. They came from very different backgrounds, but both had magnetic personalities and were beloved representatives of the sport. 

I ran into Mark a few years ago at a junior tennis tournament in California, with our sons both in action. Suddenly the kids’ matches didn’t matter, and for a few wonderful hours we turned back the clock. Then reality set in and we had to go back to being parents.

20)   Why did you found the Daily Squash Report?

I admired the way Ron Beck ran Squashtalk, and how he sustained it for ten years. When it looked like Ron was finally running out of energy, it seemed natural to pick up the slack. I ran the idea by my friend and favorite squash writer Rob Dinerman, and a couple days later we were online.

Before Ron, Tom and Hazel Jones did a tremendous job pioneering the monthly newspaper, Squash News.  They always came in on time, and I try to do the same.

 

21)   Do you view SquashSite as a competitor? Is there an intense rivalry?

Squashsite is the best in the business. Steve and Fram perform a wonderful service, and I’m not sure it is fully appreciated. I’ve often said that if they decided to stop publishing, and the great journalist Howard Harding stopped writing, the sport as we know it would effectively shut down.

No, there is no rivalry at all. Steve couldn’t be more generous with information, reports and photos. He is also a fantastic on-site reporter at the major events.

We were recently honored to have Steve create the storyline for “The Club From Hell”, a collaborative novel featuring ten different writers that is featured on both sites.

My favorite piece of Steve’s writing is probably his April Fool’s take on the PSA v PST feud. He comes up with a “half-point” rule, which supposedly satisfies both sides, in which “a half-point is awarded to the party least at fault when a rally ends in a let”.

22)   What do you view as a low moment in squash?

In the early 80’s I was sitting in the bar of the Uptown Racquet Club one evening with Marc Tascher, who was then second-in-command at Town Squash and would go on to build the operation, as CEO, into the New York Sports Clubs empire.

Uptown was humming along just perfectly that night – all fourteen courts were filled, everyone seemed to be having fun, the bar was overflowing, and there was nothing you could seemingly find fault with.

Across 86^th Street was a run-down looking Jack LaLanne exercise studio that occupied a space above a storefront.  We watched a slow but steady stream of people heading up the stairs to the studio.

Marc said: “The problem is, why aren’t  they coming in here?”

I said, “Uh-oh”.

23)   What was squash’s best moment?

Probably the development of the portable court.

24)   Do you agree with the decision to move to Point a Rally Scoring for all ages?

Not at all  - most matches in PAR 11 are unreasonably short. 

My opinion is everyone should be playing PAR to 15, with no-set at 14-all. 

However, a scoring system that should be experimented with is the following, which I've obviously based on no-ad tennis. I'm guessing this would provide many more "critical point" situations:

Each game is played to four points, with sudden death at 3-all.

The winner of 3-out-of-five games wins the set. The winner of 3-out-of-five sets wins the match.

  

25)   What do you think could grow the game?

I think the urban programs have exactly the right idea. We need to somehow apply the same approach to non-disadvantaged kids as well.

26)   Please tell me about “The Z Street Band.”

Boy, you are really digging deep in the vault to come up with that!

When my daughter was in middle school I was convinced she wasn’t reading enough, so I wrote a kids’ novel that I thought she and her friends might enjoy, and I put it online.

It centers on a group of kids who live in a southern California beach town and start a band. There is an original surfing-themed song that develops throughout the story, and at the end the reader can listen to the actual song, as written and recorded by my son who was fifteen at the time.

He’s only played squash now and then, but I’ll give him a pass.

(Squash E-zine note: See more about the book at TheZStreetBand.com or purchase "The Z Street Band" on Amazon.com here. )

How Many People Play Squash ?

Depending on who you ask, you will receive a very different answer to the question, “How many people play squash?” 

Finding accurate information regarding squash participation is no easy task. However, it is possible to get a general idea based on information provided by some of the larger nations. We’ll allow you to draw your own conclusions about the numbers above and below.

 

Using World Squash Federation’s numbers, 20,000,000 players world-wide and 50,000 courts would require an average of 400 players per court across the globe. 

England

England is regarded as a, if not the, leading squash nation. They have approximately 8,500 courts and 500,000 players[i]. With 500,000 players and 8,500 courts, they have approximately 59 players per court.

Assuming World Squash’s figures, England has roughly 17% of the world’s courts (8,500÷50,000) but only  2.5% of the world’s players (500,000÷20,000,000).

United States

There are approximately 3,700 squash courts in the U.S. The Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association estimates approximately 1,100,000 players in the U.S., which suggests 297 players per court.

France

France is hosting the Women’s World Team Championships this year. From their website,[ii] they say France has 250,000 people playing squash on 1,300 courts. This would result in 192 players per court in France.

Australia

According to the Australian Sports Commission, 108,300 people play squash[iii] on approximately 3,500 courts. This suggests approximately 31 players per court.

Canada

According to Squash Ontario[iv], Canada has >250,000 players using 1,810 courts. This suggests >138 players per court in Canada.

---

[i] http://library.constantcontact.com/download/get/file/1102992251297-408/Squash+&+Racketball+England+results.pdf

[ii] http://www.worldwomensquash-nimes2012.fr/en/le-squash/le-squash-dans-le-monde/

[iii] http://fulltext.ausport.gov.au/fulltext/2000/ascpub/pdf/squash%202.pdf

[iv] http://www.squashontario.com/squashlife/demographics.asp

Science and the Major Racket Sports

As athletes, we at times ponder things like the subtle benefits of a sports drink between games compared to a glass of water. And as squash players, we may consider the percentages of our opponent's shot selection being hit from different areas of the court. "If I drop here, is my opponent more likely to re-drop or hit a cross court shot?"

As it turns out a paper was published in 2003 by the Journal of Sports Sciences discussing these points and others in the major racket sports: squash, racquetball, tennis and table tennis.

The author, Adrian Lees, reviewed sports physiology, nutrition, notational analysis, biomechanics, sports medicine and engineering, and psychology. It's not a quick read, but despite its age there are some interesting discoveries.

For example, science has been helpful in defining training programs to improve player fitness, guiding players nutritionally and psychologically in match preparation, and in identifying effective strategies and tactics used for specific opponents. The findings relate to squash as well as other racquet sports.

Some excerpts from the author's findings on physiology and notational analysis are below.

Physiology
  
In a 1998 study, players who used a carbohydrate drink during simulated match play maintained their accuracy at the end of the third game in squash and were 19% better than those who had taken a placebo drink.

According to the study, carbohydrates should also form the basis of post-match meals, which helps in the restoration of muscle and liver glycogen.


Notational Analysis

The process of recording and analyzing the movements made by players during play, or notational analysis, has been widely applied to racket sports.

As part of this study researched discovered that over a period of 15 years, the average number of shots per rally at elite level in squash decreased from 20 to 14. (The paper does not indicate the timing, but presumably the study was done from 1983-1998 when the findings were released.)

 
Researchers were also able to successfully build a probability matrix for squash players depicting the likely shot response to each preceding condition. The author suggests this type of model may be used to identify optimal tactical strategies against a particular opponent.

To read the full 2003 study from the Journal of Sports Sciences, please click here.

The author, Adrian Lees, is from the Research Institute for Sport and Exercise Sciences, Liverpool
John Moores University, Liverpool, UK. a.lees@livjm.ac.uk

A Squash Court Hosted the Manhattan Project

The Manhattan Project was the code name for the federally funded, United States research program to develop an atomic bomb. 

The project was led by Enrico Fermi, Italy's greatest physicist in modern times, and University of Chicago physicist Arthur Compton. Both Fermi and Compton were Nobel Prize recipients.

The team of scientists they led worked on a squash court beneath the long since dismantled west stands of Stagg Field at the University of Chicago.

The squash court was the only convenient, large space available on the university campus for the team of scientists to build a "nuclear pile."

The result of their work was the first successful, self-sustaining, chain reaction initiating the controlled release of nuclear energy. Simply stated, it was the first nuclear reactor. 

Immediately after the successful test in 1942, the entire team moved to Los Alamos, New Mexico where they would ultimately conduct, on July 16, 1945, the first successful detonation of an atomic weapon near Alamogordo, New Mexico. 

The U.S. wasted no time in using the new technology. On August 6, 1945, the U.S. dropped "Little Boy," a uranium bomb nicknamed after Franklin Roosevelt, on Hiroshima, Japan. Three days later on August 9, 1945, the U.S. dropped "Fat Man," a plutonium bomb nicknamed for Winston Churchill, on Nagasaki, Japan.

On August 15th, a month after the New Mexican test bomb was detonated, Japan's Emperor Hirohito announced their surrender.  

 Earlier articles discussing the squash court connection to the Manhattan Project:

AtomicArchive.com: The First Pile 
The Economist: "From Squash Court to Submarine"
Vanity Fair Squash Blog "The Most Important Squash Court Ever"
Squash Blog Life: "The First Nuclear Squash Court"

Update July 6, 2012: In addition to the articles above, there are many, many more articles, exhibits and books discussing this moment in time. Click on the links below for more information.

Exhibits

University of Chicago: This is a link to the Special Collections Department at the University of Chicago, which built an exhibition to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the events of 1942.

The University of Chicago Archives:  a link to the picture of the squash court where the experiment was hosted

Articles

Library of Congress: This day in history

FermiLab: History and Archives Project of the Enrico Fermi Laboratory

Ames Laboratory: our history

Oak Ridge National Laboratory: Chapter 1, Wartime Laboratory

New York Times: The Day the Nuclear Age was Born

Los Angeles Times: Obituary

Wired: This Day in Tech

Northern Illinois University Library: The Birth of the Atomic Age

Books

The Manhattan Project: The Birth of the Atomic Bomb in the Words of Its Creators, Eyewitnesses and Historians, by Richard Rhodes

Chicago: A Pictorial Celebration

The Manhattan Project: by Sue Vander Hook

The Manhattan Project: by Daniel Cohen

Note: In his book, "Squash: A History of the Game," James Zug states this court was actually a racquets court and not a squash court at all. Zug is a highly regarded historian and his statement should be noted. However, the archivists at the University of Chicago reference the activity taking place on a squash court.