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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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
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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 86th 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.
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1981 USA National Squash Team
Left to Right: Ned Edwards, Stu Goldstein,
Bill Andruss, Ted Gross
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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 86th 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. )
