The Direct

The yearbook was one of the great institutions in the old hardball days. They were everywhere. Started by Johnny Humes in 1955, US Squash produced a cloth-bound yearbook for half a century; the last, mine dog-earred and chewed up by a thousand perusals, is the 1996 edition with Seymour Knox’s mug on the cover. Every time there is a new US Squash CEO, the rumor gets floated that the yearbook is about to be revived.
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The numbers 98—0 have been spinning around my head this weekend. Read the rest of this entry »

What a night. It was incredibly incredible. The U.S. Squash Hall of Fame Gala 2008 rocked. Read the rest of this entry »

News flies fast. We—seventy-odd squash guys—were out in Santa Fe for a squash weekend when we heard that Betty Constable had died. Read the rest of this entry »

Name dropping has become the modus operandi of journalists when they talk about squash: Roger Federer, Pervez Musharraf, John Dryden. Read the rest of this entry »

I just spent much of last month talking with and about Mark Talbott, for a cover article in the current issue of Squash Magazine; the eight-page profile is dotted with a dozen vintage photos of Mark from a quarter century ago. I learned a lot more about someone everyone in the American squash scene knows something about, including a couple of great trivia bits. Read the rest of this entry »

I am sure that all of you are following the story of badminton at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, with the finals of the various tournaments scheduled to start today. No? Read the rest of this entry »

George Haines, one of the most successful if unheralded high school squash coaches in the country, died last month at the age of sixty-four. Read the rest of this entry »

In my previous entry, I wrote about game ball and match ball, the twin verbal scourges on our scoring system. What I didn’t address was the issue of double match balls. Starting last month, the PSA has revised it terrible tiebreaker scoring system. No longer was it reported 11-10 (5-3) or something (meaning the actual score was 15-13). But they blew it in not reverting to the old American tiebreaking system. Read the rest of this entry »

The new PSA scoring system (same scoring to 11, point a rally, but simpler way of reporting it when the game goes into overtime) is wrongheaded on two accounts, and it is a travesty that they did not take this opportunity to make changes. My first beef is that they did not get rid of “game ball” and “match ball.” Ever since the fifties (not time immemorial), British scoring has meant that the referee intones, late in a game, “game ball.” And when a player has a match point, “game ball, match ball.”
As if. Read the rest of this entry »