Did you know that squash is a trendy sport these days? No? You obviously haven’t been reading the Styles section of the New York Times. Either that, or you’re not a member of the city’s competitive-parent set, who have recently discovered that squash could be just the résumé-booster that their 5-year-old Miles or Dylan or Hadley or Julian needs to get them over the Ivy League hump one day.
Having grown up outside the East Coast proper, I only heard rumors of squash as a kid. Two cousins of mine played it at the Episcopal Academy, a prestigious Ivy League–feeder school in Philadelphia. I never saw a match and had only the sketchiest idea of how it was played, but the sport had a mythic quality to me. The name itself, whimsical but down to earth, and the rarefied surroundings in which it thrived, seemed infinitely more civilized than the indoor games I played in Small Town USA. Racquetball and wallyball at the Nautilus on East Third St. sounded so much less, well, worthy, than squash at the Merion Cricket Club.
It wasn’t until my freshman year in college that I got my first look at squash. This was the American hardball version of the game, which was phased out in favor of the international softball style in the mid-90s. The courts were kept as cold as possible in those days. It felt like you were in a drafty barn as you sat in the bleachers with your knees glued together. Still, I thought squash was cool; it fed my curiosity about all things WASP and East Coast proper. The courts were whiter than white, the long, thin racquets looked preppy and lethal at the same time, and there was more emphasis on touch and placement than in tennis. The only problem was the big, foggy goggles the players had to wear. I doubted that even freshmen girls could forgive those. But I also remember thinking, with the cockiness of a tennis player coming to what I considered a minor-league game, “I could crush people in that sport.” Unfortunately, our tennis coach, who also coached the squash team, wouldn’t let us even set foot on the courts.
I was in my late-20s when I finally walked onto one. I was living in New York and had been struggling for years to find a reasonably convenient place to play tennis in the city. Courts were either too expensive, too far by subway, or too difficult to reserve, unless you got up at the crack of dawn. Even then, it was next to impossible to play for longer than an hour. The one place where you could play more, in a park along the East River, featured an open manhole just behind one of the baselines.
After quitting tennis, then coming back, then quitting again, then tentatively coming back, I met a guy in my office who suggested I try squash. He said New York is the only place in the world where it’s easier to play squash than tennis. He may be right. I joined the ultra-cheap YMCA on the Upper West Side, climbed the many staircases up to their squash floor (which consisted of two beat-up, converted racquetball courts), and found a group of guys—including, strangely enough, Rick Moranis—ready to play any time, any day of the week.
It didn’t take long to figure out why they were so devoted. The appeal of squash is simple: It’s a rush. From a tennis player’s point of view, it’s a condensed and speedier version of the game we know. The ball flies faster, bangs off walls at sharp angles, and forces you to shorten your strokes and quicken your first step. It’s a blur or white walls and a pinging black ball. Fifty minutes of it and you’re doubled-over.
There are a few immediate reasons that tennis players love squash. First, there’s only one grip needed—Continental—and one stroke, a short, hard chip that you use for both forehands and backhands. You only get one serve, which means it’s just a point-starter, so there’s no elaborate wind-up to master. The first time I played I came out blasting serves as hard as I could. It didn’t take me long to realize I was wasting tons of energy, as was as looking like the game’s first known roid-rage case. Best of all, it’s virtually impossible to hit the ball out in squash. All you have to do is get it over the “tin” (the equivalent of the net, but much lower) and you’re in the point. There’s no baseline to worry about, so you can blast away without fear. Hence the rush.
Unfortunately, I also found out that there are a couple reasons that tennis players struggle with squash. One of my first times out, Moranis (a fellow lefty) took my serve and hit a drop shot that nestled in just above the tin and died the way only a soft rubber ball can die. I didn’t move for it. The ball was all the way at the front of the court, seemingly far out of my reach. A couple points later I turned the tables with my own soft drop and waited for Moranis to congratulate me. Instead I stood dumbfounded as he took off toward the front wall—how could one of the McKenzie brothers move that fast?—and somehow wedged his racquet under the ball just as it was about to bounce for a second time. I continued to stand and watch as he flipped the ball just above the tin for his own counter-drop winner.
I stared at him for a second and said, “Don’t tell me your supposed to get those kinds of shots in this sport!”
“Yup. You’re supposed to get every shot in this sport,” he said, breathing hard.
I quickly learned he was right. Squash was, at bottom, not about strokes or power or touch. It was about hustle. Insane hustle. One of the sport’s origin myths, which mirrors my own story with Moranis, happened in India when the game was brought there by the English decades ago. In England, it had been a gentleman’s sport and a “shooting” contest (“shooting” means going for the equivalent of a winner). If you hit a great drop shot, that was it, you deserved the point and the other guy wasn’t going to run after it in his long pants. But the best Indian players started to do just that. They ran after the Englishmen’s drop shots, infuriating the old boys and turning the game into the battle of attrition that it is today.
In the end, the insane hustle only makes the squash experience more addictive. I’ve played as much as possible every winter since those days at the West Side Y seven years ago. It’s become an annual rite of fall: At the end of October, when the falling leaves get too thick to see the court at my tennis club, I put away the racquets and pull out the squash sticks. I play four times a week at a club near my apartment. It’s surprisingly easy to make the transition each year. There’s more running in squash, but there’s not as much upper-body exercise, so the fitness levels are similar. The one major difference is the respective footwork needed for each sport. They’re diametrically opposed: The biggest sin in tennis is to lung after the ball without using little steps. In squash, alll you do is lunge; there’s no time to do anything else. Each fall I head back to the squash court using little steps and watch the ball fly right past my racquet.
But it's always pleasing to return to the starkness of squash: The bright white walls bound by thin red lines, the small black ball that you pound straight down one wall and then send screaming across the court on the next shot; the extra intensity and competitiveness that comes from having two players in close proximity and jostling each other for position. It's pure, and vicious.
There’s a new language to learn as well. “Depth” in tennis is “length” in squash, as in “work on your length.” A down-the-line shot is a “rail” and a crosscourt shot is a “cross.” A volley is typically called a “cut-off.” A lob is, well, a lob. When it comes to picking up the ball, you never, ever pin it between your racquet and your shoe and lift your foot up, the way you do in tennis. I was called nothing less than a “dork” for doing that early on. Instead, you flick the ball off the court with the edge of your frame and send it off the nearest wall and back into your free hand.
I’ve gotten better at the game over the years, and I run my a-- off for drop shots. Unlike tennis, I have no youthful standard to hold myself to. My best days aren’t necessarily behind me—which is kinda nice. There are also more people to play at my level, including women, who regularly compete with men. For some reason, there are more competent squash players than there are tennis players. I wouldn’t say I prefer squash to tennis, but I’m glad I can split my year between them.
It’s been years since I felt addicted to tennis the way I do squash. It’s nothing less than a healthy drug. I played this morning at 8:00 for an hour with a regular partner, Lissa, a former captain of the Penn women’s team (I’ve entered the East Coast proper at last). It was a brutal wake-up call. We’re both shot-maker types who wrong-foot each other at least twice in every rally. We’re always stopping in our tracks and trying to get our bodies to turn 180 degrees in a millisecond. One guy who was watching us recently said, “There’s never a dull moment out there.”
In 10 minutes I was sucking wind; in 20 minutes I could feel my legs getting sore; in 30 minutes I looked up at the clock. It was 8:30 in the morning and I felt like I was in a war. It may have a preppy reputation, but remember, preppies also fill the Ivy League’s crew teams. I guess WASPs really do love to test themselves—or punish themselves. Good for all the little brats who are learning to play the sport in New York. They may not make the Ivy League, but they’ll know what a fight to the death is like.
Lissa went up 2-1 in games, but I was determined to force it to a fifth. The first step is the key in squash. The best players don’t just get to the ball, they get there early enough to have a choice with their next shot. I ignored my legs, my heart, my brain and pushed off just a little harder on my first step. As always, when I started to win points, I became less tired. That’s what momentum is all about in this game—playing well enough to ignore your exhaustion. I finally won the fourth game. My racquet fell out of my hand and clattered to the court. I staggered, gasping for breath, to the water fountain. On my way there, I thought, not for the first time, that nothing in the world beats a nice game of squash.