The Direct

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. (more…)

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. (more…)

Speaking of magazine covers featuring squash, Sports Illustrated has been on my mind recently. It is the fiftieth anniversary of the first (and probably, the way things are going, last) time a squash player was featured on the cover of the world’s most famous sports magazine. (more…)

I just got back from my framer three precious things. Since I never want to have a squash court at my house—besides the fact that I am sure I’ll never be able to afford it, I too much like the social side of squash, the random locker-room chatter, the serendiptious gossip that is absent when you have your own court and have to invite over players—these pictures are destined to decorate my already crowded office wall. They are the three squash covers of the New Yorker. (more…)

Now that the season has slowed down to a dull, rat-a-tat-tat roar, here is the vaunted, valuable and sometimes venomous list of The Direct’s Top Ten Media Watch™ citings for American squash this winter. Let’s get snarky and sassy. (more…)

The greatest unknown squash publication in North America has just published its final hardcopy issue this week. It was started in 1993. It had great artwork, very insightful articles, a regular and rich debate between two leading squash figures and an unparalleled humor section. Every insider read it. Subscriptions were free and people in seventeen countries got them. It’s nickname was TSO. Still guessing? (more…)

Last weekend one hundred and ninety-eight players swatted the ball at the national doubles in Philadelphia. It was another spectacular event. Only nine pairs entered the women’s open, but they were an extremely strong group. Trevor McGuinness took the men’s open, becoming the youngest player to win it since a twenty-one year-old Tommy Page swashed his way to the title in 1978 (Diehl Mateer was also the same age when he won his first title in 1949); McGuinness also becomes the first guy to win it before he matriculated in college. (more…)

This very minute is the start of the greatest forty hours of the year. It is the first day of spring and March Madness begins at noon today. Almost all of the thirty-two first-round games that are played today and tomorrow are not in primetime, but rather in the middle of the day. (more…)

Twenty-five Grover Clevelands. That is what safecracker Jimmy Willy walked away with on a rain-swept evening in Allston, Mass last weekend in the biggest legal heist in U.S. squash history. (more…)

Two thousand three hundred and twenty-nine. That was how many people were clicked in as they filed into Halsey Field House at the United States Naval Academy to watch a squash match at the national intercollegiate individuals last weekend. It was a record crowd for a U.S. squash match. (more…)