The Direct

The tenth annual Grand Central squashslamajamarama was, as always, the biggest scene of the U.S. squash season. When the Tournament of Champions does finally depart from Grand Central, as it surely must some sad day in the hopefully far future, we will look back on our late winter sojourns in Vanderbilt Hall with great wistfulness. We’ll probably never have it so good again. Read the rest of this entry »

As many of you know, I have been working for a few years on a book project with Paul Assasiante on the story of Trinity squash, and this season has been the most improbable yet. The arrival of Baset Ashfaq seemed to spell instant doom for the rest of the nation’s top programs Read the rest of this entry »

I just got a copy of the program for the December 2006 Gold Racquets from tournament director Mark Hinckley. He and co-director Peter MacGuire are stepping into the famous shoes of Treddy Ketcham. They had a fantastic weekend: Read the rest of this entry »

The biggest jolt of media hoopla for the U.S. squash world this fall was certainly about Donald H. Rumsfeld’s game. David Cloud did a big piece on Rummy’s racquetwork in the New York Times on Sunday 24 September and it gave rise to a number of interesting tangents.

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Earlier this year I suddenly felt like it was 1979 and I was on Lexington and 86th Street. In Washington I had drinks not once but twice with Harry Saint and Nancy Gengler. The Saints were in town to play in a court tennis tournament (they live within fifty feet—or fifty yards, I can’t remember, it could have been fifty meters—of Queen’s Club in London) and to visit family, including Tim Saint, the former Haverford College star, who is now in the Marines at Quantico.

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