And So, The Time Has Come ...

I had spent about a year trying to rehab my right knee, but after suffering continued pain I finally consented to undergo repair of a meniscal tear in early October. Now it's three months later and, unfortunately, there is still significant pain upon exertion. 

When the orthopedist got inside the knee he noticed a microfracture and, surprisingly, osteoarthritis (since he had earlier said there was no sign of arthritis). I have a grade IV deformity of the lateral femoral condyle, in fact, and a nice case of runner's knee (i.e., chondromalacia patella). 

With all that, I had to also consider my family history. My brother had to get hip arthroplasty in his late 40s. My mother has bilateral knee arthroplasties. My half sister wins the prize with one knee, hip and shoulder arthroplasty each. These surgeries are all caused by osteoarthritis, which seems to be a family curse.

I played a test match in squash about 2 weeks ago and the result was a win for the Squashist, together with an unfortunate realization: It took me 4 days for my knee to recover from that match, and that sort of stress on the knee is just not tenable if I want to remain active.

Later, after recovery, another test, this time a tennis match on a Har-tru court. Tennis is easier on the joints, no question, and the ability to slide on the Har-tru makes for a still reduced amount of knee stress. A day after the tennis match I felt fine.

John Musto, the squash pro at the Princeton club, who is for my money the best teaching pro out there, has said that he can retrain me to take smaller steps that will reduce knee strain. However, I was taught way back when to use my height to cover the diagonal in 3 or 4 long strides, and so to retrain my approach to movement would at least take months of hard work -- which my knee doesn't have in it!

I want to remain active for as many more years as possible before I get what I think will be an inevitable knee replacement. But that time will come a lot quicker if I stick with squash. So, painfully, I've made the only decision that makes sense: I have to hang up my squash racket and call it a day. 

For me, squash is without doubt the best of the racket sports, and the greatest individual sport there is, truly. I loved it the very first time I thwacked an American hardball on a cold New England court back in the winter of 1974. I've had a pretty good 40-year run, and along the way I've met a lot of great players. I will greatly miss playing the sport and meeting its people!

I will discontinue this blog since I feel a squash player, not an ex-squash player, should be commenting on the game. The good news is that there are enough bloggers and news sites out there that squash-obsessed players can readily get their fix. I have increasingly relied on DailySquashReport.com to get news and views (and even squash-related fiction!) about the game, and there are many good bloggers out there with some interesting things to say.

Keep playing (as long as you can!) and good luck.




James Prudden

A/K/A "The Squashist"
LinkedIn Profile

The Competitiveness Gene

Many people have told me they are amused by my “coat of arms” and its heraldic saying: “Insufferable in victory, surly in defeat.” I’d like to take credit for that, but in fact it was my father who came up with it. 

  

My father was a tough competitor. He hated to lose, and rarely did. He grew up in a farm community in Northwest Ohio and, while very good at several sports, was even better intellectually. He told the story of how he was given scholarships at a multitude of schools, including Ohio State and Harvard. He wanted to go to Ohio State, because several of his friends were going there, but that’s when my grandfather stepped in and said, “Guess what? You, son, are going to Harvard.” This was back at a time when upper-crust families tended to get their smart kids into Harvard and smart middle- and lower-class kids would have to really stand out before they would let them in. The Ivy League schools were not as generous with aid back then….

But he did stand out, and then later he went on to Harvard Medical School—not that he wanted to…. The day after Pearl Harbor, he and many of his Harvard College classmates stormed down to the Boston recruiting office for the army and demanded to be let into the armed services immediately. Many were let in straightaway, but they first interviewed everybody, and when they asked my father what he was studying at that fancy college, he said he was a premedical student. “Forget it kid,” the interviewer said, “something tells me we’ll need you more as a doctor than a soldier.” So he trudged on back to Harvard, and then on to medical school. He eventually headed up the burn unit at Fort Sam Houston during the Korean War.

Once there was a strike at Harlem Hospital, where he briefly had admitting privileges (most of his patients were at Columbia Presbyterian) and where he had a very sick patient. That patient was getting worse, but the strike had turned ugly and there was a barricade of hospital workers surrounding the hospital, refusing to let anyone in. This pissed old dad off, in a big way. He went down to the door and started jaw-boning the head union guy and his minions, who in turn argued that the patient would be alright, there were other doctors inside, and he couldn’t go in. His response: “Oh realllllly?!” he yelled, and socked the union guy in the mouth. He then ran into the hospital and took care of his patient. The union members left him alone, figuring he was nuts.

One more story to tell you how competitive and intense he was: My wife and I were visiting my parents in suburban New York many years ago, and that Saturday night we decided to play a game of Trivial Pursuit, that once very popular game in which arcane facts are answered, helping you move a game-piece around the board. Before the game, which pitted my parents vs my wife and me, my father warned that all answers had to be exactly correct, precisely as they appear on the game’s answer cards.

It wasn’t long before the level of precision was tested. We were asked a question whose answer was JESUS CHRIST. It was obvious, a slam-dunk, and I was already reaching for the dice to roll again. “Hold it!,” he said, a bit too loudly, “that’s wrong, it’s JESUS CHRIST OF NAZARETH.” I stared open-mouthed, but knew my father well enough to know the man was serious. My wife was beside herself, not being able to believe this was happening.

But later we got our revenge. My father rolled and was asked a question whose answer was the REVEREND MARTIN LUTHER KING. My father thought about this for a minute, because he remembered there was something tricky about King’s name…. What was it? Oh yes, he had a doctorate in philosophy and included that in his name. He answered “THE REVEREND DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING.”

I studied the answer card, pretending to read it carefully, all the while knowing what I was about to say would cause quite a big kerfuffle. “No! Close but not quite right. It’s THE REVEREND DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING JUNIOR!” At which my father got up, steaming, and marched out of the room. (This is where the “surly in defeat” part of the motto comes from.)

Ah, family…. The memories….

My father was actually a wonderful influence, and that extended to my interest in squash. As a family we would always play tennis, but my speed, which was never a problem, often seemed to outdo my stroke mechanics. I would be immediately on the ball and then naturally undercut it, since I had found through experience that in my verve I tended to overhit unless I undercut. When I was in my mid-teens I was about to go away to a school where squash was offered as a sport, and I remember my father strongly advising I should check squash out right away. “You’re a natural, trust me.” He had played it while at Harvard, and he was right; I loved it from the very first second, and love it still.

Later on in his life we would occasionally still get to play tennis when visiting on weekends. Despite being into his senior years, he was still pretty good, and always very wily. My full-time focus on squash had meant that my tennis game really amounted to squash shots played on a tennis court, so my father would regularly win these matches. Up to a point. But one day we were out there and I realized he had slowed, and that his shots weren’t coming so hard anymore, and that I would win. But towards the end of the set I started thinking that this competitive man would be truly aggrieved to lose, and it seemed almost unfair of me to go through with it. So I didn’t. A couple of theatrically placed shots that were just wide, some heart-breaking shots into the net, and a double-fault or two, and there it was, a victory for dad. 

I guess the competitiveness gene runs a little weaker in my DNA. I never ever let myself beat him in tennis.

Tics, Anyone?

As I've noted before in this blog, it sure is something to listen to the professional women tennis players at Wimbledon grunting catharticallly after every stroke. The men either don't do it or do it only occasionally, and at reduced volume. Somehow or another, the high-decibel grunt has become part of the culture of women's tennis, kind of like human vuvuzelas trumpeting their presence to the assembled throng. 


I've also noted the manic pre-point dance that the women do. It's called 'happy feet,' and the idea is to keep those feet moving at all times so that no inertia sets in.


There is no more manic happy-feet dancer than Marion Bartoli, a Frenchwoman whose obvious hyperactivity disorder is apparently mixed in with a strong obsessive-compulsive streak, since her pre-point dance involves wild flailing of the arms following ritualized movements. You have to see it to believe it.


All of which got me thinking about movements made by athletes when they are not actually playing the point. What if we were to take some of these actions and put them on the squash court, what would we have?


Well, in the case of Bartoli, her spastic pre-point dance on a squash court might actually put her opponent at risk, since she violently swings her racket on the forehand and backhand side as she is pogo-ing around the court. Her opponent might very likely run off the court, terrified.


Another stylized tic that tennis players have is to reach behind them and grab a towel to wipe off their face. Apparently it is uncool to wear a headband or bandanna in pro tennis. The reality is that they are using the 15-20 seconds it takes to do this to catch their breath, so you'll see a lot of face-wiping in the latter stages of a tennis match. But could you imagine that on a squash court?


Even a mild motion would just not work in squash. Derek Jeter, the Yankees' fading shortstop, always walks into the batter's box and puts his rear hand up, signalling to the umpire that he is not yet ready and to hold the game until he is. It's a totally unnecessary thing for him to do, but he's been doing it anyway his entire career. If a squash player were to hold up his hand as he prepared to receive a serve, his opponent and everyone watching would view him as a madman.

There is something about being in the same room with your opponent that cuts down on the crap. In squash, its two bats and a ball in a box. There's no room in there for bull.

On-Court Grunting: Here Comes the Science

In a past blog I noted the aggressive grunting by top female tennis pros, the likes of which can be quite impressive indeed. Male tennis players are not nearly so loud, but they do their fair share of grunting too. My point was that I thought that squash players should be allowed a grunt or two -- Hey, it's a tough game! -- and that our sport's obsession with insisting that a squash court is a no-grunting zone is a little too old-school for my taste. It's also not good for fans, who want confirmation that their favorite pro is out on court working hard.

Ah, and now the science..... Well, some intrepid psychologists got together and tested whether on-court grunting might have a negative impact on the opponent's game. The study (here) was published in the Public Library of Science ONE, an online, open-access journal. Their main finding is this: "When an additional sound occurs at the same time as when the ball is struck, participants are significantly slower (21–33 ms) and make significantly more decision errors (3–4%) regarding the direction of the ball both for easy and hard decisions alike."

Now, in tennis some of the louder yellers bellow their grunts at 100 decibels or more; in a confined squash court, that would be insanity. So we need to have these same researchers look at squash and quantify the degree at which a grunt goes from an acceptable audible pronouncement to an aggressive and unfair violation. I await the results.....  

"And I'd Like To Thank 'Nike Squash' for All Their Support!"

The finals of Wimbledon have just been played and Spain's incomparable Rafael Nadal has, somewhat predictably, beaten Tomas Berdych of the Czech Republic. But I thought Berdych played damn well, and the difference between winner and loser came down to Nadal converting his chances at break points, while Berdych, though having those chances, never was able to do so. Thus game, set, match to Mr. Nadal.

One thing I noticed in the final was the Nike swoosh that appeared on both players. Berdych was wearing a cap with a black swoosh, Nadal a form-fitting bandana with a blood-red swoosh. Every time the TV camera focused on either player, there was the firm's well-known logo. They had a guaranteed 3 hours at least of uninterrupted TV airtime. Nike, the sports giant, was going to be a winner no matter what happened on the court today.... 

Nike is an international phenomenon, with its tentacles in all kinds of sports in all kinds of places. All over the world. So it continues to baffle me why a company like Nike would overlook the demonstrably international sport of squash. 

Squash has wide appeal -- as demonstrated by the fact that the sport is played in about 190 countries -- but does not have the penetration in individual countries to attract their attention. Apparently.

But times are tough, and Nike managers must sit around their conference room table thinking of ways to increase sales worldwide. They must! If there ever were a fat target for them to go for, it would be for a relatively under-served sport like squash that needs a corporate champion to take it to the next level. Nike could sell hundreds of thousands of Nike-emblazoned apparel, shoes, and those hats that Nadal and Berdych wore during today's final, and the sport of squash would finally have its first big-time corporate sponsor. Everybody wins. 

Thank you, Nike Squash, thank you so much!

Tennis Squash

In the olden days there was a variant of squash called 'squash tennis,' which enjoyed a rather brief popularity before sliding off the face of the world. You can still read about it in places like Wikipedia (here), but the game is no longer played by anyone. There is a new game developing however, called 'tennis squash.' This game could be around for a long while.

The French Open is underway and the men's final is in place, with the surging Robin Söderling, heir apparent to the great viking Bjorn Borg, ready to take on Rafael Nadal, who would dearly like to prove that his defeat by Söderling in last year's French Open was a fluke. I've always maintained that Nadal, with his quickness and maneuverability around the court, would make an absolutely fantastic squash player, and lo and behold recent press reports claim that he has taken up the game. Squash aficionados are well aware that Roger Federer is no stranger to squash, and occasionally will use a wristy slice shot when he is in trouble, particularly on the forehand side. Andy Murray, England's great tennis player, enjoyed squash as a kid, and Ivan Lendl, even when playing pro tennis at the highest level, is said to have used squash as an exercise to build up his backhand strength (see here).

The use of the wrist to apply extra spin and the breaking of the historically stiff tennis wrist has become a noteworthy recent innovation in tennis, with observers attributing the development to advancements in racket technology.

But what about the obverse? Are there any stiff-wristed, topspin shots that would be at home on a tennis court that we in squash might adopt? I know of one, and it's quite effective. Here is the scenario: your opponent has played a ball into one of the front corners, but you are on it without difficulty. You obviously have several choices here, including a hard wide cross-court, a hard rail, or a looping cross-court lob, among others. But another shot is to hit the loose ball into the corner with topspin at medium speed. The topspin makes the ball whip around the corner faster than either a flat or undercut ball, and the surprising shot selection will either leave your opponent flat-footed, forcing a weak return, or even outright fool him. Try it sparingly, and you might be surprised how effective it is.