Sport: Speed & Sweat

In most of the U.S., “squash” is still only a vegetable. But in some large cities, most notably Philadelphia, Boston and New York, it is a fast, sweaty court game for young men, and the middle-aged who cling to the illusion of physical fitness. A businessman who has no afternoons for golf can squeeze in a game of squash racquets after work, shed a few pounds, get home in time for dinner. At Yale, about five times as many students play it on the university’s 86 courts (costing some $300,000) as any other sport.

Last week, spectators jammed the small gallery at Haverford’s (Pa.) Merion Cricket Club to watch 21 topflighters fight it out for the national singles championship. It was like looking down from the observer’s roost of an operating room: the walls cold and white, the temperature a chilly 45°. The way the experts played it, squash racquets was a test of tactics and attrition. With slim-throated, roundheaded racquets, they slammed a little black ball around the wooden-walled court. The trick was to stand in midcourt (from which most defensive shots could be readily reached) and run the other fellow’s legs off.

In almost every game, someone tried to bring off the difficult “boast shot”. It called for the geometric precision of a three-cushion billiard shot, the ball caroming sharply from one side wall to the other and dropping dead off the front one. Properly executed, it is one of the most difficult shots in squash racquets to return. (An impossible shot to return: a “nick,” which hits at the floor-line of one of the side or back walls and rolls out with no bounce.)

On the third day, balding, 34-year-old Hunter Lott Jr., an old University of Pennsylvania man, squared off in the finals against Don Strachan, 40, ex-Princeton. Lott* outmaneuvered him, wore him down, and with the help of three “boast shots” became the new squash racquets king, 15-12, 15-14, 12-15, 17-14.

*No kin to Tennis Player George Lott Jr.