By Will Carlin
100 issues. Wow. I didn’t start writing columns for the magazine until late in the first year, so I am a little behind Jay Prince and the Squash Mag staff. This is my 93rd column, not my 100th (with my feature two months ago, let’s call it 94). But since the rest of the magazine is at number one hundred, it seems like a good time to look back over the past ten years of this column, too.
When I started, there were a number of emails that we got that said that my column didn’t seem to make sense. They asked if it wouldn’t be wiser for the column to focus on instruction or to report on recent matches. A column that seemed to follow the Seinfeld model that was about nothing? Well, they said, they didn’t much like it.
From the start, though, I had in mind a column that was modeled on some of the back page columns I liked best. At that time, Tennis Magazine and Sports Illustrated, to name two, always had a closing piece that wasn’t really reacting to the main news, but was sometimes controversial, sometimes fun, sometimes moving, but always interesting.
Rick Reilly, of course, was the ultimate. Long known for being the back page writer for Sports Illustrated, Reilly recently announced a move to rival ESPN that will begin in the spring of next year. Reilly writes columns that usually are humorous, often poking fun at athletes, coaches, and, most memorably, himself. But Reilly also has a serious side, and he has written many moving pieces on many of the smaller, local heroes that help all of us remember why we love sports so much. Striving to emulate him, I think, is worthwhile; he has won the Sportswriter of the Year award 11 times.
When Jay asked me to consider doing the back page, it didn’t really take much arm-twisting; there was a lot that was, well, on my mind, and I was happy to have a forum to air my positions. But being disgruntled in print only works for a few issues at a time, and so, I tried hard to mix in some lighter columns as well. That first year included topics like the state of US refereeing (I was not a fan) as well as the lack of women playing the game after college (more than once referred to as the “longest personal ad in history”) and how all of us who play the game are secretly – or not so secretly – masochists.
Over the next two years, I slowly exhausted much of the animus I had early on, and picking a topic often became as hard as the writing itself. No problem, I thought, I will just write more funny pieces. That did accomplish one thing: it made the writing hard again. A normal column takes me about eight hours to complete, but as I started to delve into regular humor columns, I often found I was trying to hone the turn of a phrase twelve or fifteen hours after starting. I hold in awe the Dave Barrys of the world.
In years four, five and six, I was lucky to be part of the Olympic Committee, and I was able to draw on those experiences to share different thoughts about sport, squash and the Olympics with all of you. But in those years, I also started to weave in two new things: occasional profiles of people in squash who weren’t as well known as some and columns written in the style of some of my favorite writers. I am still tickled when I remember that a few of you recognized my homages to PG Wodehouse, Dave Barry, and Stephen King.
One of my favorite topics is to (over)examine some everyday aspect of the game: I have been the ball, dissected the warm-up, mishandled court reservations, revealed the post-win refereeing dodge, translated different put-downs masking as compliments, and shown the absurdity of my own pre-match routines.
I consider myself fortunate to have been able to relate stories to the greater squash world about groundbreaking feats (gold medals for the women in the 2003 Pan Am Games), about amazing people (Victor Elmaleh, the ageless wonder), about selfless acts (the squash world helping teaching pro John Dale fight cancer), and about my life in squash.
I remember when I first met Jeanne Blasberg, the current chair of US Squash. We were doing the usual get-to-know-you thing, and I started to tell her something about myself, when she interrupted me and said, “Yes, I know.” She then rattled off all the things she knew about me solely from the column. I have been self-indulgent, to be sure, and it says a lot about the squash world that so many of you forgive my excesses and continue to scan the column on a regular basis.
For the first five years or so of Will’s World, almost all of the emails and letters received were angry with me about something, but that has changed in recent years. It might be that you all have mellowed, or maybe I have become less acerbic, or perhaps we have just gotten used to each other. In any case, it is probably fitting that the two columns that have generated more feedback than almost all the others combined were the one where I attempted to rank the Best of the Past Hundred Years in all sorts of categories and the one that featured my Cosmo-style reader quiz asking just How Addicted Are You?
So, let’s see…we are addicted to the sport, and we love that we can have our own barroom argument about our game, too. Yup. We do kind of go together. And, though I don’t want to say it too often (no one likes too much mush): thank you for letting me start a few of them. I’ll do my best to keep going.
