By Jay D. Prince
When you think about the great athletes in your lifetime, what is it about them that sticks in your mind? Is it simply that they win? Or is it something more?
For me it’s all about what made them unique which, in my opinion, made them into winners. Wayne Gretzky handled the puck and got himself into the best places to be able to score unlike anyone else in hockey history.
John McEnroe, despite his deplorable on-court antics, had a serve-and-volley game that moved the sport of tennis forward from just being a baseline game.
Barry Sanders could go from 60 to zero as effortlessly as he could turn on his jets from standstill to blazing speed—and in the process leave would-be tacklers in his dust. And he retired while still on top in the NFL.
Michael Jordan had it all on the basketball court—speed, hang time that defied gravity, the tongue waggle, and a competitive drive that was unmatched.
In squash, I never had the luxury of being mesmerized by Hashim Khan. But I suspect there was something vastly different in him from all those who came before him. I did see the two JK’s play. Jahangir was relentless with his pressure, taking the ball earlier than anyone else, hammering the ball into the corners. Jansher had cat-like movement with equally incredible racquet skills. Both dominated the game in an era filled with phenomenal players.
Jonathon Power came along and wowed us with his incredible talent for making his opponents look silly while he faked a shot one way only to hit the ball somewhere else.
And now we’re seeing Ramy Ashour change the game again by taking the ball so early it doesn’t seem possible—when was the last time you volleyed a cross-court two or three feet forward of the T? Ashour does it all the time.
So what’s the point? Simple, really. While all of these memorable athletes have dominated their sports, what made them different, in part, was that they did things differently than everyone else. By that I mean to say they didn’t fit into a cookie cutter mold of how to play their respective games. The masses in their sports mostly did what they were taught and got very good at it. But somewhere along the line they lost that individuality that might have set them apart. In basketball parlance, you might say they took the playground ball out of their games.
Which brings me to a conversation I was having recently with a baseball-dad friend of mine. He was observing how things had changed so much since we were kids. Today, our boys train regularly, working on their throwing and hitting. But in the process of all of the instruction they receive, they all start swinging the bat the same. That’s not to say that they aren’t being taught well; just that they start following the instruction of coaches so much that they lose a sense of instinct.
When we were kids most of our time with bats and balls was done with friends on our own—whether pick-up games in the street or a local park, or just playing catch and playing work-up.
In squash, so many junior players spend more time in lessons than they do just playing the game that they, too, lose some of that “spark” that got them playing in the first place. Yes, there are a lot of very good junior players, both here in the US and across the globe. But it just seems to me that we need to give our kids space to just have fun hitting the ball; learning how to figure things out for themselves on the court; not just swinging their racquets in a particular way because that’s what they are told.
At the end of the day, what matters is the contact with the ball. But it would be refreshing to see kids do what comes naturally to them. Maybe one will have a slightly unique backswing, or another might move a bit differently. But if the racquet string bed contacts the ball perfectly, does it matter? After all, maybe it’s that individuality that will one day turn them into champions.
