by James Zug
I am in the process of editing Squash: A History of the Game, which Scribner is reissuing in a revised and updated paperback this fall.
In the book I mention some college student-athletes who managed to become an All American in squash and also in another sport—both Henri Salaun and Jim Zug, Sr. were All Americans in squash and in soccer. (Surely there are others.) But there is an error in the first paragraph on page 214. Back in 2003 I wrote: “Greg Zaff, a doughty Williams graduate who was the first man ever to be an All American in tennis and squash….”
It turns out Greg Zaff was the second man to ever be an All American in both squash and tennis. The first was Martin Goldberg.
Through Jon Saunders, a friend in Delaware who was on the Williams College men’s squash team with Goldberg, I was able to track down our trivia errata in person. Goldberg’s story is remarkable because he is one of those rare All Americans who never played squash until getting to college.
Goldberg grew up in Altoona, PA, outside of Pittsburgh. For his last two years of high school, he went to Lawrenceville School in New Jersey, but at the time Lawrenceville, now a prep school squash power, didn’t have squash courts. Goldberg was a tennis prodigy. He was six foot three and had a very strong serve. (His tennis teammate at Lawrenceville was Jay Lapidus, who later reached world No.34.) When Goldberg got to Williams in 1975, he immediately joined the Ephs men’s tennis team. The coach, the legendary player and former pro David Johnson, was also the men’s squash team coach. “Dave told me that I had to play squash in the winter,” Goldberg said. “I was very competitive, so it was good for me to try to learn a new sport.”
While his tennis career immediately blossomed (Goldberg played No.1 on the Ephs team as a freshman), the squash came along slowly. As per the custom at the time, Goldberg started playing squash in November and stopped playing in March. He was No.4 on the Ephs ladder as a sophomore, No.3 as a junior and No.1 as a senior. Williams was a top program—they finished fourth (ahead of Yale, Dartmouth, Trinity and other storied programs), fifth and seventh in the nation his last three years of college. Goldberg went 13-2, 10-1 and 12-2 in those three years, a remarkable personal record. Harvard and Princeton were too strong for Williams in those years, but Goldberg recorded wins over players at those schools. As a senior, he lost to Ned Edwards, the eventual winners in the quarters of the 1979 National Intercollegiates.
Meanwhile in tennis, Goldberg also performed at a high level. He twice lost in the semifinals of the New Englands and twice in the finals. In doubles his senior year he and his partner Jim Parsons reached the semis of the Division III National Intercollegiates. Williams was also a top team in that era, finishing fourth in the nation in Division III in 1978. He was captain of both the tennis and squash teams. In 1979 Marty Goldberg was honored as an All American in both tennis and squash, meaning he was in the top ten in the nation in both sports.
After graduation, Goldberg pursued a pro tennis career. He moved to southeast Asia, first living in Hong Kong and then Taiwan. He taught tennis, played in satellite tournaments, beat players like Ken Flach and climbed into the top 600 in the world.
But squash never disappeared. He played while at Cornell Law School and helped coach the Cornell men’s squash team in the 1983-84 season. After law school, he moved to New York and was a leading player in the city, winning the Met A tournament and becoming a fixture at the Fifth Avenue Racquet Club on 37th Street. But he had a moment of bad luck. At the National Singles in February 1987, three different players snapped their Achilles tendons on the very cold, unheated Ringe Courts at Penn. Down 1-0 and 8-6 in the second to Darius Pandole in the third round, Goldberg was one of those victims. Later he had both knees being replaced and rotator cuff surgery—his squash career never really resumed.
Goldberg lived in London for a dozen years. He played tennis in the Macciabiah Games—In 1993 representing Great Britain he won the 35+ gold medal. It was in Israel for the Games that he first met Greg Zaff, the second man to ever be an All American in both tennis and squash. Back in the States, Goldberg served as chair for ten years of the New York Junior Tennis & Learning, the nation’s largest urban tennis and education programs. His signature success at NYJTL was the $26.5 million Cary Leeds Center, the flagship home of the program in the Bronx with twenty-two courts and a 12,000 square-foot clubhouse.
“I’ve loved squash and the squash community,” said Goldberg, “and it is great to see how both squash and tennis have focused so much on accessibility, as programs like NYJTL and urban squash initiatives have changed our games for the better.”