By James Zug
It was bound to happen. At some point, the numbers would stop ticking over. Eight times they had won 5-4 matches. A couple of them were ridiculously close, match balls saved, epic comebacks. It couldn't go on forever like that.
The numbers stopped twice this season. The monkeys...
By James Zug
Marketing a tournament is easy these days: set up a website, send out some tweets, update Facebook and bam! The deal is done.
Not so fast. The North American Open has figured out that the best way to sell itself is with something old-school, something hardcopy. A commemorative...
By James Zug
Photos by Steve Line/squashpics.com
The boy was shy. As a child, Mohamed Elshorbagy was aggressive on court. He went for outright nicks or it was a tin on every point. He played all-out at every practice. Every session was a pressure session. Even at a young age, he...
By James Zug
Neal Tew is the purveyor of a new method of developing squash: the nonprofit club.
Tew grew up playing at the Cincinnati Country Club. He was one of Don Mills’ protégés. The class of 1993 at Harvard, Tew was a part of two national championship teams; his senior...
By James Zug
Nick Matthew
Sweating Blood: My Life in Squash
Cheshire, England: internationalSportGroup, 2013
It is a shame but inevitable. Like everywhere else in their careers, Nick Matthew and James Willstrop are now placed side by side on the bookshelf. Just under two years ago, Willstrop came out with his memoir, Shot...
By James Zug
In the fall of 1973 the first commercial squash club opened in the United States. Today, public clubs are commonplace. U.S. Squash estimates that a third of all courts in the country are in public clubs. One health club chain, Life Time Fit- ness, has forty-four clubs...
By James Zug
Parity was the watchword the entire nine days of the 2013 Delaware Investments U.S. Open at Drexel University. It was the first major tournament in the history of professional squash—now in its 110th year—to offer equal prize money for the players, regardless of whether they were a...
By James Zug
In searching for a squash vacation in the sun, I found something perhaps unique.
I went down to Sea Island Resort in September as a part of a Squash Doubles Association weekend. Last season the amateur winner in each tournament’s pro-am draw received a trip to Sea Island,...
By James Zug
At the 2013 Delaware Investments U.S. Open held last month at Drexel University, a dedicated and determined group of young men and women were present: team members of SquashSmarts, Philadelphia’s after school urban youth program.
SquashSmarts, like more than fifteen programs across the country that are part of...
By James Zug
Grand Central Terminal. It is a magical place. It is the monumental building, weighty with history and grandeur. It is the largest rail terminal in the world—terminal not station: Grand Central is a destination. Trains terminate there. It is not a place you simply breeze through.
A total...