Within four weeks of each other this spring, Nicol David and Ramy Ashour, two of the greatest, most electrifying players in squash history, stepped down from the professional tour and retired. They had similar careers. Prodigies, each were the first to capture the World Juniors twice. Each dominated the...
By James Zug
1989
We had lost to Harvard in the regular season in 1989, 6-3 in Cambridge. A week later we beat them in the semis of the first nationals team tournament at Yale. We beat them 7-2. And then we beat Princeton in the finals. It was theoretically...
By James Zug
Photos courtesy of Bert Armstrong
Looking for an old book? How about a British Open racquet from Geoff Hunt? A Johnny Skillman letter? A Sarah Fitz-Gerald stamp? A1907 squash salt trophy?
Go to Melbourne. There in Australia’s loveliest city is the world’s greatest collection of squash memorabilia. I wrote...
By James Zug
This month is the 25th anniversary of the first U.S. national softball tournament. With the dominance of softball today in America—the mass conversions of the 1990s, the incredible retreat of hardball—it is strange to imagine that the first sanctioned softball nationals was held just a quarter century...
By James Zug
It was about storytelling.
Beneath the carapace of elegance and the thick scrim of black-tie and evening gowns and silver scoops of potato leek gratin and tangerine segment and cabernet reduction, it was just a brace of old and new friends gathered together and telling stories.
We heard about...
By James Zug
April 2013 was another extraordinary month in the extraordinary life of Victor Elmaleh. The ninety-four year-old Elmaleh (pronounced El-Mali) went to work each weekday as the chairman of his real estate development firm. He played squash. He and his wife Sono Osato celebrated their seventieth wedding anniversary...
By James Zug
This past year, three nonagenarians and one great writer died, leaving our squash landscape a lot less vivid. These four men were all iconoclasts: they were outspoken leaders and their outsized personalities left deep, historically unique imprints across our country.
John Cornish
Former Mass SRA president and the last...
By James Zug
Photos by Dick Druckman
Squash Magazine’s senior writer James Zug is back with another book. In the summer of 2003 we proudly ran an excerpt from Squash: A History of the Game, which came out that fall from Scribner. It was a best-seller in the squash world and...
By James Zug
It is that time of year again. In between Labor Day and New Year’s, the vast majority of books are published. Since squash players are intensely literary as a rule, here is a guide to the books every squash player should know about and own and talk about with...