Squashing the Elitism in a Preppy Racquet Sport

Three days a week after a long day at work, Pam Regan, a sales manager for Donnelley Yellow Pages, drives from Huntington Beach to Gardena to play squash at the Squash Club of Los Angeles.

There, she might see Bill Carlin, a real estate agent, who drives from Whittier to enjoy a sport he has played since prep school.

“I’ve been playing the game for 40 years,” Carlin says. “I love the game. It’s a great way to stay in shape.”

“In squash, you use your body and mind together,” Regan says. “You have to be able to outsmart your opponent. I’m proficient at racquet skills, and I used to teach racquetball. You have to be more fit to play squash. Squash is a social sport. . . . There are more men players than women. You make friends because you share a common interest in the game.”

Squash, a racquet game played on an indoor court, has until recently been associated with prep schools and Ivy League universities. According to Bob Hanscom, a teaching pro at both the Ketchum Downtown YMCA (a public facility) and the University Club of Los Angeles (a private club), the three top U.S. schools for squash are Harvard, Princeton and Yale.

“Squash has been the most popular game at the Pentagon and on Wall Street. Today, we also have players from all walks of life,” he says.

Hanscom says the game began in 18th-Century England, where it was popular at the exclusive private boys’ schools, Eton and Harrow. Later, the game was taken up in debtors’ prisons, where inmates played it for exercise. The game was introduced into Eastern U.S. prep schools and Ivy League universities in the 1920s. As students graduated, they took the sport with them into the private clubs of New York and Boston. Eventually, the entrepreneurial spirit stimulated the opening of public squash clubs.

“Squash was very popular with British army officers in India, especially near Pakistan,” says Jeremy Stone, a Santa Monica CPA who currently serves as president of the Southern California Squash Racquets Assn. “Today, many world champions are Pakistanis.”

Stone learned to play squash at Haileybury School in England and later played for Trinity Hall at Cambridge University.

Stone and Hanscom concur that the current growth in squash in Southern California comes from the influx of players from the East Coast and from countries where squash is a popular school sport--Great Britain, Australia, South Africa, India, Pakistan.

“There’s an international quality to squash,” said John Ross, owner of Squash Club of Los Angeles, during a typical evening in the Gardena sports facility.

“Tonight we have a player from Oman, another from Jamaica. Other players here are from England, the Philippines, Mexico and Italy. Our pro is from Scotland. I think that as the sport grows, more blue-collar people will take it up. Already, at our club, the judo people from the other room see the squash players and they want to try it too.”

To keep up with the demand for squash facilities, many sports clubs that built racquetball courts in the 1970s are converting them to squash courts. (Racquetball, which is similar to squash, is played on a slightly larger court; players use a shorter racquet with a larger head and a lively rubber ball three times the size of a squash ball.) Hanscom says that the number of squash players and facilities in Southern California has tripled during the past three years.

The 32-foot-long squash court has walls on all four sides. Unlike tennis, in which players face one another across a net, two squash opponents stand side by side facing a 15-foot front wall on which two horizontal red lines are painted. The top line, six feet from the floor, is called the service line. The server must hit the ball above this line. Following the initial serve, the players rally the ball until one or the other misses and the other player gets the serve.

The ball may be hit against any of the four sides of the court, but may not hit under the lower red line. A player can only score on a serve. A game equals nine points. The player who wins three games out of five wins the match.

On the East Coast, squash players use a hard rubber ball and a different scoring system, but Southern California players favor the softer ball of international squash.

According to squash aficionados, the slower-moving soft ball requires more strategy and mental engagement than the faster-moving hard ball used in racquetball.

“The hard ball chases you and bounces around a lot,” says Neeven Soodyall, an Indian from South Africa who plays three times a week at USC. He learned the game while a student at Princeton.

“The soft ball is slower, and you chase it around the court. Squash is more mental,” he says. “You must have poise, calm, and focus to win.”

“The slower ball requires more endurance,” says Patti Soogaard, a squash player at Center Courts Fitness Center in West Los Angeles who took up squash in Australia.

“The ball is fast off the racquet, but it dies when it hits a hard surface. The better the players, the longer the rally,” she adds. “You have to have discipline. If you have other things on your mind, you’ll make an error and your opponent will catch you off guard. On the other hand, if you are too predictable, your opponent will know your weaknesses and win the point or rally.”

“An analogy you’ll hear in Britain or Australia is that racquetball is to squash as checkers are to chess,” says Steve Robinson of Torrance. “Squash is a thinking person’s game.” Robinson, who is from Great Britain, learned to play squash in Singapore and played for 10 years in Australia before moving to California.

The mental engagement of the game, combined with its intense workout, has made it popular with professionals and business people who want a lot of exercise in a short period of time.

“I don’t have that much time to do sports, and with squash I can get a lot of exercise in one hour,” says Jennifer Pancake, a downtown attorney who plays at the Ketchum Downtown YMCA during lunchtime or after work.

“After an intense game or tournament I can feel the pull in my upper legs and hips,” she said. “While I’m playing, I’m concentrating on the game. It’s a release from the tensions of work.”

“Concentration is really important,” says Jubert Leighton, a mechanic who plays several times a week at Squash Club of Los Angeles. “Every opponent is different. You can’t think of something else and play squash well.”

The physical demands of squash require stamina and endurance. Hanscom says that during a rigorous game the caloric burn-off is about 600 calories per hour. Most players advise warming up before playing, and many also work out with weights.

“You can have injuries to the groin, hamstrings and knees due to the sudden stops,” says Mike Besa of Alta Loma, who plays at Squash Club of Los Angeles. “You can really hurt yourself if you don’t warm up before playing.”

Carlin recommends that players returning to the sport after a long absence use common sense and break in gradually.

“You might want to have a physical,” he says. “You will probably play with contemporaries who have also slowed down or with others at your level of play.”

In many countries, children learn squash early, at the age of 8. But Harish Khanna, an audit partner at Price-Waterhouse, is teaching his 4-year-old daughter to play. “I had a small racquet made for her,” he says. At Center Courts, some members bring their children.

Many adults who have not had the opportunity to learn the game as children take small group or private lessons to learn how to grip the racquet and develop stroking techniques. Private lessons cost between $25 to $40 for a 45-minute session; group lessons may cost around $25 per month.

Pancake, who learned squash at the Downtown Y after graduating from law school, says, “You need to play often and also practice drills by yourself.”

“You improve by watching or playing with better players,” says Martin Anthony of Glendale, who belongs to Burbank Squash Club.

“I took lessons to get the concept of the game,” says Abe Woodson of Carson, a former pro-football player with the San Francisco 49ers. “As an athlete I have always had a lot of energy and I still need to work it off. I play five times a week now with anyone and everyone. Squash is a game of finesse.”

The mental component of squash is the quality that keeps players such as Carlin active in the sport.

“Squash is endlessly fascinating,” he says. “The ball ricochets differently each time. Each game is full of the unexpected. The conditioning is a plus, but the fun of the game is the key thing. I commute three times a week from Whittier to Gardena. If it were just for the conditioning, I wouldn’t stay with it. I could work out closer to home.”

Getting outfitted for squash is not expensive. Hanscom says that racquets cost between $80 and $150. You will need gym clothes and athletic shoes. Many squash clubs are private, but membership is open to anyone interested. At several, guests may use the court and facilities for an hourly fee. Consult the Yellow Pages under “Squash” or “Health and Fitness Clubs” for squash facilities near you or send a self-addressed, stamped envelope to Jeremy Stone, Southern California Squash Racquets Assn., 4325 Mentone Ave., Culver City, Calif. 90232.

Note: The first squash tournament of the decade, “Squashin’ the 90s,” is scheduled Friday and next Saturday at Squash Club of Los Angeles, 19016 S. Vermont Ave., Gardena, Calif. 90248, (213) 532-4243. Entry fee is $30 per entrant. All squash players are welcome.