The Future of Squash 1937/8

Shortly before he won the British Amateur in 1938 after F D Amr Bey’s run of six titles, Kenneth Gandar- Dower wrote this article giving his view of the future of squash in the 1937/8 Squash Rackets Annual.

An interesting insight from a colourful individual (details and photo of Gandar- Dower with his pet cheetah – yes a cheetah! – are in www.squashlibrary.info/squash-a-celebration)

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I do not think that squash rackets will ever be classed among the greatest of games. At no great game is it so difficult to make a winning shot against an opponent in one's own class. At no great game is it necessary to be reduced to a gasping wreck before you admit defeat. At no great game has it been found so necessary to experiment, and again to experiment, with the ball.

Had the court been standardised to rather different measurements, then we should have been spared the exhausting tedium of the unending rally. An extra yard in length, an extra two feet in width, might well have made the difference, but, because it was necessary to standardise the courts before the game's potentialities were fully known, the result was disastrous. No blame can, of course, be attached to those responsible for the standardisation (though the voice of C. R. Read was raised in protest). They were confronted with the necessity to make decisions before sufficient data was available.

Lawn tennis was lucky in that the dimensions of the court were only a matter of chalk. Squash rackets was just unlucky and turned out wrong. Wrong, yes, for the expert, but not for the ordinary player. That is the secret of the popularity of squash. When a man begins to learn any other game, he finds himself steeped in icy hopelessness, but when he turns to squash, he says

to himself, "I may seem a bit of a dud at that and the other, but I can get the ball above the board at this game." The beginner finds himself improving rapidly up to a certain point — from the start he can have an enjoyable game — it is only necessary for him to battle with his equally inefficient opponent.

He can taste the joy of personal victory—he does not feel that both he and his opponent have come off respectively second and third best in a duel with inanimate bunkers, as, for instance, in golf or lawn tennis.

What, then, is the future of squash ? Year after year more courts spring up and raise their crops of delight in battle, of thumping feet, of fitness and of temporarily overtried hearts. Year after year the game is played more widely, for the most part in a sporting and anything but press-conscious spirit. In some respects the position of the game is unique. It really does begin to look as if squash is going to be the first really popular game which cannot be capitalised or played before roaring crowds.

Lawn tennis, from its infancy, was always potentially a public spectacle, real tennis and rackets can never be popular because of the cost of courts, balls and rackets, but squash appears to be taking a unique path of its own. Never, except perhaps by means of mirrors or of television or by the aquariumisation of the court, will it be possible for the final of the championship to be watched by thousands.

Is it possible that a game with a doubtful reputation as regards health, a game the limitations of which are known and admitted by its votaries, a game which is incapable of being publicised, is going to take its place among the most popular pastimes of the future ?

I rather think it is.