U. S. Hardball Nationals To Have Its Swan Song In 2016 by Rob Dinerman Dateline December 27th
--- Imposing resolution on an issue that has been roiling the shrinking
hardball squash community for a number of years, US Squash recently
announced that the 2016 U.S. Hardball Nationals, scheduled for the
weekend of February 26-28 at the Merion Cricket Club in suburban
Philadelphia, will be the last time that this event will be classified
as an official national championship. Merion itself, which has hosted
this competition more often than any other venue and produced a host of
its champions over the years, is scheduled to have its three remaining
hardball courts removed this coming summer or fall as part of a major
renovation of the club’s facilities.
From its inception in 1907, this tournament, which has
historically been referred to simply and reverently as “The
Nationals”, has been held every year other than in 1918, 1919 and
during a three-year gap from 1943-45 due to World War II, totaling 104
editions. A women’s championship was added in 1928 and age-group
flights began shortly thereafter, starting in 1935 with a Veterans
division for players age 40 and over. Plenty of further categories
followed in subsequent years, to the extent that at one juncture there
were 12 age-group tournaments (starting with a 30-and-over, with
flights every five years through the 85-and-over) along with the
Championship event, which had a 64-draw with very few first-round byes.
In the sport’s heyday more than 400 entrants from all three North
American countries competed for what was regarded as the top prize of
the amateur squash season. During the 17-year period from 1969-85, 15
different cities spread all over the country hosted the Nationals
(Princeton and Detroit being the two-time venues), which throughout
that time frame also ran heavily subscribed Five-Man National Team
competitions concurrently with the Individual tournaments.
Interest and attendance, for both this championship and
hardball squash as a whole, peaked during the late-1970’s and
throughout the decade of the 1980’s, spurred by the growth of the World
Professional Squash Association hardball tour and the proliferation of
commercial squash clubs, which made the game much more accessible to
the public than had been the case when squash was played only at
private clubs. Both of those phenomena began to fade as the 1990’s
began and the international (i.e., softball) game gradually but
inexorably displaced hardball as the sport of choice among the majority
of American squash players. Probably the last truly vibrant hardball
Nationals, held at Yale’s Payne Whitney Gymnasium in New Haven,
occurred in 1991, 25 long years ago. By 2000, only five players were
entered in the Open division, which was therefore run as a round-robin,
and the number of total players has in recent years fallen all the way
to the 40’s, barely 10 per cent of the entry figures during the sport’s
boom years. Furthermore, in contrast to the 15-cities-in-17-years
phenomenon of three-plus decades ago, during the 17-year period that
will include the 2016 championship,13 times it will have been held at
Merion, the only exceptions being the Harvard Club of New York in 2002,
2012 and 2014, and the Tennis & Racquet Club in Boston in 2011.
As part of the drip-drip-drip that has characterized
hardball squash’s decline during the first decade and a half of the
2000’s, clubs increasingly converted their hardball singles courts to
softball, causing their members to lose access to hardball courts, and
those that allowed a few hardball courts to remain paid less attention
to their upkeep. Fewer balls were manufactured, with a consequent
harmful effect on their performance, and the change in racquets caused
a loss in the quality of the points as well. For at least the past
decade, as the list of active players has steadily diminished, a
progressively contentious debate has grown within the remaining
hardball group. An increasing percentage of this number, recognizing
the inevitability of hardball’s demise, felt that the Nationals should
therefore be allowed a dignified death (as happened with the Canadian
Hardball Nationals, whose well-attended and high-quality swan song took
place in 1995), rather than have it torturously limp along as such a
vastly reduced shell of its former magnificent self, in the process
causing a significant drop in the value and credibility of the titles
that were being contested. Opposing this viewpoint was a substantial
and vocal contingent of players who were determined to maintain the
Nationals in an attempt to keep the game alive as long as possible,
pursuant to a noble but arguably quixotic hope that a turnaround might
somehow take place and that hardball’s popularity would be restored to
something approaching its former level.
It must be admiringly said of the latter camp that its
leaders have never stopped trying different ways to attain that goal.
Beginning in 2011, a prize-money purse has been offered (the previously
amateur-only Nationals was opened to pros beginning in 1996), leading
to a larger field and to some of squash’s most accomplished figures
winning this tournament during the past five years: Preston Quick, a
multiple winner of both the S. L. Green (the national softball
championship) and the U.S. National Doubles, took home first prize in
2011 and 2012, with former world top-four Chris Walker to follow in
2013, nine-time S. L. Green champ Julian Illingworth doing so in 2014
and Merion pro Mohammed Reda copping top honors a year ago. In
addition, there are still more than a half-dozen hardball invitational
tournaments, beginning in late autumn and leading to the Nationals,
several of which are played on the 80-square-foot larger softball
courts with the green Astral ball (another resourceful innovative
wrinkle), which is slower than the fuchsia regulation hardball.
Out of respect for these efforts and for the decades-long
devotion to the hardball game that many of its remaining practitioners
continue to demonstrate in word and deed, US Squash, to its credit, has
supported the hardball Nationals and held off making the decision to
discontinue its status as an official national championship as long as
it realistically could. But by this autumn the situation had
deteriorated to the point that a total of only five players showed up
at the Harvard Club for one of the invitational weekends in November,
and by most accounts the US Squash announcement was overdue by at least
several years, if not longer. The spirit and the passion for this
unique game still exist, but the numbers have now dwindled well past
the point of no return, and the hope is that this farewell 2016
championship, played on hallowed courts that are themselves in their
final run, will provide an opportunity to pay fitting tribute to the
grandeur and tradition that for so many decades exemplified the U.S.
Hardball Nationals.
