History Of The US Nationals In New York City
by Rob Dinerman
November 24, 2001 -When
the Harvard Club of New York hosts the still continuing U S National
Hardball Championships in late February 2002, it will mark the 90th
playing of this prestigious tournament and the seventh time it has been
held in New York. The US Nationals is traditionally a revolving
tournament, having been held at virtually all of the important squash
centers in the USA during its history.
It will be a first for the 44th Street venue, though, since on all
previous occasions it had been the main gallery courts of the
University Club, with their majestic galleries, cool temperatures and
distinguished ambiance, that had provided the setting in which the
mutitudinous battles were joined.
Vintage New York Crowd
The solid maple walls that were constructed more than 75 years ago by
Brunswick, the renowned bowling-alley company, at the behest of Arthur
Lockett, a multi-millionaire squash enthusiast after whom the famed
annual Tri-City competition between New York, Boston and Philadelphia
was named, characterized those now long-gone arenas. Just as was the
case with the William White Invitational and the cathedral-like courts
at the Merion Cricket Club, the horde of contestants at those New York
Nationals were always inspired not only by the competitive forum the
University Club provided but also by its rich legacy in the overall
history of the National Championship.
New York hosted the Nationals six times in the past 62 years, the first
of which was won in 1940 by a 29-year-old Philadelphian named Arthur
Willing Patterson. Eight years earlier, Patterson had captained a
Harvard squad that featured two-time ('32, '33) National Champ Beekman
Pool and Jack Barnaby, destined to become the greatest college coach in
squash history until his retirement in 1976 after 44 glorious years at
the helm.
Though somewhat obscured during his undergraduate days by those
prominent teammates (as well as by a freshman on that '32 team named
Germain Glidden, who would sweep to three straight National titles in
the mid-30's), Patterson quietly developed a solid game based on sound
fundamentals, excellent conditioning and great cool. This latter
attribute would serve him well in his Nationals semi-final with Dick
Wakeman of Boston, especially in a do-or-die fourth-game overtime which
Patterson survived 18-14 before pulling through the fifth 15-9.
Patterson's appearance in the finals of this 18-man field, while not
shocking, was a surprise to some. He had always been a consistent
player who frequently hovered near a draw's late rounds, but was
thought not to possess the firepower needed to win this championship,
especially against a power-hitting opponent like Sherman Howes of
Boston, whose severe drives had always brought him victory over
Patterson in the past, and who was accompanied throughout the weekend
by his personal coach (a decided rarity in those understated days),
Eddie Standish.
But for this match, Patterson devised the unique strategy of hitting
everything at an angle, and breaking the ball sharply in on the less
nimble Howes, forcing him to extemporize from these unusual positions.
This novel approach enabled Patterson to grab two quick games and reach
another fourth-game overtime, which he knocked off to emerge with an
unexpected 15-10, 15-8, 9-15, 17-14 triumph. Underrated throughout much
of his career, Patterson parlayed his several traits to victory in this
prestigious tournament and thereby finally gained the enduring fame
that had previously eluded him.
One decade after Patterson's achievement, the action returned to the
University Club, where a virtual unknown from Detroit named Eddie Hahn
shocked the experts by becoming the first midwesterner ever to win the
national title, a feat even more surprising for his being 37 years old
at the time. Forced to rally from a 2-1 deficit in a second-round
encounter with the formidable Calvin McCracken, Hahn then benefited
greatly from a stunning quarter-final upset of the top-seeded Diehl
Mateer at the hands of Pittsburgh's Jack Isherwood, who was spent by
this great effort and offered little resistance to Hahn in their
straight-set semi. Hahn then faced the local favorite Dick Rothschild,
who himself had pulled off a major upset over Philadelphia's four-time
national champion, Charlie Brinton, which Rothschild followed with a
four-game victory over highly-regard Roger Bakey of Boston.
However the much-anticipated clash between this pair of unheralded
finalists turned out to be anti-climactic, as Rothschild was fatigued
and jaded by his long weekend of play while Hahn, despite his advanced
years, inexorably pounded his way to a 30-minute 15-4, 15-10, 17-14 win
to earn the title which he would successfully defend one year later
(disproving the "fluke" theory that initially arose) in Chicago. Hahn
was aided not only by his excellent conditioning but also by the
unseasonably warm weather, which gave the ball a lively character that
blunted Rothschild's normally effective short game.
This would not be the last time that the court conditions of the
University Club's two exhibition courts (which were relatively exposed
to the outside weather) would affect the tenor of a National's
competition. This is not a denigration of but rather a tribute to the
achievements of the eventual champions, who were thereby able to
demonstrate the crucial capacity to adapt and adjust to all aspects of
the competitive environment that confronted them.
One other noteworthy detail about this final concerned the distinctive
footwear of both participants. Hahn was clad in high-top, coal-black
canvas basketball sneakers, while Rothschild's feet were covered by
old-fashioned saddle-soled shoes of white leather bound by a
brown-leather band across the middle. Neither man was responding to any
orthopedic difficulty or other medical exigency; both simply felt more
comfortable in their various selections, which seemed respectively more
suited to a Harlem playground or country fair than the sacred turf of
the University Club's main gallery court. The presence of unusual
sneakers would resurface several decades later in this thematic history
of the New York Nationals, of which more anon.
While the 1940's and 1947 Nationals were both well-planned and
beautifully orchestrated, the 1957 affair was dropped onto the MSRA
with just two months' advance notice due to a strike among construction
workers in Maryland, which prevented the new courts at Annapolis from
being completed in time to host the event as scheduled. An ad hoc
committee was thereupon hurriedly formed, consisting of a number of the
MSRA's prominent squash aficionados (including Treddy Ketcham, Stewart
Brauns, Braman Adams and Tournament Chairman Bob Dewey), which swiftly
made the necessary arrangements and rescued what had become an
uncertain situation.
The Wily Henri Salaun
In marked contrast to this somewhat hectic administrative backdrop, the
matches themselves proceeded in tidy totem-pole fashion, with three of
the top four seeds reaching the semis and the top two seeds, defending
champion Diehl Mateer and the swift, accurate Henri Salaun, meeting for
the second consecutive year in the finals.
This time Salaun prevailed, though the highly competitive Mateer saved
a pair of third game match points in the 15-12, 18-14, 16-17, 15-11
battle between these two long-time rivals, whose matches always
devolved into a clash between Mateer's great attacking power and
Salaun's frustrating retrieving and shotmaking. The latter would
successfully defend this crown one year later at Annapolis,
incidentally, whose courts were eventually constructed in time to host
the Nationals not only in 1958 but in 1964 and 1974 as well.
By 1966, when the National Singles next took place in New York, a whole
new generation of talent had replaced the veterans of the previous
decade, and the resulting 32-man competition was probably the deepest
and hardest-fought of all. Though second-seeded behind Steve Vehslage
--- whose top seeding, in spite of his relatively inactive 1965-66
schedule, reflected the British "courtesy" custom of automatically
according this honor to the defending champion --- Victor Niederhoffer,
who had dropped a severely disappointing final to Vehslage the previous
year, was expected to atone for this failure and come away with his
first National title.
Though he would eventually live up to this expectation (and thereby
gain the opportunity to make what he ruefully referred to as "the
acceptance speech I had planned on making last year"), his ultimate
victory would require his surviving a murderous pair of battles with
the Howe brothers, Ralph and Sam, the fourth and third seeds
respectively.
Victor's match with his former collegiate nemesis Ralph Howe was
undoubtedly the most memorable match of the tournament, a contentious,
grinding five-game marathon in which the warm weather and packed
gallery created such humid conditions as to cause slipping sneakers,
skidding balls, severe cramps and several tension-building stoppages of
play. The gripping drama had aspects of a morality play for some, and
elements of Darwin's fabled doctrine of natural selection for others.
Suffice it to say that it made a lasting impression on everybody
present, especially given the bad blood that was known to exist between
these prideful warriors, and when Niederhoffer closed out the 15-12
fifth against an opponent who had been immobilized by yet another
mid-thigh cramp the tournament's emotional apex had been reached.
Although the next-day final was both more sportsmanlike and less
dramatic than the foregoing, it was a fine match in its own right, with
Sam Howe, after splitting the opening pair of games, finally being
undone by one of his most noticeable eccentricities; namely, his
insistence on always calling "no-set" when an overtime arose. (Younger
brother Ralph's affection for this briefest possible suffix was nearly
as pronounced as Sam's; on the rare occasions --- including the 1968
North American Open final --- when they faced each other, one could be
absolutely certain that no circumstance would extend a game past the
15-point minimum requirement!)
In both the third and fourth games, Howe held 13-11 leads and, after
being caught at 13, he chose this short tiebreaker span, losing all
four crucial points and ceding by an 11-15, 15-12, 15-13, 15-13 score
the title he would win in four straight-set matches the next year in
Chicago. One important gain that Howe would take from this event,
however, was his four-game quarter-final triumph over Bob Hetherington,
the lanky Buffalo resident who to that point had always had Howe's
number. This breakthrough would prove an important psychological
precedent for Sam when the two met twelve months later in that Chicago
final.
If Niederhoffer's conquest of the Howe family (as well as being
runner-up to Mohibullah Khan in that season's North American Open)
comprised the storyline of the 1966 Nationals, it could be said with
equal verity that his absence from the Nationals picture the following
year (caused by his bitterly-voiced, and hotly debated, viewpoint that
the Chicago clubs were depriving him of membership due to their
anti-Semitic bias), and the self-imposed exile that that followed
through 1971, cast a pall over the championships which, perhaps
unfairly, obscured and diminished the significance of the achievements
of those who did paticipate.
What is clear is that Niederhoffer's return to competition in 1972,
when he won the first of his record four consecutive National titles
prior to turning pro in autumn in 1975, infused the tournament with an
aura of existential spice that had been palpably absent during his
controversial boycott.
By 1975, when the Nationals returned to Gotham, he was, along with
Sharif Khan (whom Niederhoffer had defeated one month prior to the '75
Nationals in the finals of the North American Open), clearly the
sport's most visible figure, and a New York Times article accurately
summarized the prevailing scenario when it referred to Victor as the
"Caesar of Squash." The sneaker motif, dormant since the aforementioned
Hahn-Rothschild encounter back in 1950, reappeared in a new light in
Niederhoffer's tournament-long insistence on wearing sneakers that
matched in neither color, brand nor design, but his eventual triumph
was so foregone a conclusion (five matches, fifteen games, including
wins over soon-to-be champs Michael Desaulniers and Peter Briggs) that
his several unusual mannerisms were little more than diversionary grist
within the perspective of his dominance.
In fact. the tournament's most memorable match was a rousing semi
between the durable veteran Jay Nelson (once Niederhoffer's teammate at
Harvard) and the charismatic young charger Peter Briggs, who would
sweep through the 1976 Nationals in Philadelphia without losing a
single game. After trailing 2-1, Nelson, who had dropped a five-game
semi to Gordy Anderson the previous year, scratched and clawed his way
to a huge 12-4 lead in the fifth, before falling victim to an
extraordinary exhibition of Briggsian brilliance, resulting in a
ten-point run and a 15-13 ticket for Briggs to the finals. There
Niederhoffer, whose first National title had come nine years earlier in
New York, recorded his fifth and final championship on the same court
by throttling his flashier foe in a well played but convincing 15-10,
15-3, 15-12 triumph.
In 1986, when the Nationals last appeared in New York, another Harvard
alumnus and Intercollegiate champion was trying to win his fourth
consecutive Nationals and thereby emulate the feat Victor had achieved
eleven years earlier.
Kenton Jernigan who was finishing off the senior season of a sparkling
intercollegiate career, came roaring into town determined to duplicate
his Nationals-winning exploits in San Francisco, Cleveland and New
Haven. It was known that Jernigan was planning to turn pro right after
his graduation (as Niederhoffer had done right after his fourth
straight Nationals title) and he badly wanted to cap off his amateur
career in victorious fashion. He was accompanied in his
consecutive-nationals quest by Alicia McConnell, who was seeking a
record fifth straight women's Nationals, and their streak-extending
strivings happily could be viewed simultaneously since, for the first
time ever in New York Nationals history, both draws were being
contested at the same venue.
But while McConnell succeeded in keeping her streak alive (though only
after rallying from an 0-2 deficit and surviving a crossroads
third-game overtime in her semi with Nina Porter and then winning a
five game final with her most dangerous rival, Sue Cogswell), Jernigan
fell just short in his final with Yale star Hugh LaBossier, who got to
within two points of victory in a fourth-game five-point tiebreaker and
gratefully accepted two impatient Jernigan tins to seal the deal. It
should be noted that neither Alicia's airtight triumph nor Kenton's
agonizingly close defeat kept either from forcefully moving their
careers forward.
McConnell won the women's Nationals each of the next two years, pushing
her total to a record seven National hardball championships (and all in
a row!) and even as recently as last year, by which time she was 37,
she combined with Demer Holleran to win the Women's National Doubles,
while Jernigan rebounded from his narrow setback to have a wonderful
WPSA career in singles, doubles and softball, rising in fact all the
way to #2 WPSA ranking (behind only Mark Talbott, younger brother of
LaBossier's coach Dave Talbott and easily the greatest American player
in the history of the game) and winning the 1991 WPSA Championship,
also held in New York at the World Financial Center's famous Winter
Garden.
It is neither appropriate nor within the scope of this essay to infer
from this sextet of National Championships any sweeping conclusions
about the character of past New York Nationals or their impact upon the
overall history of this tournament. Certainly the Harvard and
Philadelphia influences, which permeate the history of squash in the
USA, are solidly represented in the persons of Patterson, Mateer,
Niederhoffer, Briggs, Jernigan and the Howe brothers, but neither Eddie
Hahn nor Henri Salaun fits into either of these two categories, and
Hahn especially proved a pioneer of sorts, given his age and atypical
background. Surprise finalists such as Rothschild, Hahn, Patterson and
LaBossier gave an unpredictable quality to this history, but Salaun,
Mateer and especially Niederhoffer confirmed that for the most part the
top players rise to the sport's most momentous occasions. Great
rivalries (Mateer-Salaun, Niederhoffer-Howe, McConnell-Cogswell) had
important details woven into their undulating patterns, but clearly no
decisive denouements are ever finalized in one isolated confrontation,
no matter how major the occasion.
Losing finalists Briggs and Mateer, for example, would recover to win
subsequent Nationals finals, while Patterson, whose playing prime was
interrupted for several years almost immediately after his 1940
championship by military service, would never really return to the top
competitive level. Some of these men (Briggs, Howe, Niederhoffer,
Jernigan) would turn pro and gain distinction in that rarified milieu,
while Henri Salaun is still winning titles at the senior and now
upper-senior levels; the two National age-group losses he absorbed in
New York in '75 (in a thrilling five-gamer with eventual champ Pete
Bostwick) and '86 (in a one-point-in-the-third battle with Tony
Crociata, who played the match of his life) were among the very few he
has suffered over the last few decades and the little maestro's total
of age-group titles dwarfs that of anyone else.
What this writer will best remember from researching this project and
constructing this thematic retrospective are the remarkable
personalities of the men who ran and competed in these championships,
for it is in the character of this large body of individuals, rather
than in the statistical tale of the drawsheets, that the true richness
of this tradition is most vibrantly found. The obvious relish which
which Arthur Willing Patterson, who lived well into his '80s in
gentlemanly retirement in a Philadelphia suburb, recalled his
triumphant weekend nearly a half-century back in a charming interview
he granted in 1986, his memory of details still evergreen yet tempered
with praiseworthy modesty and enduring respect for the opponents he
conquered; the charming anecdotes that had filled Stewart Brauns'
remarkably detailed recounting of many of the events; the flamboyance
of Diehl Mateer, the unparalleled concentration of Victor Niederhoffer,
Eddie Hahn's twinkle-eyed manner belying his on-court determination,
the human drama of Peter Briggs' eleventh-hour charge against Jay
Nelson in '75 and the clash of warring wills between Niederhoffer and
Ralpha Howe nine years earlier; Henri Salaun, approaching his fortieth
birthday, playing in the '66 event only as a favor to the MSRA
committee and turning back the clock by advancing all the way to the
semis --- these are the vignettes that linger long after the official
tally has been taken.
For it is in this marvelous mixture of personalities and styles that
these six tournaments on the New York stage gained their enduring
vitality, and it is within the uplifting perspective of this legacy
that the 2002 Hardball National competition, though somewhat diminished
in stature by the softball game's near-total takeover of singles squash
during the past decade, will gain their true meaning. What began then
as a historical review winds up as a personal tribute to the men and
moments that have defined and enlivened the history of the USSRA
Hardball Nationals in New York.