May 19,
2004-It
is ironic in view of the standing he would subsequently acquire as
arguably the most historically significant figure in the annals of
Pacific Coast squash that this exceptional all-around athlete
discovered the game completely by accident when he enrolled in a
physical education course in the spring of 1960 during the last
semester of his senior year at the University of California, Berkeley.
The course was by happy coincidence taught by Ralfe Miller, a former
runner-up in the Pacific Coast Squash Championship, who immediately
spotted the potential in his young charge and encouraged him to pursue
the sport after his graduation.
By that time. Eichmann had already achieved excellence in baseball,
where as a pitcher he played semi-pro ball in the Bay Area for several
of his high-school years after becoming one of the few players to make
the varsity as a freshman; soccer, where he followed in the footsteps
of his father, Alex Sr., a member of the 1920 German Olympic squad; and
golf, where he made all-city in high school and later led the UC
Berkeley team to its best season in decades.
He also would become good enough as a bowler to routinely record scores
in the 200 range, and one of his fondest athletic memories in later
years was of leading his intramural college basketball club to three
school championships, even though members of the UC Berkeley squad that
defeated West Virginia 71-70 in the 1959 NCAA championship game were
dispersed, usually two to a team, throughout the intramural league and
Eichmann's teams did not have any players from that championship roster.
In one memorable final during the spring of '59, Eichmann's team beat
an intramural opponent that featured varsity star Darrall Imhoff, who
would have a successful career as an NBA starting center on the Elgin
Baylor-Jerry West Los Angeles Laker teams that constantly opposed the
Boston Celtic dynasty during the 1960's. At 6 foot, 10 inches, Imhoff
was much too big for anyone on Eichmann's team to guard, but Eichmann,
in an early version of the strategy that is presently routinely
utilized against the current Laker starting center Shaquille O'Neal,
ordered his teammates down the stretch to intentionally foul Imhoff, a
poor free-throw shooter due to the line-drive trajectory of his
delivery, and the strategy paid off handsomely in a close and very
satisfying victory.
This latter incident provides an instructive look into some of the
characteristics that would later serve him so well when he decided to
focus on squash several years after graduating from Berkeley. Though
Eichmann was only 5 foot, 9 inches and 160 pounds, the arm strength he
had developed as a pitcher and bowler enabled him to generate
significant power, especially on his forehand drives, and his agility
and multi-front athleticism made him an excellent retriever with
noteworthy stamina. All of these qualities, buttressed by a competitive
attitude whose intensity level became the stuff of legend, enabled
Eichmann to frequently will his way to victories over opponents with
far greater playing experience and shot-making skills by relentlessly
running everything down and simply refusing to give in until his foes
ran out of strength or patience or resolve, or all three.
But the shrewdness that also infused Eichmann's approach to squash was
often overlooked, as was the wisdom he displayed in improving and
expanding his game by seeking top players from the east who relocated
to California and making them his practice partners. This group
included two Harvard stars, namely Larry Sears, who would win the '62
and '63 Pacific Coast championships, and later Victor Niederhoffer, the
'64 National Intercollegiate champion and '66 U. S. National champion,
who took a job teaching at the UC Berkeley Business School in '69 and
with whom Eichmann had a captivating series of matches during the
several years that Niederhoffer lived out west.
TAKING ON THE NIEDER
By the time Eichmann's rivalry with Niederhoffer began, he was already
well along in a decade-long period of dominance in squash in the region
that would eventually result in more than 40 tournament wins,
highlighted by Pacific Coast titles in '67 (on his home Olympic Club
courts and over Brooks Ragen in the final), '69 (over Steve Gurney, who
in the mid-1970's would become the head coach at Yale), '70 (over
George Morfitt, later a U. S. and Canadian multiple age-group champion)
and '72 (again over Gurney, a constant Eichmann rival, though Eichmann
wound up with a decisive 8-2 career edge). Eichmann also was a Pacific
Coast finalist in '64 and '71, a six-time California state champion,
the winner of the NorCals four straight years from 1970-73, six times
the Olympic Club Invitational titlist, five times each the winner of
the Ralfe Miller tournament and the University Club of San Francisco
event and a three-time champion in the University Club of Los Angeles
tourney.
In the first tournament of the 1969-70 season, the Ralfe Miller (named
of course in honor of Eichmann's first squash mentor, who was himself a
legendary figure in California squash lore) Eichmann and Niederhoffer
met in the final, with the latter narrowly winning the first two games
in tiebreakers, taking a much-needed rest in the 15-4 third game and
reasserting himself in the 15-9 final fourth. But even in sustaining
that defeat, Eichmann noted the one chink in his redoubtable foe's
armor and determined to find a way to exploit it going forward.
Niederhoffer at that time was somewhat out of shape and overweight, and
he likely would have lost had his uncanny shot-making not (barely)
carried him through those first two games and thereby given him the
luxury of being able to let the third game go and conserve his energy
for the fourth.
Eichmann realized that if he could up his own conditioning level even
further and make his rematches with Niederhoffer more battles of
attrition than tests of their respective racquet skills, he might well
defeat his storied opponent.
By the time these two next met, in the final event of that season, the
NorCals, Eichmann had won all five of the intervening tournaments in
which he had played, including his third Pacific Coast title. Though
the pre-final rounds of the tourney were played at UC Berkeley, the
final round was moved to Orinda, site of the beautiful private court
owned by Dr. Richard Martin, whose gallery could accommodate far more
people than that of any court in the college facility. Eichmann's plan
worked to perfection, though only barely, as Niederhoffer was forced to
expend so much energy in winning the lengthy 15-12 first and third
games that after falling immediately behind in the fourth he totally
conceded that game 15-0 (!), the only shut-out game in either direction
of Eichmann's entire career.
The fifth was, in Eichmann's words, "as grueling as it gets."
Niederhoffer, a first-ballot inductee into the USSRA Squash Hall Of
Fame several decades later, would win the Nationals four straight years
from 1972-75 and become Sharif Khan's most notorious rival during the
1970's, even beating Khan in the final round of the '75 North American
Open in Mexico City. Throughout Niederhoffer's career he fully earned
his reputation for winning down-to-the-wire matches---but on this
occasion, it was Eichmann whose superior fitness and tenacity carried
the day, to the tune of a 15-13 fifth-game victory that is still talked
about reverentially among longtime aficionados of that era.
Eichmann recorded a second victory over Niederhoffer, also in five
games, seven months later when they met in an early-season Olympic Club
vs. UC Berkeley team match, but this setback only served to galvanize
the latter, who had already set his sights on winning the '72 Nationals
in Detroit. Eichmann attributes his first-round win over Gulmast Khan,
Sharif's younger brother, in large part to the frequent practice
sessions that he and Niederhoffer scheduled as a run-up to that
tournament, but in the second round he lost decisively to The Champ
himself, who would go on to win that Nationals without losing a single
game.
Eichmann would begin winding down his playing career during the next
few years, though he did have one last hurrah in February '74 in
Annapolis, site of that year's Nationals, when he played No. 1 and led
the Pacific Coast to victory in the Five-Man Team National
Championships. He and teammates Morfitt, John Hutchinson (Eichmann's
conqueror in the '71 Pac Coast final), John
Puddicombe and Dick Radloff prevailed 3-2 in a memorable final over a
tough Westerns squad paced by the O'Laughlin brothers, Dave and Larry.
SQUASH ENTREPRENEUR
By that time, Eichmann, then in his late 30's, was beginning to turn
his squash-related interests in a markedly different direction, one
which may ultimately have had a greater long-term impact on squash in
California than that created by even his extended run of on-court
accomplishments. Inspired in part by news of the successful launching
of the first commercial squash club in New York a few years earlier,
and with the strong financial backing of a group of wealthy investors
from nearby Hillsborough (about 20 miles south of San Francisco),
Eichmann built the Peninsula Squash Club in San Mateo in 1975, a
four-court facility that swiftly displaced the several private clubs in
downtown San Francisco as "the place to be" for squash devotees and the
major hub of that sport in the area.
Eichmann ran every aspect of the club, from giving lessons to handling
court bookings to making sure the towel area was well stocked, and,
once the word swiftly got around, the best players in the area started
showing up to practice with Eichmann and tune their games for upcoming
tournaments. His father, whose own athletic achievements made him
totally at ease in this kind of environment, also became a constant and
popular fixture at the club, where Eichmann would frequently hold court
in front of a happily captive audience of his friends, admirers and
members.
This entrepreneurial undertaking proved so successful that five years
later Eichmann built a second and even more substantial facility, the
Squash Club of San Francisco, located in the great city itself and
featuring among its eight courts a glass-back exhibition court with a
300-spectator capacity gallery which top WPSA pro Stu Goldstein deemed
"the best court on our tour," quite a compliment given that during this
early-1980's heyday period there were close to 25 tournaments (most of
them held at exclusive private clubs) on the annual schedule.
The two major events hosted during that time at this latter club,
namely the WPSA ranking tour stop in March '81 and the U. S. Nationals
two years later, were both fabulously successful, and there can be no
question either that these have to be considered landmark events in the
greatest period of squash expansion ever in California squash (with
more tournaments, more flights, larger draws and more enthusiasm than
at any time either before or since) or that this surge was to a
significant degree attributable to the existence and success of
Eichmann's two clubs, which for the first time made the game readily
accessible to many people who were not members of the few private San
Francisco clubs.
Nor can there be any doubt that the boost that these clubs provided to
the area, which was duplicated by similar commercial-club successes in
other regions of the country, enabled the pro and amateur circuits in
this country to grow in a way that provided an entire squash generation
with a degree of playing and money-making opportunities that were,
unfortunately, absent during the arc of Eichmann's own playing career.
The massive expansion of the game, and the proud realization of the
important role that he himself had played in its occurrence, was
particularly fulfilling to this son of San Francisco, who lived his
entire life there before moving in '95 to Sacramento, where he still is
a frequent and proficient golfer.
Now 66 and seemingly as feisty as ever, especially when recalling
questionable referees' calls that went against him or opponents with
whom he clashed decades ago, Eichmann was able to retire in his early
50's after getting "offers he couldn't refuse" from the real estate
developers to whom he wound up selling his clubs near the end of the
1980's. He continues to enjoy the respect and admiration of all who
witnessed or were in any way associated with his outstanding and
multi-front squash career.
Tom Dashiell, Eichmann's mid-1970's sparring partner and occasional
tournament opponent and later (in '79) the first Californian to be
ranked in the USSRA top 10, noted recently that throughout those years
that it was Eichmann, "who hated to lose more than anyone I have ever
known," against whom he would constantly measure the progress of his
game. Ted Gross, the only Californian to seriously compete on (and
crack the top 15 of) the WPSA tour, said that Eichmann had been his
primary squash role model and the inspiration for his own career
aspirations. And Alan Fox, the USSRA President during the early 1990's
and a Californian himself whose playing days substantially overlapped
with Eichmann's, made special mention of the multitude of fronts on
which Eichmann had made enormous contributions and of Eichmann's status
almost as an icon of that substantial period in west coast squash in
general and California squash in particular.
That he was able to play with the type of edge he exuded throughout his
career and still command such affection all these years later from such
a disparate group of people is perhaps the consummate tribute to what
this legendary figure meant to squash during such an important time in
the game's evolution.