June
1, 2001 - WPSA singles and doubles star Thomas Earl Page, whose extraordinary talent
and charm captivated the North American squash world from the late
1970's to the early 1990's but who battled personal demons for much of
his life, died April 28, 2001, at the grievously premature age of 44.
Winner of the U. S. Nationals in 1977 as a precocious 20-year-old
Princeton sophomore, Page went on to capture numerous titles in both
singles and doubles and became one of the most popular performers on
the WPSA Tour throughout its glory days of the 1980's.
During an era that featured such luminaries as Sharif Khan, Mark
Talbott, Ned Edwards, Stu Goldstein, Michael Desaulniers, John Nimick,
Mario Sanchez, Todd Binns and Kenton Jernigan, Tom was perennially
ranked solidly in the top ten, posted multiple victories over every
North American top-echelon player and displayed a verve and flair that
made him, at his best, arguably the most charismatic and entertaining
player on the entire tour.
One of the most compelling spectacles in all of sport during that
period, fully the visual equal of Pavel Bure racing down the ice on a
breakaway or Magic Johnson spearheading a Laker fastbreak, was that of
Tom Page flying recklessly around the squash court, his legs powerfully
churning across the court as he made multiple eye-catching retrievals
of an opponent's would-be winners. In addition to this mobility, Page
also could create enormous pace while still possessing exceptional
touch, especially on his backhand three-wall, which he often directed
into the nick with uncanny precision.
A member of the famed Merion Cricket Club junior program in suburban
Philadelphia, Page starred as a junior on his undefeated Episcopal
Academy high-school team on which his older brothers, Palmer and David,
each a future college all-American, also played prominent roles.
Tom's first explosion onto the Open squash scene came in the 1977 North
American Open, when he stunned the squash world by handily defeating
two recent National Champions on his way to the semis, where he led
Sharif Khan (who had won seven of the previous eight Opens) 9-8 in the
fifth before yielding to The Champ. This sparked a torrid surge that
culminated in the National amateur title in Chicago the following month.
After turning pro a few years later, Page again electrified the squash
scene in the opening event of the 1980-81 WPSA season, his first full
season as a pro, when he sequentially upset Aziz Khan, Mario Sanchez,
Sharif Khan (all in three games!) and Clive Caldwell to win the
tournament. Two years later, again in the season-opening event, he
faced top seed Michael Desaulniers, who had overwhelmed the tour
throughout the previous spring while rocketing to the No. 1 ranking,
and upset him in five, thereby puncturing the growing myth of
Desaulniers's invincibility.
But perhaps Page's greatest performances came against Jahangir Khan,
who throughout that mid-80's stretch was completely dominating both the
hardball and softball games. Jahangir later insisted that by far the
adversary, hardball or softball, who posed the stiffest challenges to
him during that period was Tom Page.
Though the indomitable Jahangir always emerged victorious, Page
invariably played his best squash in their matches, and the noteworthy
contrast in their styles--Jahangir error-free, conservative and with
perfect fundamentals of stroking and footwork, Page adventurous in his
shot selection and evincing a flair for the dramatic, the world's
greatest all-time player against America's most gifted natural
talent--made for riveting entertainment, as did the tendency of their
matches to go the full five games.
The climax of their rivalry was a quarter-final battle on a portable
three-glass-wall court in the off-Broadway theatre Town Hall in the
1985 North American Open, an air-sucking rubber-burning punch-out
replete with a seemingly unending stream of pulsating all-court points
which Page, after hitting a savage backhand winner at 17-all in the
third to go up 2-1, appeared positioned to win. Though he bent just
enough beneath the unrelenting Khan ground attack to surrender the
final two games to his all-conquering foe(who went on to win the final
two rounds handily), Page with this performance had co-authored what
might have been, given the ferocious athleticism of the play and
significance and grandeur of the setting, the esthetic masterpiece of
the WPSA's entire history.
Tom was never able to approach, much less duplicate, this performance
in the years that followed; in fact, in the next event a few weeks
later, he lost in the early rounds to a lower-ranked opponent, a fact
which seemed to symbolize the difficulty he had throughout his career
in finding the consistency that characterized the play of those ranked
ahead of him.
Always in the top ten, he never was able to reach the top five and the
resulting frustration, as well as the burden of extremely high
expectations he always had to carry and the toll exacted from the
cumulative effect of a series of minor but nagging injuries, prevented
him from ever winning one of the pro game's handful of major singles
championships.
Doubles was a different story--throughout the late 1980's, he won major
titles with a number of partners and playing both the right- and
left-walls. Though he won the 1985 WPSA Doubles Team Of The Year Award
with Michael Pierce, his greatest and most long-standing alliance was
with Todd Binns, with whom he teamed to win this Award three straight
years in the late 1980's; in their best season, 1987-88, they lost only
one match, in the finals of the last tournament of the season.
Tom's career, like his life as a whole, was a series of highs and lows,
but he was always known as a clean player, the personification of good
sportsmanship, win or lose, and a hail-fellow-well-met with a good
sense of humor and a good heart. He made a major positive impact on the
North American squash world for the better part of two decades, and he
will be fondly remembered and sorely missed by his numerous friends as
they mourn a life that ended all too soon.