August 5,
2004-Harry Conlon attempted a defence of his national title despite having been posted to Thule, Greenland all year.
The youngest player ever to win the U. S. Nationals and the first to do
so while an active member of the armed services of the United States,
Harry B.
Conlon took up the game in 1946 at age 13 and learned the game from his
father, Harry A. Conlon, who was the squash professional at the former
University Club (now called Allentown Athletix) in Buffalo, where the
junior Conlon was born.
During the next several years, he would go over to the University Club
almost every day after school to practice by himself, receive coaching
from his father if he was not too busy or practice with club players
such as Henry Jocoy, Jinx Johnson, Bob Rich or Bill Johnson, among
others, who might come in during the afternoons without a scheduled
partner.
From a truly inauspicious beginning in the autumn of '47 as a
participant on the YMCA team in the newly formed C class Buffalo
league, the slender but cat-quick teenager swiftly perfected all the
front-court shots and developed rifle-like shots off the back wall.
After losing the '50 city singles final to local legend Monty Pooley,
Conlon won that event the following year, but his squash prospects
appeared to be effectively doomed, or at least severely constrained,
when a few months later he joined the United States Air Force following
his high school graduation and was assigned to Scott Field, Illinois,
with duties in cryptography.
However, by chance his base commander was a club-level squash
enthusiast from nearby St. Louis, and when the latter realized the
talent level of his young charge he encouraged him to play regularly
both on the base and in St. Louis. This fortuitous circumstance enabled
Conlon to participate in a number of tournaments in the area during the
1951-52 season, including the Western Championship, the biggest event
in the region, where he lost in the final round to the reigning
two-time National Champion Ed Hahn.
SURGING TO THE CHAMPIONSHIP
It would be a Pyrrhic victory for the latter, however, as by the time
the two next met, in the semis of the Nationals in New Haven a few
weeks later, Conlon had made the necessary adjustments to pull away in
the last half of his 15-13 9-15 15-9 15-10 ticket to the final. There
he faced Haverford College star Diehl Mateer in a classic confrontation
of styles and backgrounds. Mateer struck a dashing figure with his
fundamentally sound strokes off both flanks, the product of his squash
upbringing at the Merion Cricket Club in suburban Philadelphia, then as
now the mecca of American squash, where he learned the game from their
two great pros, William White and Brendan McCrory, and former national
champions like Hunter Lott and Charlie Brinton. His classic game also
featured constant volleying, percentage shot-making and the powerful
forehand that would eventually bring him three U. S. National titles
and two North American Opens in a USSRA Hall Of Fame career.
Conlon, by contrast, largely eschewed the volley, preferring to play
many balls off the back wall, where his exceptional late wrist action
enabled him to whip the ball past his bigger but less agile opponent,
often wrong-footing him and keeping him off balance both with this
stroking style and with his penchant for attempting daring shots even
from difficult positions when he thought the benefit was worth the
risk. Merion by that juncture had produced more than a half-dozen
National Champions, while Buffalo was considered a backwater squash
city, but it was the Buffalonian Conlon who eventually prevailed,
surmounting two difficult mid-match lost overtime games in the process
and drawing relentlessly away in the mid-portion of the decisive fifth
game of the exciting, back-and-forth 15-12 14-15 15-11 16-18 15-8
victory that ensconced him, at age 19 and only four short years removed
from his debut as a Buffalo C player, as the youngest person ever to
win this championship, a distinction he still holds today.
The following year Conlon made a memorable attempted defense of this
title, despite being stationed virtually throughout the intervening 12
months in Thule, Greenland, where there are no squash courts, despite
not playing in a single competitive event during that time (while all
his competitors were honing their games in the dozen tourneys
comprising the amateur circuit) and despite taking only a couple of
weeks' leave just before the '53 Nationals to prepare for it. Inspired
by the occasion and by the supportive presence that weekend of his
hometown fans (the Nationals was held in Buffalo that year), Conlon
barely edged out another future USSRA Hall Of Famer, Henri Salaun, who
would get his revenge in another exciting five-game match in the
Nationals five years later and who along with his great rival Mateer
would win seven of the next eight Nationals during the period from
1954-61.
SQUASH NOMAD
But his thrilling five-game win in the quarters over Salaun and the
long hiatus that had preceded this tournament would exact a price the
following day from Conlon, who then lost for the only time in his
career to Cal MacCracken, who then dropped the ensuing final to Ernie
Howard, a Canadian against whom Conlon went undefeated throughout his
career. During the decade that followed, with only a brief interlude of
civilian life, Conlon was ranked in the top eight almost every year,
despite being stationed for four years in Japan, where he played tennis
almost exclusively, winning in fact the Pacific Air Force championships
in that sport in both singles and doubles, as well as all military
Japan championships that were held during his time there.
His duties also took him at various times to North Africa, Guam,
Alaska, Seattle, Mississippi, California, Colorado (where he won the
state singles and doubles titles), and Washington D. C., the most
squash-friendly of his stations, where he served three separate tours,
during which he was able to win the Woodruff-Nee and Saucon Valley
invitational tournaments while reaching the finals of the prestigious
Harry Cowles, Gold Racquet and Atlantic Coast Invitationals. During the
latter stages of Conlon's 26-year career in the Air Force, he was
stationed at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, where his
duties primarily revolved around the Cadet Athletic Department. He
eventually became the Non-Commissioned Officer in charge of all the
cadet athletic fields, field house and gymnasium and assisted
(completely understandably) with the Cadet Club squash program.
After serving his country for more than a quarter-century, Conlon
retired in 1977, settled in Colorado and spent 20 years working for a
telephone company before retiring for good in 1997. Now in his early
70's, he was elected to the Buffalo Squash Racquets Association Hall Of
Fame in 2002 (joining such inducted luminaries as '73 Nationals
runner-up Bob Hetherington and '79 North American Open finalist Gordy
Anderson), though he was unable to attend the induction ceremony in
person. His good lifelong friend and contemporary Ed Jocoy, himself
well placed for a number of years in the USSRA amateur and age-group
rankings and the son of one of Conlon's first practice partners more
than a half-century ago, accepted the plaque on Conlon's behalf and
paid tribute to the accomplishments of one of the most unique figures
in the history of squash in this country.