History Of The Harry Cowles Invitational
by Rob Dinerman September 25, 2001 -From
the moment of its inception in 1947, when the country was still in the
post-World War II flush of victory and optimism, to its dignified
curtain call in '96, following a highly praiseworthy run that lasted a
full half-century, the Harry Cowles Invitational was one of the major
highlights of every squash season and an impressive landmark of Harvard
squash.
Founded by three-straight-time U.S. National Champion Germain G.
Glidden (who as a college senior in '36 won both the last of his pair
of consecutive Intercollegiate tourneys and the first of his trio of
consecutive National titles), the Cowles eventually seized the crucial
last-weekend-of-January slot on the calendar and became the last major
competitive test before the season-culminating Canadian and U. S.
Nationals, often in fact serving as a precursor and a barometer for how
those national titles would evolve.
NATIONAL CHAMPIONS
In fact, there were 15 occasions-Charles Brinton in '47, Stanley
Pearson Jr. in '48, Henri Salaun in '55, '57 and '58, Diehl Mateer in
'56, Anil Nayar in '70, Victor Niederhoffer in '72, '73 and '75, Peter
Briggs in '76, Tom Page in '77, Michael Desaulniers in '80, John Nimick
in '82 and Kenton Jernigan in '85---in which the Cowles Champion
proceeded to hoist the U. S. Nationals trophy several weeks later. In
addition, the winners of the first 14 editions of the Cowles titlists
won the Nationals at some point in their careers, as did 16 of the 29
overall Cowles champions, and it wasn't until '90 (in its 44th
rendition) that the Cowles was won by someone who didn't win either the
Intercollegiates or the U. S. or Canadian Nationals.
Glidden's main motivation in persuading the host Harvard Club of New
York to go forward with his proposal was to honor his revered college
coach, Harry Lee Cowles, whose successor as Crimson head coach, the
legendary Jack Barnaby, flatly described as "the greatest teacher the
game has ever known." Though generally averse to employing the
three-wall stratagem, which he felt was an unsound shot that backfired
too often and therefore should only be used as an occasional surprise,
Cowles had the flexibility to revise his thinking in this regard
vis-à-vis his protégé Glidden, whose phenomenal quickness and ability
to anticipate made the three-wall in
his case a lethal weapon whose upside well exceeded the risk involved.
GLIDDEN & BARNABY
Both a grateful Glidden and an admiring Barnaby (who played in the
early 1930's for Cowles, then spent the four seasons from 1932-36 as
his assistant)were determined to convey their appreciation in any way
they could to their extraordinary mentor and role model. When the aging
Cowles---who headed Harvard's program from 1923-36, during which skein
Harvard men won a total of 11 national championships, while the team
never lost a formal intercollegiate match---had to be hospitalized for
the last years of his life, Barnaby took it upon himself to make sure
that his former coach got the best medical care and visited him
frequently right to the end, while essentially writing Cowles coaching
book for him and personally ensuring that future generations knew of
Harry's expertise and accomplishments.
And when the Harvard Club Board of Directors resolved to have an
invitational tournament to emulate established events like the Gold
Racquets at the Rockaway Hunting Club in Long Island and the William
White Invitational at the Merion Cricket Club in suburban Philadelphia,
there was never any question who would be honored in its naming. While
there may be room for debate as to which of the six or seven annual
pre-Nationals invitationals was the favorite or the most
prestigious(with each having a distinctive flavor and court conditions
favoring various squash traits), there is no such question regarding
which in its extended prime was the grandest.
Virtually from the start --- when the inaugural edition was so
well received that the Committee felt obliged to create a
second-echelon companion event, initially called the Harvard Club
Invitational, subsequently renamed the John Jacobs Invitational to
honor the club's long-time (from 1919-65, a span of 46 years!) head pro
upon his retirement --- the club demonstrated its commitment to making
its flagship event into a memorable celebration of squash in general
and Harvard squash in particular.
There was always a bagpipes-playing band at the sumptuous Saturday
evening black-tie dinner, whose festivities for decades culminated in a
high-stakes calcutta on the outcome of Sunday's semi-final and final
rounds. Expensive cigars were distributed and the tournament chairman
and other dignitaries delivered speeches. For years Coach Barnaby gave
a clinic on the evening right before the tournament began to hype the
upcoming weekend's event to the club's members, who acquired a
well-deserved reputation for supporting the tourney, both financially
and by their substantial presence throughout the weekend, which usually
ended with everyone still present Sunday afternoon convening at the
club's elegant Mahogany Room, located several floors below the
sixth-floor squash area, shortly after the Cowles final, at which point
the permanent Cowles Champions Bowl would be filled with champagne and
passed around the room until everyone, beginning with the just-crowned
winner, had taken a sip.
The tournament's far-flung popularity was demonstrated by the degree to
which even several rival clubs enthusiastically responded when some
exigency arose and their assistance was called upon. On one occasion in
the mid-50's, an onslaught of unseasonably warm and humid temperatures
caused the weather-sensitive Harvard Club gallery courts to "sweat" to
a degree that posed a danger to the players. When the Tournament
Committee was therefore forced to ask the Athletic Committee of the
Princeton Club one block south for permission to use some of their
courts, their Chairman, Bob Lilien, immediately made them available and
play was able to proceed. Similarly, when the Yale Club courts two
blocks east of the Harvard Club were needed to accommodate what had
become an overcrowded field, Treddy Ketcham and his Eli comrades
swiftly provided them.
Both Lilien and Ketcham were later named to the Tournament Committee as
a gesture of gratitude for their responsiveness, and both served in
that capacity for many years. In fact, both the Princeton and Yale
Clubs, no doubt inspired by the association of some of their leading
lights with the Cowles weekend, eventually created invitational
tournaments of their own. The Yale Club Invitational had an impressive
20-year run from 1977-96, even creating a second-flight event emulating
the Jacobs tourney; the Princeton Club Invitational made a brief but
gaudy appearance in the late 1980's and early 1990's; and the Eastern
State Veterans age-group event, hosted by the Yale Club, is still going
strong after more than 30 years, intentionally occurring on the same
end-of January date as the Cowles to enable its substantial player
group to spend their between-match down time watching the Cowles and
Jacobs competitions, thus creating a kind of neighborhood squash
festival.
The 44th Street corridor between Vanderbilt and Sixth Avenues was
invariably
filled with squash traffic in both directions and an ongoing exchange
of information, results and progress reports from both teeming venues.
It is a tribute both to their chronological longevity and to ongoing
passion for the event their loyalty to Mr. Cowles had galvanized them
to create that both Glidden(who died at age 85 in '99, three years
after the last edition of the event he had founded) and Barnaby (now
just a few weeks short of his 92nd birthday as of this late-September
'91 writing)remained actively involved throughout the tournament's
50-year span.
Germain, even in the early 1990's, by which time he was hobbled,
stooped over and forced to rely heavily on his cane to move around,
could be seen gingerly but determinedly ascending and descending the
flight of stairs to the gallery of the two exhibition courts, intently
following the action, especially when Crimson undergraduates were
competing, and offerring pithy comments and sound post-match advice;
one often got the sense, even at that late date and with his
aforementioned physical limitations, that he would have liked nothing
better than to grab a racquet, don some sneakers and jump right into
the action. He often made a speech at the Saturday night dinners,
during which homage was always paid to his role in founding the
tournament, and he invariably hosted the post-finals Mahogany Room
festivities.
If anything, and in keeping with his gregarious personality, Coach
Barnaby
was an even more ubiquitous and loquacious presence, whether holding
court in the social area just outside the courts, regaling his
listeners with an endless supply of copiously detailed remembrances and
reminiscences of past Harvard or Cowles protagonists and performances,
dominating his opponents on the chess tables located fairly close to
courtside or renewing friendships and acquaintances with Harvard Club
denizens or alumni of his coaching tenure. Particularly fascinating
were the interactions of this latter group with the legend who had
coached and counseled them, often to outstanding individual and team
achievements, during their formative years as undergraduates at one of
the nation's foremost universities .
BARNABY THE GURU
Although many of these alumni had subsequently experienced extraordinary
professional and financial success and received confirmation in any
number of ways of the formidable standing they had attained, when they
approached their aging former mentor and "caught him up" on what they
were up to, their still-powerful desire for his approval was quite
visibly written on all their faces; such was Barnaby's continuing
influence on charges who might have graduated decades ago, that it
seemed that only by receiving his certifying stamp of approval and
admiration(which was almost always generously bestowed at the proper
moment)that they could truly find the authentication they had been
seeking. The whole exchange conjured up memories of the famous sports
scene a few years ago when eight-time National League batting champion
Tony Gywnn responded to a question about hitting posed to him by
another New England icon, Ted Williams, his eyes clearly betraying a
wish for Williams's approval and an anxiety about whether or not his
response had been sufficient and "correct." Perhaps the preferable
Barnaby analogy would be not with the mercurial Williams but rather
with the professorial UCLA basketball coaching legend John Wooden, with
whom Barnaby's career and life parallels are striking to the point of
being almost eerie: both coached at famous programs for more than a
quarter-century; both are still alive today and in their early 90's
more than a quarter-century after their retirements, while remaining an
active presence in the games they loved and greatly influenced all the
while; both retired almost simultaneously(Wooden in '75, Barnaby in
'76)and with college championships unexpectedly presented to them by
over-achieving teams in their farewell seasons after having long
streaks of consecutive championship seasons terminated in their
penultimate seasons(UCLA having been dethroned by North Carolina State
in '74, while Harvard suffered a similar fate at Princeton's hands in
'75, defeats that were both avenged the following season); and, most
importantly, both were revered as father figures by their proteges,
many of whom claim unequivocally that these men were by far the most
influential figures in their entire college experience and sometimes in
their entire life experience.
As a tribute to Jack's enduring greatness, when the Cowles Committee
created a third event for the weekend, for players age 35 and over, it
named that competition in his honor, and a number of Crimson alumni,
upon winning the Jack Barnaby Invitational, have called it the greatest
honor of their careers because of their enduring reverence for the man
it commemorates. Accompanying Glidden and Barnaby in the Big Three of
perennial protagonists in the Cowles weekend was venerable head pro
Milt Russ, who succeeded Jacobs in this position, gave valuable lessons
to the progeny of the club's membership during their high-school
years(with a number of his products going on to play valuable roles on
Harvard's varsity squads), applied his well-honed trouble-shooting
skills to resolve any in-tournament scheduling, refereeing or other
administrative difficulties that arose and cheerfully and in a myriad
of ways helped guide the weekend to a successful conclusion.
While the head pros of some of the other invitationals seemed to be
reluctantly forcing themselves through the tournament weekend as though
gamely doing a detested chore, Russ clearly had a passion for the
Cowles weekend and an emotional stake in its reputation. His charm and
enthusiasm were a reliable hallmark of the tournament, and it seemed
almost fitting that, though stricken in '95 with a form of bone cancer
that was so lethal and fast-advancing that he was expected to die weeks
before the fiftieth and final Cowles tournament in late January '96,
Russ simply willed his ravaged body through that painful final period,
managing in fact to address the Saturday evening throng from his
Teaneck, NJ home via speakerphone.
Though there was understandably some awkwardness attached to his
broadcast conversation with several of the attendees, Mr. Russ seemed
grateful to have been able to play a role in the weekend and certainly
everyone present was glad to have been able to hear the voice of their
old friend(who succumbed just a few days later)one final time. Russ,
incidentally, joined the Harvard Club staff as Jacobs's assistant in
1963 and spent the last 33 years of his life there, becoming head pro
in 1965. This means that over the 77-YEAR PERIOD from 1919 to 1996 the
Club had exactly TWO head squash professionals. Talk about stability
and continuity in a squash program!
RECAP
And what great and memorable matches the Big Three oversaw! The sheer
boundless athleticism in '77 of the star-crossed Tom Page, then a
20-year-old Princeton sophomore with unlimited potential which he
unleashed against his doughty but out-classed older brother Palmer in
one of only two Cowles Title finals (preceded 11 years earlier by Sam
and Ralph Howe)featuring siblings, exuding from every pore a "forever
young" quality that seemingly made him immune to the sad demise that
awaited him just last spring, when he collapsed and died on a New York
sidewalk at the grievously premature age of only 44; the great rivalry
that extended throughout the 1950's on both the Nationals and the
Cowles fronts between Henri Salaun and Diehl Mateer, who between them
won every one of the 11 Cowles played from 1950-60, with the latter's
second son Gilbert adding titles in '78 and '84 to his father's quintet
and making the Mateers the only family with two generations of Cowles
champions; Gil's younger Penn teammate Ned Edwards, over whom he had
previously held a psychological edge, triumphantly breaking down that
barrier in their close '79 final and thereby taking an emphatic step in
launching what would become a superstar WPSA career; David Boyum
ambushing HIS junior and college nemesis Kenton Jernigan in the
first-ever all-Harvard-undergraduate Cowles final in '83, a defeat
Kenton would
avenge a few weeks later in the Nationals in San Francisco, where
Kenton would rocket to the first of his three consecutive National
championships; the twinkle-eyed Canadian Gordy Anderson posing the sole
interruption to Victor Niederhoffer's reign over the event from 1972-75
by upsetting Victor in the '74 final, another outcome due to be
reversed several weeks later in the Nationals final; Harvard's
domination of the final seven Cowles tourneys from 1990-96, with Head
Coach Bill Doyle doing the honors in '93 and the Ezra brothers, Adrian
and Dan, subsequently joining the Howes three decades earlier as the
only brothers to win the Cowles---these are just a few of the many
significant and scintillating highlights that flashed across the
over-loaded Cowles historical ledger.
KETCHAM AND UFFORD
When at the tail-end of my preparation for this essay I asked Treddy
Ketcham for a brief meeting in order to flesh out some of my research,
he graciously insisted on accommodating my request by arranging a
luncheon at the Racquet & Tennis Club in midtown Manhattan and by
asking another Cowles legend, Charles Ufford, to attend.. As always, I
greatly looked forward to meeting these two gentlemen-Ketcham a World
War II hero(and recipient of the Navy Cross for heroism at Iwo Jima),
donor and recipient of numerous awards, longtime tournament chairman of
the Gold Racquets, Ufford a Cowles and Jacobs Champion, three-sport
star (soccer, tennis and squash) at Harvard, first American ever to
earn the Cambridge Blue in squash, both men Cowles tournament chairmen,
retired after long and distinguished careers as lawyers, former
national age-group champions, among the very few to be named Honorary
Life Members of the USSRA and two of the most widely beloved figures in
the history of squash in this country.
They did their best to answer the array of historical questions I posed
to them in a conversation that was frequently interrupted by the an
array of club members and staff employees who came over to our table to
visit and, it seemed to me, to pay homage to these two luminaries, who
seemed genuinely pleased at the sight of everyone who stopped by to
greet them.
I realized during the 80 minutes we spent that these exceptional men,
as well as others whose enormous contributions to the history and
magnitude of the Cowles I have attempted to chronicle in this article,
were telling me all I needed to know about the glittering half century
of the Harry Cowles Invitational, not so much by any information they
conveyed to me(though they were generous that way as well) but just by
being who they were, that in the way they conducted themselves and
lived their lives they were paying the greatest possible tribute to the
event with which they were so closely associated and that clearly meant
so much to them. Jack Barnaby, Germain Glidden, John Jacobs, Milt Russ,
Treddy Ketcham, Charles Ufford, Harry Cowles himself---as legacies go,
an event could do a whole lot worse.