Rob Hill, 1960-2025, Former WPSA President And 1984 U.S. National Doubles Champion by Rob Dinerman
Rob, top row second from left, Princeton 1983
Dateline September 9, 2025--We
at DSR are sad to report that we have learned that Lee Robinson Hill
Jr., 64--universally known as Rob--the 1984 U.S. National Doubles
champion and a four-time winner of the U.S. National Hardball
championship who served as President of the World Professional Squash
Association (WPSA) during the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, died in a
single-engine airplane crash near Denver early this past Friday
morning, September 5th. A Commercial Pilot and Flight Instructor who
had been involved in aviation for four decades and had logged more than
1200 hours in the cockpit, Hill had started a company a few years ago
that rented out a small fleet of planes and taught aspiring pilots, and
reports indicate the plane was practicing touch-and-go landings about a
mile south of Centennial Airport when the fatal accident occurred.
As a three-time first-team All-American during the early 1980’s at
Princeton --- which his namesake father, who later was involved in the
Manhattan Project for research and development of the atom bomb, had
also attended during the 1940’s --- Hill played No. 1 throughout his
sophomore, junior and senior years on perennially contending
teams. The Tigers won the Ivy League and national nine-man team
championship in both 1980-81 and 1981-82, Hill’s freshman and sophomore
years. In that latter season --- the first of Bob Callahan’s legendary
32-year career as the Princeton men’s squash team’s head coach --- the
key dual meet was a 5-4 road win over Harvard in which, in the last and
deciding match of the day, Princeton No. 6 Rich Zabel, trailing Spencer
Brog two games to love, fended off three match-balls against him in the
third game and then handily won the fourth and fifth. Hill was elected
team captain as a senior and at season’s end he was chosen as the
recipient of the 1984 George C. MacFarland Jr. Award, given “to that
member of the Princeton men’s varsity squash team who, through
enthusiasm, ability, sportsmanship and leadership has contributed most
to the sport and his team.”
A few weeks later, Hill and his Princeton teammate Andy MacDonald won
the 1984 U.S. National Doubles, which was held that year in Denver,
Hill’s home town. At that stage the U.S. Squash Association had not yet
developed a doubles ball suited to altitude, and Hill and MacDonald,
both big and strong power-hitters, got the ball too heated up for any
of their opponents to control. They blasted their way through the draw
without losing a single game, overwhelming No. 1 seeds Tom Poor and Jay
Gillespie in the quarterfinals --- a reversal of the result when these
two teams had met two weeks earlier in a Canadian National Doubles
semifinal in Vancouver --- and Buffalo’s Marc Reinhardt and Charlie
Jacobs in the semis before their final-round victory over the Mateer
brothers, Gilbert and Drew, who would win this championship two years
later in Detroit.
Following his college graduation, Hill remained in the Princeton area
and served as a volunteer assistant coach to Callahan all the way
through the 1990-91 season. After placing third in the USSRA amateur
rankings during the 1984-85 season, he turned pro at the outset of the
following year and played on the WPSA hardball singles and doubles
circuit throughout the last decade of its existence (the tour ended
with the 1994-95 season), attaining a top-10 ranking and serving first
on the WPSA Tour Committee and then as the Association’s President from
1989-92 before giving up that position when he was named Head of Global
Production for Racquet Sports at Prince Sports. He wound up spending
most of his business career in sales in the telecommunications industry.
The understanding between Callahan and Hill during his six post-college
years in Princeton was that Hill would practice with the players (which
helped both him and them) and would assist Callahan in coaching them
during dual meets when there was an open weekend in the WPSA schedule.
The seeds for this appointment might well have been sown two years
earlier during the 1982 U. S. Nationals in Washington. Hill lost early
on in the Singles, but, according to Daily Princetonian sports reporter
Ron Kerridge, he “earned his keep in another capacity for the rest of
the weekend. ‘I was sorry that he lost,’ Callahan said, ‘but he was a
great assistant coach.’ ” Callahan was probably joking at the time, but
the memory of Hill’s industriousness in cheerleading and giving
excellent between-games advice throughout that weekend to his teammates
--- who were entered in the U.S. Nationals Five-Man team competition,
advancing to the finals before losing to defending-champion Mexico ---
almost certainly made a lasting impression on him. Hill later won the
U. S. National Hardball tournament three straight times from 1997-99
and again in 2001. His wins in both 1997 and 2001 were after
trailing two games to one in the finals against Roy Rubin and Tom
Harrity respectively. That latter match was the fourth and last of a
stretch from 1998-2001 in every year of which Hill and Harrity opposed
each other in the final round of this fabled championship.
Hill also won a number of important invitational squash tournaments,
among them the Yale Club, Trenton and Gold Racquets Invitational, and
in 2014 he marked the 30-year anniversary of his (and MacDonald’s) 1984
U.S. National Doubles triumph by partnering his former Princeton
teammate Bill Ullman to the U. S. National Doubles 50-and-over title
with a 3-0 final-round win over their highly-regarded Canadian
opponents Bart Sambrook and Al Hunt. Perhaps the biggest
individual-match win of Hill’s career came at the expense of Australian
star Chris Dittmar in the first round of the 1985 North American Open.
The rugged Dittmar had just reached the final round of the British
Open, which at the time was the most important championship in the
softball game, and he and Hill had a slugfest at the Park Avenue Squash
Club in midtown Manhattan in which Hill --- a tremendous competitor
with great hands who fearlessly hit whatever shot was called for,
regardless of the score --- wound up persevering in four ferocious
games.
Hill’s all-around racquet skills were in full evidence mainly during
his decade on the WPSA hardball tour, but they also evinced themselves
when he (1) made the 1985 U.S. Team that played in a Pan American (i.e.
softball) event in Buenos Aires; (2) reached the final round of the
1989 U.S. Racquet Triathlon (racquetball/squash/tennis) competition;
and (3) competed in numerous age-group amateur tennis tournaments in
recent years, including the International Tennis Federation World
Masters 60-and-over Championships in Florida just this past May,
despite having undergone a double-knee-replacement operation during the
late-twenty-teens.
Hill --- who is survived by Julie Amelie Danos, his wife of 34 years;
Robby, Drew, Eliza and Nicole, their four children; and his brother,
Wayne (a second brother, Andy, died in 2016) --- was a straight shooter
who also, however, had what one friend described as “a heart of gold.”
The fact that Hill not only mentored an underprivileged child through
Newark’s Big Brother program during his years in New Jersey but went
way beyond the call in spending at least one afternoon per week with
him while also speaking with him by phone several times a week as well,
is an instructive example of this character trait. He was versatile
enough to excel both in these “anonymous” private moments and in much
more high-profile events as well. The enduring positive impact that Rob
Hill had on the entire squash community throughout the past 40-plus
years may have been best encapsulated by one of his many longtime
friends, who admiringly cited the degree to which he “could
energize/elevate any event just by walking into the room. In addition
to his physical size and presence, he brought an infectious optimism
into any public setting or gathering. Our lives are so much more fun
for knowing him and being with him that his passing will ripple for a
long time.”
