*April 28th, 2011 marked the
10-year anniversary of the death of Tom Page.
TOM PAGE OBITUARY by Rob Dinerman
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.