Olympic Circus Beat Goes On, Response from a longtime player in Metro NY
I read your observations today on DSR.
They all make sense to me.
But your suggestions are not going to happen.
Unfortunately singles adult squash is slowly dying.
The fitness barrier to entry is too high for anybody who’s over 30 with a job .
The worldwide number of courts and players is shrinking.
The Olympic exercise is fool’s gold.
The TV ratings will be rubbish. It’ll be One And Done.
Hardball doubles is stable and passionately supported by a small cadre of rich people who belong to private clubs.
Lets not pretend that squash is accessible to the masses. It isn’t, it hasn’t been, and it never will be.
The SEA programs raised more than $30 M in the aggregate last year .
They provide absolution and “ guilt
washing” for rich, highly educated, very successful people who are
associated with the game.
Write a fat check to one of the SEA programs and you’re a good person.
US Squash can raise $1M per annum because they can’t provide an avenue for the assuaging of guilt by rich people.
Replacing Kevin Klipstein won’t
change the underlying problem in squash: the softball singles game
isn’t fun for grown up people.
The game is precariously balanced on the
razor’s edge of parents who delude themselves into thinking that their
kid is going to get into a “ better “ college because he or she will be
recruited for squash.
Parents withdraw their kids from
tournaments if they think their kid is going to get a tough draw
, thereby jeopardizing his or her ranking.
Imagine that- parents forcing their kids NOT to play. How on earth do they think the kid is going to actually improve?
If you want to get better you have to lose and go to school on losing so you get better.
Taking lessons helps technically but you need to play in a match that counts to learn how to compete.
The Olympic initiative for squash is a sideshow of a sideshow and it won’t change anything long term.
Dave Talbott tried to tell the coaches and the people that ran squash in 1990 not to drop hardball.
They wouldn’t listen. Now the singles courts are empty at prime time in some of the biggest clubs in the biggest cities.
I feel your pain, and I understand why you wrote what you did. But the Olympic organizers won’t take your advice. .
A blind man can see that the game is circling the drain and I can’t think of a way back to its heyday.
