Our new year started on a bright note – albeit slightly late!! Our squash coaching that was off as the flooring of our court was being repaired resumed today. Since the coaching was resumed after a gap of a month – we escaped with the coaching being slightly easy on the body. The sprints up and down the court were not so bad – nor were the drills.
While we were away from the court for about a month or so – I was witness to something that has made me a lifelong squash convert!! Bombay hosted a PSA squash tournament with several of the world’s top ranking players participating in the same.
Now, for all my passions for squash, I had never seen a professional tournament – simply because we do not have too many of them in India. The tournaments that happen in India are partly run by the elite and exclusive clubs – that are not really open to the non-members. Having said that, nothing that I would have seen in India would have prepared me for the spectacle that is professional squash at the top level!!
The tournament featured top players like Ramy Ashour, Nick Matthew, Amr Shabana, Gregory Gaultier, James Willstrop amongst others!! This was like a feast for someone as starved as squash for me – if I could, I would have spent all my waking hours watching these extraordinary players play!!
It was as if these players were from another planet – their court coverage, the accuracy and the variety of their shots, the deceptions, stamina, footwork…..to me, it was all magical!! Their rails almost kissing the wall looked so deceptively simple that I was left wondering about the number of times I end up smashing my racket on the wall!! Their movement on the court – reaching forward to take the drops and almost effortlessly gliding back to retrieve the lobs really made me wonder about my lead-footed efforts to cover the corners of a squash court!!
What was really amazing to watch was the way these top players had about 2-3 options after reaching the ball for the type of shots that they could play. The players would reach the ball so early that they made the entire game look deceptively simple.
Ramy Ashour and Nick Matthew made it to the finals – and the finals was such a visual treat – Ramy was as unorthodox as they come and Nick was copybook. Between them, they would have played the entire range of shots that you would expect to see in a squash court ….and then some more. They were hitting rails from impossible angles, retrieving impossible-looking passing shots and playing the kind of drops that players like me can only dream of. For someone like me, it was squash nirvana!!
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