outsidetheglass: Recent Episodes
Outside The Glass
Now completing his twentieth year as president & CEO at US Squash, Kevin Klipstein returns to OTG to talk about milestones, past and future and gives insight on what American squash might look like in July 2028.
America’s top player talks about her second Achilles rupture and another long road to recovery.
Dave Talbott, Mark Talbott, Guy Cipriano and Sam Fraidin himself tell the true story behind one of the game’s most notorious practical jokes.
How did squash get into the Olympic Games? Ned Edwards, a leader in the effort, tells the story.
Our newest squash centenarian, Newt Meade joins OTG to talk about his squash career that reaches back to the 1940s.
The man behind the famous New York City steel court, Robert Gibralter talks about what it is like to play squash outdoors.
The irrepressible couple that changed the fundamentals of squash, Hazel and Tom join OTG to talk about the inaugural issue of Squash News in 1978, relaunching the U.S. Open in 1985 and their list of the greatest players they ever saw.
England’s national coach, David Campion has been in the game of squash since age seven when he got his first lesson from his future step-father, Malcolm Willstrop.
Steve Line tells the stories behind some of his most famous images, including Awad v. Jahangir in 1982, Jahangir in 1988 and Willstrop & Matthew in 2009.
One of the greatest South American squash players in history, Catalina Pelaez is also a survivor of the worst terrorist attack ever on a squash facility.
What is the ideal amount of talent? What is the difference between dominant and marginal advantage? John Musto, the Cardiac Kid from days of old, answers your questions.
Ramirez grew up playing handball and paddleball in New York City, is a Hall of Fame racquetball player and probably knows more about ball & wall games than anyone in the country.
Patrick Chifunda has gone from the Copper Belt of Zambia to Johannesburg to Baltimore and now to Richmond during his memorable career.
A decade ago, nine-time National Singles winner Julian Illingworth notched the highest ranking for an American male, world No.24. Until now.
US Squash’s newest star, Timmy Brownell talks about how a tournament in Namibia eight years ago changed his career.
Twenty-five years ago, Steve Line captured the most iconic image of the most iconic pro squash event.
The king of string, Steve Crandall runs a two-hundred year-old global business on the banks of the Ashaway River in Rhode Island.
How does San Diego, historically one of the smallest squash cities in the country, have one of America’s best community squash facilities and most successful youth enrichment programs? Blair Sadler explains why.
In his new memoir, In the Early Times, Tad Friend eloquently writes about the journeys that he and his father have made on and off the squash court.
A husband & wife duo built from scratch one of the great small-town hotbeds of American squash. Here is the story of Newport Squash.
What makes a squash club survive and thrive? Peter Nicol and Jess Winstanley, proprietors of Nicol Squash, a new four-court public club in Manhattan, talk about one recipe for success.
A junior at Drexel and All American squash player, Alina Bushma talks about how the Russian invasion of Ukraine has affected her and her family.
What is the difference between squash and golf? Dixon Hill, a top U.S. junior in both sports, takes a stab at that age-old question.
New York City is one of the toughest real estate markets in the world. Harry Saint solved it, putting in the first commercial squash clubs in Manhattan back in the 1970s. Here is the story of how squash was transformed.
Squash on ships has been a theme ever since the Titanic had a court. In the post-Second World War era, RMS Queen Elizabeth had a busy squash court, as Paddy Swanson recalls.
Squash and sex and selling the game. Steve Line takes us behind the scenes off perhaps the most explosive photographs in squash history.
A former world champion and world No.1, Laura Massaro has just come out with a must-read memoir.
Barrett Takesian helped create the pathbreaking Portland Community Squash. Now, the thirty-one year old is helping US Squash make community squash a movement that is dramatically changing the game.
The voice of tennis at the US Open, Andy Taylor has become a fan favorite as emcee of squash’s Qatar Classic. How he got to Doha is a tale that includes radio morning shows, buckets of ice and The Price of Right live with Jerry Springer.
Now back at England Squash, Chris Robertson is continuing his run as a world-class squash coach. But he was once a rising star as a player, coming out of Brisbane, Australia to capture the World Junior title in 1984.
This month Access Youth Academy is opening an exciting, eight-court facility in San Diego. Renato Paiva, the executive director of Access, tells of his remarkable journey from being a junior player in Brazil to leading an innovative urban squash program.
The Conjuror, Qamar Zaman, is the subject of Steve Line’s story behind one of squash’s all-time classic photographs.
The founder of the squash and education movement, Greg Zaff talks about the original business plan, the people and values that inspired the creation of SquashBusters twenty-five years ago.
Squash’s legendary patriarch, Jonah Barrington, talks with OTG about his early years in the game, including how he scraped through to win his first British Open in 1966.
One of the world’s leading referees, Marko Podgorsek speaks to Outside The Glass about squash in one of the more hidden and underappreciate corners of the game, Slovenia.
In mid-December 2020, Enzo Corigliano died in upstate New York. The twenty-three year-old was a star on the St. Lawrence squash team. His coach, Scott Denne, speaks about his tragic death and the importance of conversations about mental health.
The most successful coach in college squash history, Paul Assaiante talks with OTG about ownership, recruiting, parenting and the fear of failure.
At the 1994 British Open, Steve Line shot one of the most legendary images in twentieth century squash: Mir Zaman Gul smacking heads with Anthony Hill. Line tells OTG the story behind the photograph.
The national coach of Qatar, Ong Beng Hee had a storied playing career that started with a huge leap of faith: not yet sixteen, he turned pro and moved from Malaysia to England.
In our continuing series of exploring off-court passions, OTG turns to Lefika Ragontse. The former Trinity star is the owner of Dread Sports and operates three squash clubs in Maryland and New Jersey. But his first love is diamonds.
Gilly Lane is the head coach of men’s squash at Penn. As a player and a coach, he has seen the crippling effects the fear of failure can have on a squash player and has some profound and simple ideas about what to do about it.
Over the past thirty years, John Massarella has progressed along all the stations of a referee—from marking matches at his club to handling local, national and eventually international events and culminating in refereeing world championship finals. He started with pen and paper and now touches the iPad to keep score and he’s worked under seven different refereeing systems. Massarella speaks of his best and worst matches of his career and why he’d be a terrible coach.
Danzig, Bellamy, Rutnagur—the cohort of great squash journalists is small and hard to join. This month, as he turns eighty-five, one of the elder statesmen, Martin Bronstein, tells us about his favorite moments in his forty-plus-year career.
A U.S. Squash Hall of Famer, Anil Nayar talks with OTG about a couple of pivotal milestones in his career, including the 1969 National Intercollegiates—one of the most famous moments of sportsmanship in squash history.
The greatest doubles player in history, Damien Mudge captured a record 169 tournaments over his twenty years on the pro tour. But it wasn’t always the smoothest journey for the Australian.
James Green is the behind-the-scenes leader of Manhattan Community Squash, the exciting new facility in the heart of New York. Green is one of the most articulate proselytizers for the new model of non-profit, community squash, with accessibility being the core value.
Johnny Williams is now known as a longtime coach in Switzerland and commentator for SquashTV, but the former world No.15 famously overcame a illness that kept him off court for over three years during his prime. It is a story of resilience.
Off the court, Mike Way, the head coach at Harvard and mentor of world champions, loves the combination of the wind and the sea: sailing, windsurfing and, for the past twenty years, kiteboarding. Whether bumping into sharks or cutting the grass, Way is way into kiting.
Melissa Winstanley had produced close to a hundred professional portable court squash tournaments, including every Tournament of Champions since 1982. Joined by John Nimick, Winstanley tells the ToC saga of waking the rats, waiting on 42nd Street all night for the court to arrive, free telephone calls to Pakistan and doing the seating chart and ticketing by hand.
The chair of the board of the Squash + Education Alliance, Amrit Kanwal helps lead the urban squash movement, which is celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary with a jubilee weekend next month in New York.
OTG slips back in time with Derrick Niederman, the longtime referee and Squash News reporter, as he spins tales about Yale’s John Skillman and some of the history’s most fascinating matches at the old Boston Open.
Former world No.21, Irish national champion and SquashTV commentator, Aisling Blake sits down with OTG to chat about Sligo, Trinity College Dublin and the secret behind Nicol David’s rise to world No.1.
Our first taping of Outside The Glass before a live audience was in New York earlier this year. Kevin Klipstein, Peter Nicol and Barrett Takesian discussed what squash will look like in a few years and how we’ll get there.
In 2023 Santiago will be hosting the Pan Am Games. OTG speaks with the famous Pinto family, which helps lead squash in Chile, about the dynamics of the game in South America.
Liz Irving has been Nicol David’s coach for the past seventeen years. As David retires, OTG talks with Irving (the daughter Jenny Irving from Ep.5) about how she guided David to unprecedented heights.
Andrew Shelley might be the most senior leader in squash today: he started working in the game forty-three years ago. As he steps down as CEO of the World Squash Federation, Shelley looks back with OTG on his remarkable early years running the British Open.
The GOAT of squash—as reckoned by many observers—might be Ramy Ashour, who just announced his retirement from the pro tour. In a remarkable interview with Outside The Glass, Ashour talks about what injuries have taught him, his best win and worst loss, his ideas about scoring and how he ate his first squash trophy.
The greatest Frenchwoman in squash history, Camille Serme joins OTG to talk about coming back from tough defeats, devising game plans and assessing theories on whether marriage is good or bad for your squash.
Last month Nicol David, the greatest female squash player in history, announced that she was going to retire from the pro tour later this spring. Here she talks with Outside The Glass about what she loves about the game, the Olympics and having dinner with Roger Federer.
Exactly twenty-five years ago, in February 1994, the men of Yale and Harvard played each other in a famously close match. The score went to 4-4. The final match, between Jamie Dean and Tal Ben-Shahar, ended 18-17 in the fifth. OTG talks with Dean and Ben-Shahar about what happened that historic day and how it changed their lives.
In two years’ time, US Squash will open the Specter Center, a world-class, twenty-court, 65,000 square-foot facility in Philadelphia. Kevin Klipstein, Ned Edwards, Steve Gregg and Rich Wade explain what it will look like.
One of the most recognizable people in the game, Ronny Vlassaks has just arrived in the U.S. to coach at Squash on Fire in Washington. He tells OTG what it is like pick up squash for the first time in his mid-twenties after a career as a world-class pro cyclist.
In 1978 Sue Newman King captured the British Open, becoming the first woman not named Heather McKay to win the title since 1961. Forty years later she talks that tournament, her unusual start in squash and the founding of the women’s pro tour.
Daryl Selby, world No. 16, hilariously contemplates his obsession with another game with a tiny ball: golf.
An injury on the ice brought a Canadian junior hockey player into the squash court, and the game of doubles was never the same. Jamie Bentley, three-time World Doubles champion, speaks about the game of cutthroat, the thrill of doubles and the day, up match ball, he lost seventeen points in a row.
Last season, the PSA Tour was set ablaze by Nicol David making videos of her dancing with fellow pros. Here is the inside story. And Mark Talbott talks about Tom Cruise and dancing at Grateful Dead shows.
Imagine flying in very late for your first match at the World Open and your luggage doesn’t make it with you. That is what Sarah Fitz-Gerald, the Australian great, faced in her final World Open, in Qatar in 2002. What happened next is the stuff of legend.
A salty seventy-two year-old southpaw from borderlands of Berwick-upon-Tweed, Bryan Patterson has been a top junior, amateur and professional player and a camp director and coach. For the past quarter century, he’s been mentoring kids in the U.S., first in Brooklyn and then Philadelphia and for the past eleven years at CitySquash in the Bronx.
What do we love to do when we aren’t playing squash? OTG talks with James Willstrop about theatre and Chris Gordon about ice hockey. Both PSA pros have had good runs recently: Willstrop just captured the gold medal in the Commonwealth Games and Gordon won the British Virgin Islands Open in February. But off-court: emotions, story-telling, stitches in the face, Mr. June and the Scottish play—it’s all here.
One of the most successful coaches ever, David Pearson has worked with some of the top players in the world, including a few competing this month in the 2018 Commonwealth Games in Australia. A childhood in Zambia, school in Zimbabwe and a job in the complaints department of a shoe company—all that came before he came to squash as an adult.
One of the greatest players in squash history, Geoff Hunt won eight British Opens and the first four men’s World Championships. A little-known part of his career was the Australian's sojourns in North America, first as a teenager and later as a pro. Hunt has stories about Original Six ice hockey, Victor Niederhoffer, the Mennen Cup, Sharif Khan, the Philadelphia Boast and the shortest men’s World Championship final in history.
Steve Line is The Man in Black. The first and only full-time professional squash photographer, the Englishman has been sitting behind the front wall, camera in hand, for almost thirty-six years. He now takes 48,000 photos at each event. But it wasn’t always that way: Line tells of turning from geology to photography, his wedding photo mishaps and how he developed film in a coal bunker.
Mike Lewis is the Walter Mitty of squash—except his day dreams became a reality. In his mid-twenties, he quit his job to become a touring squash pro. In the next eighteen months, he played in forty-seven countries, reaching world No.112. Here are tales from his life on the road, including the art of sleeping at squash clubs and discovering squash fans in places like Andorra, Morocco, New Caledonia and Paraguay.
Outside The Glass got a special, behind-the-scenes look at Aspire Academy in Doha, Qatar. Geoff Hunt, Stewart Boswell and Jonathon Kemp took us on a tour of the world’s only squash boarding school. We learned about kabaddi, saw fencing and table tennis practice and spent time at the squash facility from where future world champions will probably emerge.
What is it like to be a Dreamer, to be brought to the U.S. as a young child and grow up without documents? Reyna Pacheco is a Mexican-American who graduated from Columbia last year and is now a professional squash player. She is ranked world No.72. Pacheco tells her inspiring story to OTG. “Dream big, work bigger—work as big as you dream."
Jazz trumpeter, data cruncher, media guru, Howard Harding is the man behind the story. He has researched, written and issued over 8,600 squash press releases in the past thirty years. He’s also the founder and director of SquashInfo.com, the Bible of squash. And he’s hung out with Lou Reed.
One of the giants of North American squash, Clive Caldwell has been a top pro player, director of the pro hardball tour and owner of major squash clubs in Canada. OTG sits down with him to talk about the original oversized racquet, the infamous Bunny Suit, the creation of the WPSA logo and how squash can evolve: "Every change is a nightmare,” he says. "Nobody wants change. If you don’t change, you die.”
It is a lodestar for your life: the very first time you stepped on a squash court. Sometimes it was a magical moment; other times an ordinary moment, just something you did. Looking back, though, it is when your life changed. Guests include Ted Price, Demer Holleran, Larry Sconzo, Jack Bickel, Rich Wade, Bart McGuire, Matt McAndrew, Kat Grant, Leo Pierce, Nick & Tom Post, Sam Howe, Jim Dawson, Jeff Stanley, Alvin Wolff and Molly Pierce.
In the fourth of our series on best wins and worst losses, OTG jumps into possibly the most excruciating and exciting arena: team matches. We hear about the greatest Team USA squad that no one knows about—the gold-medal winning American girls at the 1980 Women’s World Juniors—and other tales of redemption and recidivism. Guests include Freddy Hernandez, Kat Grant, Rich Wade, Ted Price and Adam Hamill.
In our third episode in our series that looks at best wins and worst losses, OTG dwells on something squash players vividly remember: match points. Miraculous comebacks, stunning collapses, whether in a national championship, a club tournament or a C league match, these are moments they've never forgotten. And neither will you. Guests include Andres Vargas, Bart McGuire, Preston Quick, Jim Dawson, Matthew McAndrew and Larry Sconzo.
Squash is a family game: we compete with our parents, our children, our siblings, our cousins. As we continue our series about memories of your best win, your worst loss, OTG presents a half dozen stories about the poignant joys, irritations and sorrows of playing in a squash family. Guests include Leo Pierce, Molly Pierce, Sam Howe, Nick Post, Tom Post and Demer Holleran.
Earlier this month, Amanda Sobhy, the world No.6 player, suffered a ruptured Achilles tendon in the semifinals of a tournament in Colombia; she was at match point against fellow American Olivia Blatchford. Sobhy talks with Outside The Glass about the lead-up to the injury, her harrowing journey to the hospital that night and her plan for the long road back.
It is March, so it is time again for the Cheltenham Festival, the annual horse jumping meeting in England. Malcolm Willstrop, a former horse racing journalist, takes Outside The Glass into a betting shop in Pontefract to put a wager down before spinning a few tales from his early days in squash. The dean of international squash coaches, Willstrop has been mentoring players for a half century, including Gawain Briars, Lee Beachill and his son, world No.9 James Willstrop.
OTG is starting a new series of interviews about memories of your best win, your worst loss and the first time you played squash. Olivia Blatchford, a longtime Team USA member and currently world No.27, inaugurates the series with an insightful look back at victories in Mexico and Ireland, defeats in New York and the perfect roll corner. How do you incorporate the “I don’t lose, I learn” mentality? What is your theory about how to play match points? What do you do when your five-year-old says, “When do I get to play?”
Nour El Tayeb and Ali Farag are newlyweds, having gotten married last summer. They are also two of the most exciting and exceptional young players on tour. They talk with Outside the Glass about honeymooning in Vegas, cattle farming, how they coach each other between games, the brilliance of Harvard coach Mike Way, playing in front of the Great Pyramids and what El Tayeb’s grandmother always says to Farag.
The elder stateswoman of collegiate squash, Wendy Bartlett is in the midst of her thirty-third season as head coach of the Trinity College women’s squash team. Outside the Glass sat down with her to talk about everything from squash in Pittsburgh in the 1970s to nail biting 5-4 matches to the precipitous decline in the number of female coaches today.
What do Eric Heiden, Big Bend National Park, Seattle’s Bumpershoot Festival and MLB.com have to do with each other? They are all part of the fascinating, roundabout squash journey of US Squash President & CEO Kevin Klipstein. Listen here to a penetrating and revealing conversation about parenting, sportsmanship and the first time he learned the importance of the T.
What is it like the very first time you hear about squash? Outside the Glass goes to Wilmington, Del., as a new urban after-school program—with the help of some alumni from the Philadelphia program—introduces the game to a group of middle schoolers.
The world’s most obscure racquet sport is sticke. Invented in the 1870s, sticke was all the rage in Victorian England and about fifty courts were built around the world. Three survive today. We visited one in Wiltshire, England to try our hand.
Get to know the best American squash players of the future as they get set to go to the World Junior Championships in Poland.
It is one of the great secrets in the game. In a few days, another Jarvis & Kaplan Cup starts. Founded in 1960, the Jarvis is a week-long inter-provincial team tournament in South Africa. Paul Atkinson and Mark Reid, two Jarvis veterans, explain to James Zug the traditions and hijinks of the Jarvis.
Paul Selby is opinionated, controversial and always an iconoclast. The longtime English coach and father of three ranked professionals, including Daryl Selby, sat down with James Zug and Chris McClintick at the U.S. Open last fall. Selby told of his highly unusual introduction to the game, how he raised his children and his provocative thoughts on developing the game.
Jenny Irving started playing squash in Melbourne in the late 1950s and went on to become the second best player in the world. She reached the finals of the British Open in 1971. Forty-five years later, she came back to the British Open and talked about her regimen of training at 11pm, her daughter Liz Irving and her rivalry with fellow-Australian Heather McKay.
What is it like to grow up with a world champion as a father? Joey Barrington, the SquashTV commentator and former world No.24, speaks about his dad, the legendary champion Jonah Barrington. He talks about ghosting on a South African beach, the uses of an intimidating tan and the moment he told Jonah he was turning pro.
In the 1950s Dick Cooley was ranked in the top ten in the country, a former Yale star and a member of a national championship team from the Pacific Coast. He was playing squash left-handed, although he had grown up a righty; during the Second World War Cooley had lost his right arm when his fighter plane crashed in France, and he learned to play squash left-handed. “Someone believes in you, you can do a lot of things.
For twenty years after-school youth-enrichment programs have been a huge part of the U.S. squash community, but a new program in Israel has a different take on how to change lives and expand opportunities. Outside the Glass went to Raanana, outside of Tel Aviv, to take a look at SquashBond Israel—Sport & Beyond.