A taste of winter squash
NEW YORK - This is it: the Davos of squash.
For the 12th year running, Boston's own John Nimick - he's the guy who staged a squash tournament inside of Symphony Hall - has lured the world's greatest squash players to Grand Central Station for the J.P. Morgan Tournament of Champions. Last year, this was the Bear Stearns tournament . . . then Bear Stearns ceased to exist.
So how has the economic meltdown affected America's most elite and insular sport? "Frankly, this is our best year ever," Nimick said, pointing to about 400 customers - a huge crowd for squash - who have paid between $20 and $160 to crowd onto risers inside Grand Central's ornate Vanderbilt Hall. "It didn't hurt that we had all our sponsorships lined up by April, before the bottom fell out of the economy."
This year is going to be the make-or-break year for squash, a game still confused with a vegetable in America. The American governing body US Squash commissioned research revealing that 1 in 100 Americans have actually heard of the game, and those few associate the sport with wealthy New Englanders.
They wouldn't be far off, would they? But outside the United States, the sport is played in 127 countries and has broad appeal. Hardly any of the champions whom Nimick has lured here from Egypt, France, Malaysia, and the British Isles attended private school or college - practically the only places in America where a young person would find a squash court. The world's great young players mostly wandered into public squash clubs and honed their skills from there.
In June, squash will make its pitch to become an Olympic sport. Hopes are running high. Too high, I suspect. It's assumed - dangerous to assume! - that the International Olympic Committee will add two new sports to the 2016 Olympics, and squash is competing with such popular pursuits as golf, baseball, rugby, and karate.
"We certainly have our work cut out for us," says Scott Garrett, president of the London-and-Bahrain-based sports consultancy KHP, who is helping to brainstorm the Olympic bid for the World Squash Federation. "Here is a classic gladiatorial sport" - he and I are watching a video feed of Egypt's Wael El Hindi battling Malaysia's Mohd Azlan Iskandar, while talking outside the tournament. "It ought to be as big as tennis. What's holding it back?"
One thing holding it back is the sport's inability to project on television. The tiny, golf-sized ball, even when painted white, travels too fast to pick up on a television monitor. The lighting and color scheme inside Grand Central render the action particularly opaque on video. "Look at that," says Garrett, pointing to the TV monitor. "It's like watching someone play in their living room."
For five British pounds, or about $7, you can watch six or seven of the Grand Central matches on the Professional Squash Association website, psalive.tv, and decide for yourself. I clicked on a previously recorded, tight fight between the world's No. 2 player, Egypt's Amr Shabana, and France's Gregory Gaultier. I saw the ball about 10 percent of the time.
It hardly helps squash's Olympic dream that the sport is in its customary state of genteel disarray. Neither the WSF nor the PSA has a president right now. The game's premier American event, the US Open, was moved from Boston (too parochial) to New York last year, where it promptly croaked. Doubtless reacting to Olympic officials' complaints about the impenetrability of squash's "Hi-Ho" scoring system (it stands for "hand in, hand out"; don't ask), the sport has adopted rules called PAR-11 (it stands for Point a Rally; don't ask) which has coaches and players thoroughly confused.
And yet. On Tuesday night I dragged a friend who has never seen the game to Grand Central, to watch West Roxbury resident David Palmer, the world's No. 6 player, take on the Gallic pepperpot Gaultier, No. 5. Thanks to the new scoring, the match proceeded quickly, and it was a heck of a fight, which Palmer lost. Gladiatorial indeed.
"That was 10 times more exciting than half the Olympic sports I see after midnight on ESPN 2," my friend opined. Perhaps there is hope, after all.
Alex Beam is a Globe columnist. His e-dress is beam@globe.com. 