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Butcher To Return Home To Australia 
By Rob Dinerman, Dec 19, 2007    
Squashtalk Independent News; © 2007 SquashTalk LLC

After nearly a decade as a prominent member of the American squash scene, both as a top-10 ranked player on the ISDA pro doubles tour and as the head professional of one of the nation’s most prestigious private clubs, the Racquet & Tennis Club in New York, Scott Butcher will be retiring from both pursuits at the end of the month to move back to his native Australia, where he and his wife will await the birth of their first child later this winter.

Butcher, 36, was introduced to squash at age 10 at a neighborhood club in Sydney when his mother had him tag along when she played her club matches with her friends. He picked up the game in earnest in his mid-teens, faring well enough in regional junior tournaments to earn a one-year scholarship at the renowned Australian Institute of Sport under the tutelage of seven-time British Open champion Geoff Hunt and his fellow Aussie colleagues Ken Hiscoe, one of Hunt’s strongest rivals during the latter’s years of dominance, and Heather McKay, the greatest woman player of all time, following which Butcher (whose most graphic memory of that time is of the literally breath-taking series of 400-yard sprints that concluded most of Hunt’s practice sessions) spent several years on the PSA pro tour, where he eventually earned a world ranking in the high 40’s.

During that early-1990’s time frame, the PSA tour didn’t offer enough prize money to truly support more than 15 or 20 players, especially with the expensive global travel it entailed, and after a few years of excellent play but smallish profit margins as one of a number of exceptional players outside the top echelon, Butcher returned to Australia, where for several years he played in regional events and coached at the Sydney Football Stadium.His reputation became such that when longtime Racquet & Tennis pro Neal Vohr in a late-1990’s phone conversation with Hiscoe mentioned that one of his assistants would soon be leaving, Hiscoe recommended Butcher, who shortly thereafter headed to New York to join Vohr’s staff and eventually (in early 2002) succeed him as head pro, a standing that Butcher has held ever since.

It was during his time at R & T that he embarked upon his doubles career in the early 2000’s, winning two Silver Racquets titles (with Morris Clothier in 2000 and Beau Buford in 2001) and attaining the final of the 2003 U. S. Nationals with Clothier. Butcher also experienced solid success on the ISDA tour, reaching at least the semis with first Jeff Osborne (including the 2003 Briggs Cup, where they scored a five-game upset over Clive Leach and Blair Horler), then Martin Heath and lastly Paul Price, with whom Butcher advanced to his first ISDA final when the pair won consecutive five-gamers over first Josh McDonald/Viktor Berg and then Willie Hosey/David Kay in the 2005 Canadian Pro tourney in Toronto.

But all that was just a prelude to the season and a half (from February 2006 through the end of the 2006-07 season) that Butcher spent with Leach, a stretch highlighted by their final-round appearances last season at the Cambridge Club (where they led Price and Jamie Bentley 2-1, 12-9 after pre-final wins over Gary Waite/Jonathon Power and Hosey/Berg) and U. S. Nationals, where they saved three match-points against them in an 18-17 fifth-game semi over Ben Gould (who will be succeeding Butcher as the R & T head pro next month) and Hosey; and U S. Nationals, where and Ben Gould; their consistent attainment of at least the semifinal round; and, most memorably, their penchant for eleventh-hour rallies and down-to-the-wire finishes.

This latter list includes the four consecutive fourth-game match-balls-against that they saved in Long Island when they went from 11-14 to 15-14 against Quick and Gould, who then could muster only eight points in the ensuing fifth; their pair of similarly multiple-match-ball saving fifth-game exploits both in an ’07 Briggs Cup quarterfinal (from 10-14 to 15-14 against Chris Walker/Berg) and, as noted, the U. S. Nationals semi (from 15-17 to 18-17 in the best-of-nine tiebreaker); and the ’07 North American Open rally from 10-14 to 14-all in the semis against eventual champs Price and Gould, who however managed, albeit barely, to come away with that game 17-16 on simultaneous-match-ball.

While the 2006-07 season was clearly both the best and most exciting of Butcher’s career, the grueling schedule had by season's end taken quite a physical toll, especially on his shoulder, which underwent surgery during the intervening summer, and on his ankles, which had bothered him on and off for several years. Knowing as well that he would be returning to Australia by midseason, Butcher decided not to play on the 2007-08 tour, though he did come up with a fittingly-praiseworthy swan song performance in New York at the early-November Big Apple Open, where he partnered Hosey (whose original partner, Jamie Bentley, had to withdraw with an arm injury) to a quarterfinal win over third seeds John Russell and Quick, the only time all season to this point that one of the top four teams (namely Price/Gould, Damien Mudge/Berg, Walker/Leach and Russell/Quick) has been stopped short of the semis.

The retirements from ISDA play this autumn of such significant stalwarts as Waite, Bentley and now Butcher may be signaling the impending departure from the competitive professional doubles picture of the core group that was present when the Association was formed in January 2000 ---- fully a third of the current ISDA top-25 ranked players have joined the tour in 2003 or later, and this number figures to grow in the next few years as more long-time protagonists of that vintage step aside and a new wave moves in. Butcher himself will always be remembered as a solid member of that original group, as well as for the firm steadiness with which he fulfilled his responsibilities both as head of the racquet scene at one of America’s most prominent clubs (whose members turned out in force at a good-bye party that the club held for Butcher last night to express their gratitude and to wish him well) and as a highly successful left-wall player with several different partners on the ISDA pro circuit.

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