New York. July 31, 2000 copyright 2000 Squashtalk.com :

PRO HARDBALL ON A SOFTBALL COURT
The $10,000 Hamil Cup, a professional hardball tournament hosted by the University CLub of New York in late-May and culminating in a terrific five-game final-round win by Gary Waite over Mark Talbott, was the first hardball event with significant prize money since January '96, when the sixteenth and final edition of the Greenwich Open essentially spelled the end of a WPSA hardball circuit that during its mid-80's glory period had featured more than two dozen events across the continent and well over a half a million dollars in prize-money but that had been steadily fading by the early 90's.

Besides putting an end to what had become a 40-month drought between prize-money hardball tourneys, the Hamil Cup also demonstrated the versatility of the WPSA hardball stars who comprised most of the 15-player draw and who throughout the weekend displayed both extraordinary staying power and the adaptability required to play such high-calibre squash on the 30-inch wider international court. That latter point may prove to be the Hamil Cups's most enduring legacy, for with the number of American courts steadily dwindling, if hardball squash has a realistic chance of undergoing a legitimate revival--and few of the spectators present could deny how much more electrifying a spectacle they were viewing than a softball match can deliver--it may have to be on the international courts that are increasingly dominating the North AMerican squash landscape.

Certainly this was not the first time that such WPSA hardball stars as Waite, Talbott, Kenton Jernigan and Todd Binns have played competitive hardball on courts that didn't

have American-court dimensions. Indeed, the three-glass-wall portable tour court on which most of the major championships

were contested was 20 feet wide, a foot and a half wider than an American court, since the WPSA Board believed that there would thereby be fewer lets and better television viewing angles. In addition, occasional events in Canada were held on 20-foot-wide courts with the (two inches higher) international tin, and one tour site(the Skyline CLub in suburban Toronto)featured complete softball dimensions during its last few years as a hardball event. It IS a somewhat different game without any question, disproportionately

rewarding some talents while minimizing the effectiveness of others.

The higher tin makes it dangerous to cut some shots that are uniquely characteristic of the hardball game--like roll-corners and reverses--in too fine a fashion, and both the tin-height and extra room make finding the nick on another hardball shot, the three-wall, almost impossible. Volleying and aggressively cutting the ball off, especially the crosscourt, are also rendered much more difficult by the additional width, and of course there are 80 extra square feet to cover as one attempts to retrieve that fast-moving American hardball.

On the other hand, the hard serve is a much more potent weapon on the softball court, both because the server can position himself much closer to the front wall(thereby substantially cutting down on his

opponent's reaction time) and, more importantly, because he has much more court to serve into, i. e. the serve

returner has a much greater area to defend and much less time to react to the serve. Three of the four semi-finalists (Waite, Binns and the hardest hitter in the field, Damian Mudge) power-served almost exclusively and to great effect; in fact, it was in the his ability to handle Mudge's heretofore devastating hard serve that the unflappable Talbott may have found the key to his semi-final win, as Damian seemed frustrated and a bit demoralized at seeing what he had come, with good reason, to regard as a huge weapon fizzle in the face of Talbott's wonderful reflexes, and the rest of his very good game seemed to be negatively affected as well.

Those, like Waite and Binns, who have reliable double-boasts in their arsenal, were rewarded for this skill because their balls had so much more front wall to run across before encountering the side wall, and the ability to play off the back wall was crucial, due to the impracticality of volleying and the difficulty the higher tin imposed on any attempts to lay a hard-hit ball down. In terms of retrieving, familiarity with the court dimensions seemed to mean more than familiarity with the ball--that is to say, the players who had been playing softball on a softball court seemed to be at a decided advantage over those who had been playing hardball on a hardball court, though it should be remembered that almost all of the former group HAD been playing hardball in the sense that they had been on the professional doubles tour, which has blossomed in recent years and on which a number of the top hardball players had been focusing their efforts in the four or five years since their hardball tour vanished.

HAS it fully vanished, though, or will this highly successful Hamil Cup, which was initially envisioned merely as an isolated and nostalgic trip down memory lane, instead become a harbinger of bigger and better things to come, maybe even a full-throated revival of the hardball tour as it once was? The level of play in many of the matches was so high, the keenness of the competition (especially in Talbott's final with Waite and semi-final with Mudge) so pronounced, that a number of the patrons, many of whom have prominent roles in other clubs, came away from the weekend vowing to do what they could to have similar events occur in their clubs, whether on a softball court or on hardball courts in the case of the clubs that still have them. So many players and spectators in the wake of the tournament mused aloud about the degree to which they had forgotten how much they missed the hardball game and enjoyed watching and playing it, that this tournament COULD have a more far-reaching effect than anyone had imagined beforehand.

What CAN now be stated with certainty are the following: 1. Softball-court hardball squash, while somewhat different from its American-court counterpart, is a wonderful and fast-paced game; 2. If a promoter or sponsor decides to hold such an event, the best players, whether holdovers from the WPSA tour or more recent doubles- and even softball-oriented players will enter; and 3. Not only will they enter, but they will play both extremely well and in extraordinarily exciting and entertaining fashion. What develops from that trilogy of assertions remains to be seen.

What IS known is that professional hardball squash, for at least one glorious mid-May weekend, made a magical reappearance and gave those present an enduring sense of what they had been missing.

- By Rob Dinerman

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