Why do we love doubles?

For the court's long expanse of white with red trim, this great bright ocean liner plowing through the winter seas? For its infinite shotmaking capabilities—the high-flying Philadelphia shot, the astonishment of the reverse volley three-wall-dead-into-the-nick, the risk and glory of the double boast, the bread-and-butter, you-hit-that-loose-stuff-I'm-going-to-hit-this-till-the-cows-come-home reverse corner—shots that have sadly disappeared with the end of hardball singles? For the truth that there is, with doubles, no limit to the playing life of the happy squash player, that the game's most loyal players are nonagenarians? For the pleasant sight of mixed doubles? For the regulation, in 1933, that the doubles ball, "shall be pneumatic and at a temperature of sixty-eight degrees shall have a rebound upon a steel plate of thirty-six inches from a drop of one hundred inches"? For the fact doubles means two, team spirit and combination, first man and second man, your ball, I'll cover those hard cross-courts over your head, thanks for bailing me out, yessssssssssssssss PARTNER?

Yes, for all this, but also for the fact that squash doubles is a quintessential American game. Of all the national games involving a racquet—save the blasphemous game of racquetball—only squash doubles is born and bred, U.S.D.A. certified, prime-cut, red-blooded American.

Doubles explained

A doubles court, a box of 22,500 cubic feet, is exactly the right amount of space. It creates a remarkable situation where creativity is contained and constrained by the law of gravity. Doubles works because of limitations. The game is one of close-combat violence. Four players, all standing in close proximity to each other in the middle of the court, bash a little rock at each other. To the novice spectator, the violence looks random. The angles and combinations of ricochets, the volcanic spray of drives, rebounds, volleys and drop shots, cloud the newcomer's eye. To the initiated, doubles bears zen-like fruit. The two right-wall players circle each other throughout the point. So do the left-wall players. The unspoken rule in squash doubles is that if one team is striking the ball, the other team gets room in front to stand and wait to return the ball. Therefore, both groups of two players are constantly revolving, like two gears in a machine, like two couples dancing, like two pinwheels side-by-side blowing in a hurricane wind.

High-school geometry dictates what these spinning vortexes can do. The brutal simplicity of the game—a box and a ball and a stick—demands orthodoxy. Parabolas of drives, tangents of drop shots, swirling cosines of caroms are all predictable. Speed and spin can vary slightly, but once the ball is played, any seasoned player can immediately decipher where the ball is going, when the ball will bounce back and what would be an appropriate response. Responses, naturally vary, and within one point (many rallies last more than one hundred hits) the momentum can shift a dozen times as players dig themselves in and out of trouble.

The sense of balance

There is always a sense of balance with four people on one court. "Successful doubles results," wrote Al Molloy, long-time squash coach at Penn, "when one partner supplies the power and the other the finesse." That is the usual pattern, which is why the mid-1990s combination of Gary Waite and Jamie Bentley, two of the hardest hitting doubles players in history, was so lethal. It was power and power, and their three-year unbeaten streak was a testament to turning Molloy's dictum upside-down.

Of course Waite & Bentley also won because both men could hit good dropshots. "All of the greatest doubles champions have been shot makers rather than retrievers," wrote three-time national doubles champion Victor Niederhoffer in 1979. "Diehl Mateer, who won the doubles titles on eleven occasions, is probably the greatest left court player. He goes for winners at least once in four hits." Doubles calls for the sharpshooter and the sniper, Dirty Harry with a Dunlop triggerfinger. The doubles court is large and long, one hundred and thirty-eight percent larger than a singles court. All that room up front is too tempting. Why lob and hit the ball deep in hopes of one's opponents coughing up a loose shot? Why be predictable? Stop this nonsense of one hundred-hit rallies. Shoot.

The American cat and mouse

That mentality thus produces a game where players are trying to prevent shots. "The essence in doubles," continued Niederhoffer, "is to place you team in an area where it's impossible for your opponents to go for the point with a high percentage shot." Instead of patiently waiting for a loose shot, players try more to prevent their opponents from being tempted by a shot. This cat and mouse is what makes the game truly apple-pie and stars-and-stripes. The individual is waiting to bust out with a stylish shot that declares, "I am here, I am a great player. I can break the mold." All the other racquet sports reward consistency and patience and endurance, keeping the ball in play and waiting for mistakes and unforced errors. But doubles rewards the bold. That is why we love doubles. It is so American.

[ Read part I: The origin of doubles, also by James Zug]