SquashTalk>Columns>Team Kneipp > Effing Reffing

By Dan Kneipp

What's going on ref? (photo © 2006 Debra Tessier.

Let me start this article off with a disclaimer that this is not directed at
the actual referees, who I think are severely handicapped by an outdated
system that does no justice to the professionalism of squash. Having said
that:

Our parents had a tennis background and ‘found’ squash in their mid 20s,
thought it was the greatest game ever (yep) and dragged Joe and me along to
the courts. Joe’s first coach as a junior was our uncle Pat who was a top
club player in his time. He had a solid all-round game, whereas Dad was a
shot maker with great touch.

Our parents and uncle had never seen Joe play in a proper professional
tournament. This was because of the severe lack of top professional
tournaments in Australia over the past ten years, the lack (or restriction)
of international exploration by the elder generation of our family, and some
bad luck mixed with terrible tournament management that meant the major
squash tournament scheduled for Melbourne 2001 was cancelled at the last
moment, meaning our family was at the venue but the tournament wasn’t.

What's that decision all about? (photo © 2006 Debra Tessier.

For the World Open in Hong Kong in December Joe flew Uncle Pat to the tournament as a present (Pat has been teaching himself Chinese over the past
decade and used the trip as a book buying adventure) and as extra motivation for Joe for the tournament. Joe lost to Lee Beachill in the first round in a tough match, but it was great for Joe to have Pat in his corner, and a wonderful experience for Pat.

An interesting outcome of the trip was an email Pat sent to family friends and relatives who know little or nothing about squash, detailing his experience. I’ve reprinted an extract of it below. Remember that this comes from a man who was extremely involved in squash at a junior level, played a lot of local tournaments at a standard that would be competitive against any non-professional players at any club, but has NEVER, EVER seen a top professional tournament until December.

“In stark contrast to the incredible standard of squash was the standard of the umpiring. Every sport has some weakness that means if you push it to its legal limits you can create a basically unworkable situation out of what was once a good game. In the case of squash, the problem is that two people are constantly sharing and taking turns to use the same space, unlike tennis in which each has his or her own side of the net. You're supposed to play your shot then allow your opponent free access to get to the ball and play it to the front wall. If you interfere with this trivially or accidentally you have to play the point over (a "let") and if you do it grossly or in such a way that it denies the other player a possible winning shot then you get the point awarded against you (a "stroke").

For the game to work, particularly in a situation where the players are career-serious about winning and losing, you have to have someone who knows how to interpret and enforce this sensibly. In local matches, players usually score the match that starts after they've finished, and this mostly works reasonably well. Better in fact than a lot of what I saw here.

I was absolutely appalled. I didn't see a single match that didn't involve a significant number of really questionable decisions.

The absolute horror was one match where the ref out of the blue started lecturing one of the players fairly harshly on not delaying play, then proceeded to make a series of decisions that were distinctly unfair to him. I don't know if he had money on it, or if he just liked the other guy, but it was an awful experience.”

For those of us who make a living from squash, these comments aren’t
surprising. What is surprising is that nothing seems to be being done about
it. The solution is simple, but I’ll cover that in the next article.

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