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[Anthony Hill summary and statistics]

Photos: © 2001 Debra Tessier, squashphotos.com

Anthony Hill: Sometimes great, Always entertaining, sometimes controversial.

By Ron Beck, 4-2001

Anthony Hill is one of the most interesting though controversial players of the modern squash era. Amiable off-court and a thoughtful and helpful contributor to tournaments and their promoters, the tempestuous Aussie has a "short fuse" and over the past several years was the most penalised player on the PSA Tour.

Hill is an extremely creative player, at times able to put together incredible strings of dominant points, but usually unable to sustain his play throughout a match due to mental lapses. Hill himself recognizes his main weakness. He remarked last year, " They'll always try to 'get me going' - they know it's the only way they will beat me.

Hill often gets distracted by the refereeing, often losing focus on the match at hand to argue about a finer point of the rules -- about which, by the way, he is usually right.

"Hilly," as he is usually called on tour, has his supporters and detractors, but barely anyone is neutral. There is no doubt that he adds a colorful dimension to the pro tour which is good for the tour's overall variety and vitality. Last fall in Boston, Hilly came on court with the Squashbuster kids, totally on his own, as they staged a pre-match exhibition at the US Open. His warm and positive interaction with these inner-city kids exhibited a highly positive aspect of his character, one that many other of the tour players would be hard pressed to match.

Hill is a sparring partner and good friend of Jonathon Power, and one of the disappointments of the past yearhas been his inability to mount a serious threat to Power in their surprisingly frequent head-to-heads. It is as if their friendship prevents Hill from having the determination to really go after Power in a tournament situation.

The 30-year-old from Melbourne, now based in Holland, first made a name for himself on the PSA Tour in 1989, winning four events including the Swiss Open and three in the USA - the San Francisco, San Antonio and Los Angeles Opens,

Hill's 1999 campaign began with a quarter-final appearance in the Marsh & McLennan Apawamis Open in New York (where he lost to Chris Walker), followed by a lively first round departure from our Tournament of Champions, here in New York City, where he lost 3-2 to the eventual runner-up Ahmed Barada. Back in Europe, he reached the quarter-finals of the Flanders Open in Belgium after beating Canada's Graham Ryding 3-2 in the opening round and added success after success as the year progressed.

Now playing and training out of the Netherlands, Hill is a player with tremendous natural ability, who undoubtedly has the ability to climb further up the rankings. 'I know that when I am firing on all cylinders, I can beat anyone in the world,' he says. 'However, I know that I must learn to be more consistent.'

He is a former world junior finalist who gave up Australian Rules Football when he was sixteen to concentrate on squash. His interests away from squash include surfing, boxing, and videos.

Although his time to make his mark on the pro circuit may be running short, Hill has recently entered several North American Pro Doubles events, having surprising success that underscored his raw racket ability and versatility.

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