World’s Oldest Squash Blog

I am not precisely sure about this blog being the oldest in the world,  but it has consistently come out since since December 2006 and I can’t find another major blog out there today that predates that.

For a couple of years, it was published on the US Squash site and called The Direct—a pun on the old pastime of generating indirect wins over top players (see George Plimpton dilate on the indirect in his foreword to my 2003 book Squash: A History of the Game).

On the advice of Preston Quick, I went to the stunning Internet Archive and its Wayback Machine. I was able to recover a couple of dozen of those blog entries when they appeared on what is now the old old old old USQ site. The only gap now is when I happily blogged, along with Alex Beam, for Vanity Fair in 2008-2009.

Rereading some of these older columns reminded me of my first blog about Harry Saint, Mark Talbott’s shoe size, the passing of many squash legends and the antics of others (see February 2008 for a report on Southey Miles, who suffered “a nasty spider bite while mistaking a giant flower arrangement in the foyer for a urinal.”)

I predicted (April 2007) after Peter Nicol’s retirement that it would be a long time before another man reached his mark of sixty months as world No.1. It turns out I was right. Since Nicol retired, the closest anyone has come is Amr Shabana who has logged in thirty-three months and counting.

Hats off to some of my commenters, particularly Guy Cipriano, who have added greatly to the depth and nuance of the entries.

Perhaps my favorite entry (March 2008) was my college squash team nickname bracket. The winner, if you will recall, is the William Smith Herons.