I love squash. I love it even more than I loathe exercising. Squash is a great game and a great city game. Close quarters, doesn’t take much time and afterwards you’re spent. Squash is complicated, however, because it usually involves a club. You want to play, yes, but if you angle for an invite then you’re likely playing with somebody who is a regular and likely to dominate you.
That’s the other side of squash: Good players beat the less good. And, more often than not, they beat them like a drum. In tennis the inferior player can junk things up, change pace, try to bring the superior player down to his level. Not squash. Every sterling shot your opponent makes puts you in an increasingly desperate and defensive position. The same way that you’re more likely to solve 90% or more of an easier crossword (success building on success) or 10% or less of a hard one (aggravation leading to more aggravation).
I thought of all this as I prepared to play squash with a friend at his club. Squash unfolds in close quarters. And it was during warm ups, at that early stage, that I sensed I was in serious trouble. He was hitting rail after rail totally in control of his game, fluid and under control. My shots were a little more…variable. Like driving a car with no power steering. The same way you know in the first scene if a movie is going to be a lemon, it was immediately clear that I was about to be dismantled.