This page is part of the Atlas of Popular Culture in the Northeastern United States by John E. Harmon
While platform and paddle tennis are good examples of how class structure in US society is mirrored in sports and recreation, squash is an even better example of a sport which a small elite has traditionally reserved for itself. It is certainly true that around the country one can find the occasional squash court in a YMCA, community center or public university, but the majority of squash courts in the United States are in private universities and athletic clubs. For example, there are 154 squash courts in Connecticut; Yale has 25 while the public university of Connecticut has 8 courts. The private preparatory high schools of the Northeast usually have at least one squash court; Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire has 12 courts, almost as many as the entire state of Iowa (14). Its position as a sport of the elite is based in the Anglo-centric tradition of elite recreational activities in the United States, which is particularly pronounced in the Northeast.
So, it might be a little difficult to refer to squash as an element of popular culture in the region since the class structure restricts access. I include it because the Northeast (particularly New England) is so clearly the center of squash in the United States.
The origins of all raquet sports are complex but lead to France in the Middle Ages. The thinking is that the original sport, Jeu de Paume, was played with the hand, sometimes a net, sometimes a wall and sometimes neither. Eventually people started wearing gloves, then wrapping their hands and the extension to a raquet or paddle was the next step. This game eventually became tennis, the sport out of which all modern raquet and paddle sports evolved.
The game played in America as squash came from a British game, rackets. Rackets had its origin in the court games of the late 18th and early 19th centuries and had a close association with the handball-like game of "Fives." Rackets was played both inside with three or four walls and outside on a single wall. The court at Fleet Prison was an important early location and the public (which means "private" in England) school, Harrow, is thought to be the first school to play rackets, perhaps as early as 1822. The closed, indoor, court games started to become standardized in 1853 with the opening of the Old Prince's Club whose size set the standard for racket courts (50 x 30 ft) (Armitrage 1933). The courts themselves are important to explain why rackets was so restricted to private facilties - they were expensive to construct and maintain and the game was expensive to play. A seven-game match might use as many as 100 balls. At the current price of squash balls that would be around $400. As one historian of the game put it:
"From the date of the institution of the Old Prince's Club, the game gradually ceased to be played in Taverns, the old courts were allowed to fall into decay, and Rackets became the sport of an educated and more wealthy minority. This was both its salvation and its despair. By making it expensive to play Rackets gained substantially by the favor of many who were qualified to endow its interests with a liberal organization. Tournaments were arranged, and the fixed rules of play drawn up, making Rackets the mighty and wonderful game that it is. But by so doing all popular concern for Rackets was lost, and the life of the game was placed on a thread, the thread of prosperity." (Armitrage 1933, 44)
Rackets was the dominant raquet court game in Britain until the end of the 19th century. At Harrow, around 1830, rackets players discovered and began to play with a punctured rackets ball. In 1864 Harrow constructed four courts and squash rackets was officially founded. The courts were much smaller and less expensive to construct (21 x 32 feet) and the softer ball slowed play to the point where more people could enjoy the sport. Squash rackets courts soon "sprung up like mushrooms, in Clubs, in business houses, in Schools and Universities and in a great many private dwellings." (Armitrage 1933, 46) The game was less expensive to play, could be learned more rapidly and had a social element to it that rackets lacked. While rackets was a sport for the male elite, squash rackets was enjoyed by many more.
Squash was certainly being played in Canada before 1882. In that year a headmaster of a New Hampshire private school (St. Paul's in Concord) saw the sport in Montreal and wrote about the new squash complex at his school. In the article he favorably compared squash to rackets, principally on the lower costs. It would appear that the diffusion of squash into this country came through the private boy's schools of New England; this is still reflected in the distribution of squash courts in the United States. The soft ball was not really suited to the unheated squash courts in New Hampshire and a harder ball was developed which was more suitable to a narrow court.
Eventually the US (hardball) court was standardized at 18.5 feet wide with a 17 in. "tin," an out-of-play strip of metal, at the front which contrasts to the English (international) court which is 21.5 ft. wide with a 19 in. "tin" at the front (Wallburton no date). International courts are still quite common in places where squash is played at all in the United States and many faciltiies will have both sizes, but the narrow courts outnumber the international courts considerably. Of course, the rest of the English-speaking world plays on the wider courts. Doubles courts, which are larger still, are much less common.
By the 1930s squash raquets (still its official name, although it is more commonly called "squash,") had spread only to the US, Canada and India; today it is played internationally still principally by the elite.
International and U.S. squash rules allow a range of choices for the softness of the ball since play can vary so much with temperature and atmospheric pressure. But Americans generally play with much harder balls than players in the former British Commonwealth. There are still a few rackets courts in England but it is practically gone as a sport.
There is significant regional variation in the penetration of squash across the country with the Northeast, particularly New England, having by far the deepest penetration of squash courts and the South the weakest. It is interesting that New Hampshire, where squash raquets was first played in the United States, still has the highest number of squash courts per capita. This is most likely because of the large number of private secondary schools in the state.
The map of penetration, however, is a little spurious. The presence of squash courts in
a place is no indicator that people have access to them. Access is almost always
controlled by the organization that owns the courts and is restricted to members and
guests. There are few squash courts in the country that are accessible
to the general public
even for a fee. There is a growing trend to include squash courts in health and raquet
clubs to which access is not controlled by the existing members but is available to anyone
who can come up with the membership fee. A squash court is a substantial investment for a
health club, however, in that only two people tie up a considerable amount of square feet
to play the game and the court, because of the speed of play and hardness of the ball,
requires more substantial construction than other indoor court sports. But as more courts
are built in these facilities, squash is becoming more accessible than it has been in the
past.
Sources
Armitrage, J. 1933.The history of ball games (continued). In Rackets, Squash Racquets, Tennis, Fives & Badminton, edited by Lord Aberdare. By E.M. Baerlein, Captain J. Tomkinson, E. Snell, Major T. Moss, David Egerton, John Armitage, Sir George A. Thomas, bart. With one hundred & fifteen illustrations, ed. Lord Aberdare, 37-55. Philadelphia: J.B. Lipincott Co.
Wallbutton, T.No date. 130 years of world squash. History of squash on site of World Squash Federation. http://www.squash.org/WSF/history.html
Links
United States Squash Raquets Association