Man has always enjoyed games played by hitting a ball with either a closed fist or with some form of bat or racket. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the development of the game of “Squash Racquets”.

In the early years of the 19th century, this obsession gave birth to another variety of the sport, in the most unlikely places - a prison in London, England. The prisoners took their exercise by hitting a ball against a wall with rackets, and so started the game of “Rackets”.

Squash was invented in a school in Harrow, England around 1830, when the pupils discovered that a punctured “Rackets” ball, which “squashed” on impact with the wall, produced a game with a greater variety of shots than with the game “Rackets”. The variant proved popular and in 1864 the first four Squash courts were constructed at the school and Squash was officially founded as a sport in its own right.

In those early days, Squash, as with all other sports, was without any form of international standardization. It was inevitable that slight variations in the way it was played, and the equipment used, would occur. Only two main streams of activity followed, one in England with its 21 feet wide courts and “soft” ball and the other in North America, with its 18.5 feet wide courts and “hard” ball. With both courts having the same length of 32 feet the universality of Squash was not seriously challenged.

As Squash developed so did its administrative structure. The first national association to be formed was the United States Squash Racquets Association in 1907. In England the game was regulated by a Squash sub-committee of the Tennis and Rackets Association from 1908 until it gained full status as the Squash Rackets Association in 1928.

The point-a-rally scoring system to 15 was used universally in Squash until 1926 when the current hand-in, hand-out system to 9 points was introduced outside North America. The American hardball game, however, continued to be played to 15 points and this system was also adopted for the men’s professional circuit in 1991, in an effort to shorten the matches.

Squash spread rapidly in its early days and the major growth areas were wherever British Military Forces were stationed. South Africa, India, Pakistan, Egypt, Australia, New Zealand and many other countries learned their Squash from the military and soon adopted it as their own. Probably the most successful Squash nation of all time, Australia, had its Squash seed planted through contact with the British military.

In Germany, Squash was born twice! Its first cradle was in Berlin in 1930 when the first four courts were built by Dr. Ernst von Siemens, head of technology department of the electronics company which bore his name, and he started regular company staff activities and even foreign competitions on the “wall-play-halls”. Not until a group of Hamburg players founded the German SRA in 1973 did the first National Championships take place, and within a few years there were over 6,000 courts and 2 million players in the nation - the most spectacular growth of Squash anywhere in the world.

Many other nations experienced tremendous growth in Squash, starting slowly at the beginning of the century and then gaining popularity. In each country the basic story is the same. A group of enthusiasts starts to play and promotes the game which, because of its inherent qualities of intense exercise coupled with all-absorbing competition, ensured that it grew rapidly to become a major sport. The formula which made Squash grow in its traditional homelands is now being seen again in Japan, Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Korea and many new Squash nations, worldwide.

The World Scene

In its early days, international Squash was controlled by the Squash Rackets Association of England and the United States Squash Rackets Association, but in 1966 representatives of the sport from Australia, Great Britain, India, New Zealand, Pakistan, South Africa, USA, Canada and the United Arab Republic met in London and agreed to form the International Squash Rackets Association (ISRF), the first meeting of which was held on 5th January, 1967.

The ISRF continued to thrive and was amalgamated with the Women’s International Squash Federation in 1985. In 1992 the name of the Federation was changed to the World Squash Federation (WSF), finally recognizing that the sport had been universally referred to simply as “Squash”, rather than “Squash Rackets”, for most of its existence.

The World Squash Federation now has 109 Squash playing National associations in membership. It is the sole International Federation for the sport, as recognized by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), and maintains responsibility for the rules of the game, court equipment specifications, refereeing and coaching. The WSF maintains a world calendar of events and organizes and promotes world championships for men, women, junior men, junior women and master age groups in both singles and doubles Squash. The Federation leads its member nations in programmes for the development of the sport, and is currently working with the IOC towards the target of having Squash included as a sport on the programme of the Olympic Games in the year 2,000.

Squash has been played for over 130 years, grown sensationally in the last thirty, and it is now poised to become one of the largest and best loved of all sports. It has captured the imagination of sportsmen and women everywhere and started a boom in the sport which raised the number of courts to 46,000 worldwide and the number of players to over 15 million by 1994.