outsidetheglass

Johnny Williams is now known as a longtime coach in Switzerland and commentator for SquashTV, but the former world No.15 famously overcame a illness that kept him off court for over three years during his prime. It is a story of resilience.

Off the court, Mike Way, the head coach at Harvard and mentor of world champions, loves the combination of the wind and the sea: sailing, windsurfing and, for the past twenty years, kiteboarding. Whether bumping into sharks or cutting the grass, Way is way into kiting.

Melissa Winstanley had produced close to a hundred professional portable court squash tournaments, including every Tournament of Champions since 1982. Joined by John Nimick, Winstanley tells the ToC saga of waking the rats, waiting on 42nd Street all night for the court to arrive, free telephone calls to Pakistan and doing the seating chart and ticketing by hand.

The chair of the board of the Squash + Education Alliance, Amrit Kanwal helps lead the urban squash movement, which is celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary with a jubilee weekend next month in New York.

OTG slips back in time with Derrick Niederman, the longtime referee and Squash News reporter, as he spins tales about Yale’s John Skillman and some of the history’s most fascinating matches at the old Boston Open.

Former world No.21, Irish national champion and SquashTV commentator, Aisling Blake sits down with OTG to chat about Sligo, Trinity College Dublin and the secret behind Nicol David’s rise to world No.1.

Our first taping of Outside The Glass before a live audience was in New York earlier this year. Kevin Klipstein, Peter Nicol and Barrett Takesian discussed what squash will look like in a few years and how we’ll get there.

In 2023 Santiago will be hosting the Pan Am Games. OTG speaks with the famous Pinto family, which helps lead squash in Chile, about the dynamics of the game in South America.

Liz Irving has been Nicol David’s coach for the past seventeen years. As David retires, OTG talks with Irving (the daughter Jenny Irving from Ep.5) about how she guided David to unprecedented heights.

Andrew Shelley might be the most senior leader in squash today: he started working in the game forty-three years ago. As he steps down as CEO of the World Squash Federation, Shelley looks back with OTG on his remarkable early years running the British Open.

The GOAT of squash—as reckoned by many observers—might be Ramy Ashour, who just announced his retirement from the pro tour. In a remarkable interview with Outside The Glass, Ashour talks about what injuries have taught him, his best win and worst loss, his ideas about scoring and how he ate his first squash trophy.

The greatest Frenchwoman in squash history, Camille Serme joins OTG to talk about coming back from tough defeats, devising game plans and assessing theories on whether marriage is good or bad for your squash.

Last month Nicol David, the greatest female squash player in history, announced that she was going to retire from the pro tour later this spring. Here she talks with Outside The Glass about what she loves about the game, the Olympics and having dinner with Roger Federer.

Exactly twenty-five years ago, in February 1994, the men of Yale and Harvard played each other in a famously close match. The score went to 4-4. The final match, between Jamie Dean and Tal Ben-Shahar, ended 18-17 in the fifth. OTG talks with Dean and Ben-Shahar about what happened that historic day and how it changed their lives.

In two years’ time, US Squash will open the Specter Center, a world-class, twenty-court, 65,000 square-foot facility in Philadelphia. Kevin Klipstein, Ned Edwards, Steve Gregg and Rich Wade explain what it will look like.

One of the most recognizable people in the game, Ronny Vlassaks has just arrived in the U.S. to coach at Squash on Fire in Washington. He tells OTG what it is like pick up squash for the first time in his mid-twenties after a career as a world-class pro cyclist.

In 1978 Sue Newman King captured the British Open, becoming the first woman not named Heather McKay to win the title since 1961. Forty years later she talks that tournament, her unusual start in squash and the founding of the women’s pro tour.

Daryl Selby, world No. 16, hilariously contemplates his obsession with another game with a tiny ball: golf.

An injury on the ice brought a Canadian junior hockey player into the squash court, and the game of doubles was never the same. Jamie Bentley, three-time World Doubles champion, speaks about the game of cutthroat, the thrill of doubles and the day, up match ball, he lost seventeen points in a row.

Last season, the PSA Tour was set ablaze by Nicol David making videos of her dancing with fellow pros. Here is the inside story. And Mark Talbott talks about Tom Cruise and dancing at Grateful Dead shows.

Imagine flying in very late for your first match at the World Open and your luggage doesn’t make it with you. That is what Sarah Fitz-Gerald, the Australian great, faced in her final World Open, in Qatar in 2002. What happened next is the stuff of legend.

A salty seventy-two year-old southpaw from borderlands of Berwick-upon-Tweed, Bryan Patterson has been a top junior, amateur and professional player and a camp director and coach. For the past quarter century, he’s been mentoring kids in the U.S., first in Brooklyn and then Philadelphia and for the past eleven years at CitySquash in the Bronx.

What do we love to do when we aren’t playing squash? OTG talks with James Willstrop about theatre and Chris Gordon about ice hockey. Both PSA pros have had good runs recently: Willstrop just captured the gold medal in the Commonwealth Games and Gordon won the British Virgin Islands Open in February. But off-court: emotions, story-telling, stitches in the face, Mr. June and the Scottish play—it’s a...

One of the most successful coaches ever, David Pearson has worked with some of the top players in the world, including a few competing this month in the 2018 Commonwealth Games in Australia. A childhood in Zambia, school in Zimbabwe and a job in the complaints department of a shoe company—all that came before he came to squash as an adult.

One of the greatest players in squash history, Geoff Hunt won eight British Opens and the first four men’s World Championships. A little-known part of his career was the Australian's sojourns in North America, first as a teenager and later as a pro. Hunt has stories about Original Six ice hockey, Victor Niederhoffer, the Mennen Cup, Sharif Khan, the Philadelphia Boast and the shortest men’s World...