Grandeur Soit Qui Bien Y Pense

(Greatness comes to those who embody it)

My road to professional squashdom has been a long one.

But, as the great Jahangir Khan once wrote: "To end up as champion, you have to start. That is not quite as obvious as it seems. Starting is often the big problem." A perfect summation, as getting from "go down to the local squash club to learn how to keep your racket face open" to "incurring financial debt by traveling to Aberdeen to hit a nick or flick someone in the wrong direction" is not a simple geometric extrapolation. In between these potentially connectable points, you will find many hurdles: doubting your skills; making financial ends meet; feeling pressure from your world of influence; accruing the maturity needed to be a true professional; having the courage to handle an uprooted lifestyle…There is no way around it, the decision to become a professional squash player is not an easy one. Let my path be a living testament for those who wish to follow…

The heat was oppressive. By night, I would lie wide-awake on my back, annoyed that neither my nakedness nor a ceiling fan would suffice to shirk the swelter. And yet, I didn’t mind the extra hours that insomnia provided for me to dream my dream of becoming a professional squash player. By day, I would venture to the legendary Fleet Club or Karachi Gym Khana to play on courts that were marked by potholes and littered with bird feathers and excretion. After a few weeks of this treatment, the slide one had to take due to the slippery filth on the floor became a natural part of one’s stride. The courts were so hot that your shirt, shorts, socks - your shoes, no less! – were drenched in sweat by the end of the warm up. The watering hole outside was a large urn with one communal glass and a community of flies buzzing about it. Amazing what one will do, without reservation, when one is thirsty. The limits extend even further when at the tender age of fifteen. "But Rocky would do this sort of thing," I thought. More importantly, Jahangir Khan had done it. That was why I was there. Jahangir was my absolute hero and I had to see the place where it all started, so to speak, for him. Besides, my dad had just taken me to see the unabridged re-release of Lawrence of Arabia and I was in my own little world having my own little Arabian adventure. That was the summer of 1989 and that was how it all began for me, really.

As my reading list would have testified, those years were much simpler. Nonetheless, Pakistan provided an endless supply of fuel for my already growing passion for squash racquets. This fuel propelled me from neophyte in 1987 to an "A" player by 1989 to the #1 player on the National Junior Squad in 1992, all with only three junior tournaments under my belt (hint: there are as many junior squash players in California as there are Wooly Mammoths). At that point, I was entrenched deep enough in the squash world to begin my exposure to the problems that plague elite players.

Some of my first invaluable lessons came as a very cocky eighteen-year old in Hong Kong at the 1992 World Junior Championships. After the USSRA stipend, each team member was responsible for raising $3000. My campaign efforts in the San Francisco Bay Area were dismal, with only $500 from two doners, while my three teammates were successful in raising the full amount. The neglect from my community did not exactly make me bitter, but I was wounded nonetheless. As a result, I withdrew from my community and became more self-reliant. With years, I have realized that there must have been something about me that did not draw attention or support. And, the positive lesson that I immediately walked away from Hong Kong with was, as the American flag bearer in the Olympic-like welcoming arena, an overwhelming sense of patriotism. As I shook the hand of the last British governor of Hong Kong, I discovered that representing one’s country in international competition was an incredible honor.

Although the enthusiasm that accrued in Pakistan and Hong Kong was enough to allow me to proclaim squash as my profession upon graduation from Princeton in 1996, the ensuing two years proved to be a rocky period of disaster and lesson learning rather than of fierce competition and ranking building.

First came the pressures associated with graduating from one of the world’s most prestigious educational institutions. Just walk around an Ivy League campus during recruiting season and you will perceive an aura of desperation to make parents proud, to make good on an expensive investment, to jockey for position with peers, and to continue on a linear track of success. During my time of decision, I dealt with these pressures by rationalizing that a two to five year career in professional squash would not thwart a future career ambition on the basis that an intelligent person remains so for life. I would even go so far as to argue that, with the correct approach, an Ivy League education followed by a professional career in sport could make a candidate more valuable in the eyes of a recruiter. Besides, I’m all about no regrets and I know that I would not be happy if I didn’t first discover what I could achieve on the squash court. Alternatively, I realize that there have been many graduating seniors who have failed to see the logic in this argument. Such are the issues that all future talented graduating seniors will deal with.

In spirit of my Hong Kong resolution to be self-reliant, I took a job at the Racquet & Tennis Club in New York and quickly walked right into the next hurdle: Invincibility, with a capital I. I thought I could do anything. But, after six months of rising at six-thirty for a workout, coaching for eight hours so I could have a second workout and then trudging home at ten to eat, fall asleep, and wake to do it again, I not only lost my girlfriend, but I began to experience my first ever injuries. Everything seemed to malfunction: back, shoulder, knees, ankle, wrist…even my thumb! The worst of it all came in February 1997, when I developed a strange virus in my chest that was never identified! It not only took six months to heal physically, but another year to recover my mental confidence; when something goes wrong with your chest cavity, paranoia sets in deeply. It wasn’t long before I figured out that trying to play full-time and to coach full-time were conflicting interests. Even still, I did not yet possess the maturity of a professional. Although I was disciplined in my training, I was not disciplined in my eating and sleeping habits, and I was still on the college party clock. This slack culminated in the 1997 Pan American Federation Championships in Mexico City. I was chosen for the team and was very poorly prepared. I was not fit enough, my racket skills were atrocious, and my mind was not on the squash court. In retrospect, I wish I had had the courage to pass my selection on to another candidate. All the same, I have always been ashamed of my performance in Mexico and have resolved to earn my spot on subsequent national teams through hard work and professionalism and to hold my selection to a National squad in the highest regard.

All these tribulations took a toll on me, but in the fall of 1998 I was ready to refocus on squash and prepared to tackle the professional circuit full-time. Needless to say, one’s reputation precedes oneself and the result was a lack of confidence in my skills as I initially had a hard time overriding people’s low expectations of me. After two years of rough terrain, I had to rediscover – and in some respects discover anew - who I was as a squash player. This hunt has lead me from my mind, around the world, and back again. The results have been great. I have enjoyed more strength, fitness, skills, intelligence, and, most importantly, wisdom in dealing with the hurdles that invariably keep coming my way.

In the end, life is about decisions and, regardless of which one’s you choose, you will be faced with pressures, different and similar, to the one’s I have herein described. The often bizarre life that professional squash offers, however, truly allows one to "front only the essential facts of life" and to walk away from it all with the sense that you have really learned something important about yourself and the world in which you live.

I wanted to express the unglamorous perspective of sport because it is the con’s that will dissuade someone from choosing this lifestyle. The tour is not about typical real-life issues, such as making money, succeeding in a 9-to-5, caring for another human being, or even enjoying the comforts of the Friday night gang. It’s a journey of self-discovery, of pushing the limits physically and mentally, and of carving your own path in a universe that few people can relate to. Although I have geared this article towards those elite players who may consider playing professional squash one day, I would hope that the unassuming junior in the Canadian arctic or the rank-and-file club player in Chicago would walk away with some insight…or inspiration.

As for me? My road has been long, indeed. But I have miles to go before I sleep.