I played squash with Mohan yesterday (2/8/2025), and I enjoyed it greatly. Granted, the manoeuvring is confined to the playing area, so the physicality will not achieve the levels of badminton or tennis, but there are specialities of the game that someone who is playing should appreciate: with tennis and badminton, you learn to manoeuver the projectile(ball or shuttlecock) to an area of the court the opponent does not anticipate or cannot respond to in the requisite time.
Each sport has certain terms that are synonymous with its play. For example:
- Tennis:
- Serve(usually overhand, which is underhand in badminton, the required trajectory of the projectile, being toward the court in tennis, and above it in badminton’s case:down for tennis, up for badminton
- Slice(this manoeuvres the ball so it saves the player the necessity to use energy for ending the point. It is a touch shot, not associated with power, but helps change the rhythm of play mid-point
- Overhead smash: this is usually a point-ending tactic, and is not expected to have a similar response
- Groundstroke (tennis or badminton): This is a shot a player hits from the baseline toward the net or away from, the key distances the shot are measured against being the dimensions of the court, the directions being crosscourt and down-the-line
- Spins: Topspin and underspin, which relate to the movement of the ball vertically and through the court(a slice has underspin, and no topspin); the shot is called flat if the ball is not consciously imparted any spin; almost necessarily, the 2 spins are closely linked to the groundstrokes, and determine the style of play a player chooses, whether he/she prefers to play from the baseline(topspin to lift the ball vertically) or approach the net to intercept and finish shots when there is an opportunity that presents itself
- Of the great adversaries Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer, Nadal is primarily a baseliner,, while Federer mixes solid net play into his playing strategy, my knowledge of the sport allowing me to categorize most players as one or the other, primarily a baseliner or all court player, meaning one who uses net play. I will list 5 from the ATP and 5 from the WTA, for a balanced write-up.
- Roger Federer - All-court
- Rafael Nadal - baseliner
- Novak Djokovic - baseliner
- Pete Sampras - all-court player, with an emphasis on the net
- Andre Agassi - baseliner
- Justine Henin - all court player
- Venus & Serena Williams - baseliner
- Steffi Graf - all-court player
- Monica Seles - baseliner
- Lindsay Davenport - baseliner
Perusal of this list proves that power and touch can have more or less the same effect, touch requiring more application of the player’s range and the ball’s range, vertical or horizontal, hence making for tennis that is easier on the eye.
Squash and tennis have a great deal in common, except it appears that one’s primary opponent in squash is not another human but the wall, so, for the benefit of the player(to keep his/her blood pressure within normal bounds), it should be seen as mandatory to play with another player 😀
