Show Notes

• Biggest question people ask about squash
• Growing up in a squash family
• Transition from top junior player to pro
• What it takes to be in the top 10 in the world
• The value of coaching
• What David enjoys most about coaching at Cornell
• Coaching the world’s top ranked players
• How a club player can improve his/her game
• Why squash isn’t in the Olympics, and whether it ever will be
• Advice for young players

Connect With David Palmer

Website: http://www.squashcampsatcornell.com/
Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/dpsquash_cornell

Summary

David Palmer is a retired professional squash player, and is currently the Head Squash Coach at Cornell University. He is a two-time World Champion, a four-time British Open Champion, and a World Doubles Champion. David discusses what it takes to be a top 10 squash player, and what he enjoys about transitioning from a player to a coach.

Full Transcript

 Brian  

Welcome to another episode of LifeExcellence with Brian Bartes. Join me as I talk with amazing athletes, entrepreneurs, authors, entertainers, and others who have achieved excellence in their chosen field so you can learn their tools, techniques and strategies for improving performance and achieving greater success. David Palmer is a retired professional squash player and is currently the head coach at Cornell University. David’s playing achievements are too numerous to mention all of them, but he is a two time world champion, a four time British Open champion, and a world doubles champion. David has also won more Commonwealth game medals than any other squash player and he captained the Australian National team six times. David is a sought after coach and has worked with many top players, including five players who currently rank in the top 15 in the world. In 2007, David was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia, an honor established by Queen Elizabeth II to recognize Australian citizens for outstanding achievement and service. Welcome, Dave, and thanks for joining us on LifeExcellence.

David  

Thanks, Brian. Happy to be here.

Brian  

Welcome to another episode of LifeExcellence with Brian Bartes. Join me as I talk with amazing athletes, entrepreneurs, authors, entertainers, and others who have achieved excellence in their chosen field so you can learn their tools, techniques and strategies for improving performance and achieving greater success. David Palmer is a retired professional squash player and is currently the head coach at Cornell University. David’s playing achievements are too numerous to mention all of them, but he is a two time world champion, a four time British Open champion, and a world doubles champion. David has also won more Commonwealth game medals than any other squash player and he captained the Australian National team six times. David is a sought after coach and has worked with many top players, including five players who currently rank in the top 15 in the world. In 2007, David was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia, an honor established by Queen Elizabeth II to recognize Australian citizens for outstanding achievement and service. Welcome, Dave, and thanks for joining us on LifeExcellence.

David  

Thanks, Brian. Happy to be here.

Brian  

Dave, let’s start out with a very basic question. It’s the one I get asked about squash more than any other question. Just what is squash?

David  

I thought you’re going to throw the Olympic question at me to start with. (Brian:  That comes later.) Obviously, I think in America, the easiest way we explain it is, it is similar as racquetball but much better. Similar size court, similar racquet and ball, slight differences with the rules, but obviously racquetball is probably – everyone in America knows what racquetball is. Slowly but surely squash is getting bigger and bigger and gaining more popularity but we still get asked sometimes what squash is or we walk into a place and we got squash on our shirts and people are a little confused. But I feel like it’s getting bigger over here. Obviously [on the] east coast it’s getting bigger. Probably racquetball is the most similar game we could compare ourselves to.

Brian  

I love that it’s growing in popularity and it’s a great sport for a variety of reasons. I read an article a while ago in Forbes and it listed the ten healthiest sports and squash was number one. It really surprised me. I know it’s a great sport, great physical sport, but it surprised me that they would say that it’s the number one healthiest sport. What makes squash not only fun and competitive, but also so healthy?

David  

I think it’s that there’s no weather impact. It’s indoors, so you can play it all year round. So that’s one good thing I love about it. The courts are all indoor, except for a few fun outdoor courts. But I think again, there’s so many aspects of the training. As a coach, endurance is a big part of squash, you’ve got to be very fit. Some of the matches go for 90 minutes or over, some of the top PSA matches [do]. The endurance is very important. You’ve got to be very fast; dynamic type of sport speed is important. Change your direction is really important; control. Then on top of that, you’ve got the racquet and the bal,l and technique and tactics come into it, trying to control the ball. And on top of that, like all sports, there’s a huge mental aspect as well; you’re in a pretty small space, right next to your opponent. Where [if] you look at tennis, you’re on the opposite sides of the net. In squash, you’re bumping into the guy – you feel him breathing, you hear him. It’s a little bit like foxes in a ring type of thing moving around each other. So there are so many aspects of it. When you’re having a full on match – and I think the biggest thing is, in racquetball, the ball is much bouncier, and it comes back to you. So a lot of the rallies are just two guys or two girls standing at the back of the racquetball court and no matter where the ball, it will always come back to you. Where squash, the ball is colder, it’s deader, it doesn’t bounce as much so there’s a lot more front-back movement involved. When you’re running from the front to the back continuously, that’s where your heart rate goes up. The higher heart rate, the more calories and I think that’s where they get to that calculation that you burn more calories in an hour of squash than any other sport.

Brian  

Well, it’s definitely a lot of fun, and it’s certainly a good workout too. We talked about the growing popularity—lack of popularity but growing – in the US. Dave, you were born in Australia where squash is far more popular than it is here. How did you first get interested in playing squash?

David  

Like most Australians, it boomed, squash really boomed back in the late 70s and 80s. Every suburb in Australia probably had a squash court. So [there] was plenty of access and my parents, like most squash players, normally a family member gets you involved, and both my parents were good squash players. In Australia you’re encouraged to play sports in school. So Australia we were outdoors a lot, we were playing all different sports. But over time squash became my favorite. Unfortunately, in recent times, the squash in Australia has died off a little bit. I think it actually is growing more here in America than it is in Australia at the moment. And a different type of dynamic as well, you see a lot of the international coaches from Australia and England and different countries, South Africa, all over here in America coaching. And the reason is, is that the game is growing over here, you can make a pretty good income from being a coach in certain areas. You’ve got different types of coaching as well, you’ve got coaching at private country clubs, private clubs. I’ve been to the one in Detroit quite a few times, the DAC, you have clubs like that. And then you’ve got some public courts, you’ve got public clubs, you’ve got some families that have private coaches, you’ve got high schools now that have lots of high school teams, or high school games, really growing, the teams are getting bigger. So you’ve got some squash coaches that are in the high school. Then you’ve got the college college squash at the moment, which is really growing strength. So lots of different options to coach different levels. Unfortunately, in Australia, our level has dropped off. I think this is the first time we haven’t had a player ranked in the top 70 or 80 in the world. So as far as Australia, it’s dropped off. But we’re really excited, it’s fun to be over here in America, while the game sort of is still new in a lot of places and sort of at the grassroots level, growing.

Brian  

I think squash in the US is popular on the East Coast, where you are now obviously, but the Midwest and the West Coast – I guess you know better than than I do – I’m not sure outside the East Coast. Hopefully it’s expanding.

David  

There are certain pockets where it’s getting bigger, obviously in California, San Francisco, in the Bay area, there are lots of clubs there. That’s actually some of the top juniors – with college, we’re following all the juniors and with our recruiting – a lot of the top juniors are coming from the West Coast. So there are lots of good programs over in California, San Francisco. There have been a couple of big clubs in Houston, Texas starting to grow as well now, so that you’re seeing a lot more juniors come out of that. There are a couple of big junior tournaments being held down there as well. Then you’ve got pockets of courts, like in Detroit and Cleveland and cities like that. But we definitely have lots of lots of room to grow. Obviously, it’s [in] heavily populated [areas:] Boston, New York, Philadelphia, down to Washington, DC. Definitely lots of areas. Before here I was coaching down in Florida, and there are not many squash courts down in Florida. There’s definitely room for growth down there. And like you said, the Midwest has plenty of untapped places. It’d be great to see the game continue to grow. I know at the college level, we’re looking to add more teams and try to get some of these bigger universities and big football and basketball programs to look at adding maybe a squash program as well.

Brian  

What’s happened in Australia? What is squash being replaced by?

David  

I think, just unfortunately, I think it boomed back in the 80s where, like I said, every suburb had big clubs – 10, 12 courts – didn’t really have to do anything, it just was popular. You open the doors and the courts would be reserved solidly through the daytime and nighttime. I think they didn’t do enough development in the schools. We had lots of great players, but sometimes that can be a kiss of death when you’re producing good players all the time. You think it’s going to continue forever. If you’re not getting that grassroots level; and I don’t think they did enough development to keep the game popular in the schools. You’ve got to keep having a new generation of juniors coming in and I think other sports came in. You’ve got lots of sports in Australia and I think squash sort of died away a little bit and then the real estate in Australia really took off and boomed and you had these huge squash facilities in prime locations. So when the popularity died off, the owners struggled, so they sold the properties and they were turned into apartments or knocked down and other things were brought up. We’ve probably lost over 50% of the squash courts in Australia over recent times. So there’s always going to be something new. If you’re not doing the beginner level [with] the young kids – getting them in, getting them liking it – there are ten other sports or 20 other sports that will get their interest. But I’m still a little bit involved with Squash Australia, I’ve been helping some of the committees and on the selection panels. I know they’re trying to regroup it and they just held a PSA event last week and there’s a bigger PSA event in New Zealand this week. So they’re trying to rebuild it. It’s tough when you lose squash courts, but what we’ll see, hopefully we can see, it’s a different generation. Back then it was Australia, England, Pakistan [who] had the two best players of all time in the men’s game. Now it’s countries…like Egypt is really strong; you’ve got some South American countries producing some great players as well. England, still reasonably strong. So it’s nice to see some different countries becoming involved. India has a lot of good players as well. And America, on the women’s side, is very strong. I think the top three or four women players are all in the top 16 in the world. So it’s definitely paying off on that side. I think it’ll be interesting to see, in the next ten years. Egypt is by far the biggest producer of top players and I think America is slowly catching them in juniors and that will transfer over to PSA as well. 

Brian  

Well, hopefully that continues. That’ll obviously help, too, with the popularity of that sport if we can see players competing on the world stage. That will definitely create more models and get kids more interested. And as they’re exposed to it, maybe they tend to at least take that on and some of them will take off with it and others will move on. Let’s talk more about when you were growing up. So you said your parents played. You grew up playing; I think you turn pro around the age of 19. Tell us about the evolution of your game – from recognizing that you were a pretty good squash player to then becoming a really good squash player and how that happened and then eventually turning pro and competing internationally. What did you need to do to get to the next level and eventually turn pro?

David  

It was something like, again, growing up in Australia I was always encouraged to play sports. Squash was one of my favorites. But I played soccer and cricket and did cross country and I did lots of sports. So that’s the way the country is and I remember going away from school as much as I can [sic], if I could get on a sporting team and I could get out of going to school that was always a fun thing. It was probably around the age of 14 that I realized that squash was my favorite. That’s the one I wanted to do the most. So I sort of cut back the other sports and put all my efforts into squash with training and playing tournaments. My parents were very good to me. I realize, being a father now, what they did to me and then what they gave me – the opportunity. Drove me everywhere and gave me the opportunity to be as good as I wanted to be without putting too much pressure on me. At the time I probably didn’t see it, I definitely didn’t see it. Afterwards, in my success I saw it, now being a father I really see what they did to me. So I was really fortunate and grateful [for] the experience they gave me. I think as a junior – I was a good junior, but I wasn’t the best Junior and every age I sort of got better so by the time I was 17, I was probably number two in Australia. And then by the time I was 19 in the 90s I got to number one. I went overseas when I was 18. My coach, I think it was a bit of a test. He was a – Joe Shore was his name – he was a bit of a mentor of the game and guru of the game and was a bit of left field with some of his ideas. He took me over to South America, there was a big tour over there and I joined PSA. I was like 400 in the world – I was lost on the list. I was able to get into about eight to ten tournaments over there so I ended up spending about five months away. I think that that decision to do that transformed my career. It’s scares me now to think about it, that I chose to do that, that I went away. I tried to tell my daughters now, like there were no [cell] phones back then, there was no internet really. I had to use a payphone to call mom and dad, write letters. It scares me to think about how I did that, or how I navigated it all back then, without any of that technology that we have today but it definitely showed me how much I wanted it. And it was definitely hard to be away but it made me hungry to succeed. I had pretty good success, I came back about 80 in the world and then I continued after that. Then I made the big decision when I was 20 to move over to Europe. Australia was strong with lots of players but all the tournaments were in Europe and Asia and in the Middle East. Australia was too far to travel back and forth. So it was pretty common back in the day that the Australian players would set up a base in Europe and it was a good time. Fortunately I found a good base over in Belgium and that’s where I started to work with my coach, longtime coach, Shaun Moxham. I played leagues in Europe where they pay you to play for a team and that was really a fun experience playing matches and getting paid. And it was a way – I was funding everything myself – I could sort of survive. When I started with Shaun I was about 30 in the world and he was also a former PSA player and a very good coach and I started to work with him. We had quick success and up into the top ten. And then from there, it just kept building and building. He was my long term coach, pretty much all the way through to the end of my career. But the early days were tough. I was lucky, my wife who was with me then, Melinda, she came over with me and traveled around with me. We lived in Europe nine, ten months of the year and having her over there as well was a good balance for me, kept me on the straight and narrow. It all fell into place but yeah, hard work. That’s roughly how I remember it.

Brian  

You mentioned PSA a couple times and then you mentioned the European league that you played in. Can you, just for our audience, explain what the PSA is and how that fit into what you were doing professionally?

David  

The PSA is the Professional Squash Association. It’s a little bit like the ATP or the NBA. The same type thing as a tennis tour where you join and then you play tournaments and you get a ranking. The better you do, the more ranking points you get, the more tournaments you play, you move up the rankings. Obviously, the goal was to get as high as I could, top ten – top 20 originally, then top ten – then with the big goal of eventually, one day being number one. And it’s like tennis where you get the different level prize money; the better you do on the tournaments, the more money you get. So the European leagues were a bit of a different thing that was separate from PSA. It was really popular in my generation that a lot of the clubs in Europe would have professional teams and they would have different players and some teams were four players in a team, some were three, some leagues you had to have a certain number of international players and a certain number of local players. The clubs in Europe were really fun as well, back then there was sort of like a squash club with a bar in it. So the bar was right next to the squash courts, and then you get a big crowd to come in. It was a whole night of squash and entertainment. So for me, it was a perfect way to incorporate getting good match practice for the pro tournaments leading into them.

Brian  

You really had quite a remarkable career. You were a pro, I think, 16 years. I believe that I read you were in the top ten in PSA for ten years, which is pretty impressive. How did people describe your game? Or maybe how would you describe your game when you are at the pinnacle of your profession? What did people say about David Palmer when they were writing about him or when they were talking about you when you were at the pinnacle of your career?

David  

I think the TV commentators…my nickname on the tour – and all the players get a nickname at some point – mine was “The Marine.” Definitely at one point I feel like I was probably the fittest guy on the tour with a combination of being mentally very strong, good under pressure, but I was physically very strong. I’m six-two. I was quick around the court, I moved well. I feel my game developed over the years with the help of Shaun. Probably my old original coach had the theory of if I was the fittest player and mentally the strongest player, whatever it took – if it took me two hours to win a match – then I would win the match. But we realized after a while, that probably got me to top 30 in the world, but through a six month period I got stuck at 30 in the world where I wasn’t moving up. That’s when I moved to Shaun and Shaun was more of a technical coach. We combined both keeping me the fittest player – mentally the strongest – and then Shaun made changes to my game technically and tactically to make me a more attacking player. Then the whole combination worked really well and I was very consistent over the years. That’s why I was able to stay around the top rankings for such a long period of time. So I was tall, I volleyed a lot, I hit the ball hard, I moved well. Again, a lot of my big wins were very close matches where I came through right at the bitter end to win matches, or save match points and win some big titles. But my mental strength was also…I was very fortunate that the coaches that I worked with worked well together in different areas. Even to this day, now coaching myself, I still think back to a lot of the stuff that I learned and it’s still very relevant in today’s coaching. In today’s game, obviously every sport is getting more modern and changes with technology, but the core – what I went through when I came through – I think it’s still very relevant today. 

Brian  

I know in tennis, many of the top players, especially the top men’s players, are tall; they’re six-two, six-three and where that helps them is with the service, though it’s different in tennis than it is in squash. Are many of the top players in squash also tall like you? I mean, I would think wingspan helps. It’s hard to pass somebody who’s six-two. Is that a characteristic of many other top players or you just happen to be tall?

David  

It’s a little bit of a mix. Definitely I follow tennis pretty closely so I know being tall in tennis there’s a huge advantage with the serve; I wouldn’t say as much in squash. You’ve got a good mix, like I was six-two, but there were guys in my era that were six-four, six-five. There were also guys that were five-three, five-four. So I think at the end of the day in squash you if you’re tall, then like you said, you use your wingspan. You use your height across the tee, you volley a lot. The smaller guys were probably faster a little bit, maybe in and out of the front corners a little quicker. They were a bit more dynamic around the court. Even today there’s a good mix in the top ten of different sizes and heights with the players. It’s not as dominant as in tennis or other sports like basketball – you obviously have to be tall in basketball. Again, if you’re tall there are definitely advantages if you can use them. Obviously, there are disadvantages because if you’re tall…a lot of the squash movement is lunging in and out of the corners; you’ve got to get lower. So if you’re really tall, getting low is harder. And if you’re on the shorter side, getting in and out of the corners is probably easier but it’s more difficult for you to stand on the tee and volley and cut balls off because you don’t have the length or the width to get across to the balls. It’s not as dominant as in some sports, I would say that’s for sure.

Brian  

Dave, one of the things we strive for on the show is to identify what it takes to be the absolute best in one’s chosen profession. You can say that you very definitively were the absolute best a couple of different times in the sport of squash. You talked about this a little bit, you talked about height, you talked about the mental game as well as fitness, but what did you have to do to become world champion as opposed to say being stuck at 30 or being in the top 50 or the top 100? What’s the distinction between the top, not even to become a world champion, but to get into the top five versus being at 30?

David  

Again, I think it’s the day to day things. It’s again, like any sport, it’s the work ethic that you have every time…I’ve known…now with the coaching front, I’ve coached juniors – low level juniors, good juniors now in the college game, I’ve coached pro players – so the top guys they’re doing…again, squash is not obviously…the financial reward is not there compared to a lot of other sports. So it’s one thing we get asked a little bit is why are we playing squash because the money’s not there compared to like tennis or golf or other mainstream sports in America. But the passion to be able to call yourself a professional athlete and have a world ranking, that means a lot to a lot of the players around the world. So the money, yes, it’s important, but having the chance to be top ten or number one or win a major title definitely outweighs that. But I think it’s the day in, day out work ethic that you bring; making the sacrifices. Again, I look at this for four main areas in squash; there’s a physical part, there’s a technique part, there’s the tactical part and the mental part. And I feel all four of those areas have to be very, very, very strong; continually got to work on. I think golf is a good example; the technique in golf is really important. Squash the technique is very important as well. Squash is very fast, but it’s all muscle memory. The ball comes so fast, there’s no time – and I mentioned golf – golf is the complete opposite. And I like golf, I play golf a lot. I think it’s a very similar swing in some ways. That’s why people often think tennis and squash is similar, but actually tennis is really bad for squash and probably vice versa. Tennis coaches don’t like squash, squash don’t like to tennis coaches, because it’s a totally different swing, totally different grip. Tennis, it’s a big swing lots of rotation, trying to hit the ball hard. Squash is more smooth and rhythm. I like to compare it to golf, much more similar. So golf, you see the top players, they’re very smooth with their swing and they hit it 350 yards down down the fairway and squash is very similar. So under pressure, your technique has to stand up, your decision making has to stand up, the split second decisions with your heart rate at the max. It’s nice, some of the pro tournaments they play the heart rate, so you see that as well. They’re like 190, 200 beats and you know they’re maxing out but they’ve got to make on the spot decisions on how to move to the ball, shot selections, how to deal with their opponent. That’s what makes it great. And again, it’s those things that you have to work on on a day to day basis. And like anything, it’s finding the one or two percent advantages over your career. I think, at the end of the day, the mental side is still the biggest side of it. Having your technique, having everything stand up under pressure, when it gets to that critical moment in the match where it’s nine or ten or there’s one match at one point left. That’s when the champion and all the hard work pays off for and that’s what separates in squash. You talked about the top 30, you’ve got the top ten, then there’s a break between ten and 15, then there’s a break between 15 and 30. I know in some sports, maybe in tennis, it’s not so uncommon for number 30 in the world to beat a top five from time to time, but that rarely happens in squash. Normally the top ten guys are not losing to the guys outside the top 12 in the world. So I don’t know why that is but that’s the reality of it.

Brian  

Interesting. So you’re at Cornell now where you’re the head coach of squash. You’ve mentioned your coach and your coach helped take you to the next level. Share a little more about the value of coaching you received during your career. How is that helpful to you?

David  

Again, I was very fortunate to have two big coaches in my career and I think back to what my parents did for me as well. Being a father of two daughters who were both athletic and both into sports – I got one squash player, my youngest daughter is playing squash so that’s fun, and my older daughter is a volleyball player and I love that as much as well. I love to see her play and being successful at that. But I think again, I look back to it. There’s a big thing with squash…I think in any sport that kids don’t get burnt out [from] a lot of pressure from parents wanting more than their kids and pushing. I often get asked…my oldest daughter never liked squash, she never wanted to play and I never forced her to play and people are like, you’re crazy, make her play squash, for sure she’s going to be good. But she never wanted to play, so I didn’t make her play. She found volleyball as her love and I think that’s great. My youngest daughter, she liked it a little bit and then she went away from it. She played other sports and then she’s come back to it now and she’s fallen in love with it herself – which I think is great – without me having to force her to come to squash. It’s a complete opposite; I’ve had lots of long days and I’ve been, some days, 12 hour days coaching at the school here and I’m ready to go home and she wants to come in and play and I think that’s great. So I think the lessons I’ve learned, I tried to instill them in the team here, the college game is really…it’s a great time to be involved in college sports. I’ve been at Cornell now six years, I coach the men’s and the women’s program. That’s also a different dynamic coaching both teams, there are not many, there are a few coaches that do that. Mostly, there’s a separate men’s coach for the men’s team and a separate head coach for the women’s, but I’m doing both so that’s different dynamic, as you can imagine. So I’m managing. I have about 15, 16 girls on my women’s team, and I’ve got about 16 to 18 boys on the boy’s team so we’re managing about 30 to 33 athletes, which is a lot. I’ve got a full time assistant coach, Mark Burke, and he’s a big help to me. It’s a great time to be involved in college squash and I feel like we’re just getting started with it. I really think we can build up, we have about 35 or 40 varsity programs and about another 25-30 club teams across America. The Ivy [League] schools [are] very strong in the college squash and then outside of that you’ve got Trinity. It is very strong, over the years it has been one of the biggest programs in squash. The men’s program at Trinity has the record in all college sports for 13 seasons undefeated. So that’s a pretty unique thing to have. Paul Assaiante at Trinity, and then you’ve got new programs. UVA has a very strong program now, Drexel in Philadelphia has a strong program. So you start to get some other areas, schools getting involved as well. So I’m enjoying it. I’ve been here six years and I see myself here long term.

Brian  

What do you enjoy most about coaching college players?

David  

I find the squash piece is easy in some ways; the on the court, coaching them, working on the technique, working on the game, is the easier part. The team dynamic, getting the team to work together is the hardest piece. We do recruiting. I’ve got a mix of some international players and mostly American players, but you are bringing together 15-16 people that don’t know each other, or sometimes were rivals in juniors and now they’re on the same team together. Getting them to work squash, it is a fun dynamic. It’s an individual sport, but it’s a team sport in college. So I find that interesting; you’re an individual [yet] in a team match nine players play. We just played the Ivy scrimmages on the weekend, yesterday we played Colombia. So nine men play and nine women play and you’ve got to win five out of the nine matches to get the overall team win. But every match is still an individual match so it’s one person; one of our players playing against one of their players. So you’ve got the dynamic that it is an individual sport, but your outcome affects the team results. That’s a big part of our team culture that we’re trying to build and continue to build over time. I enjoy that part of it a lot. The recruiting is difficult, it’s very competitive; spend a lot of hours reviewing videos and film. Obviously, during the COVID period was very tough when kids couldn’t come. We had to resort to recruiting cycles where we couldn’t meet the kids in person really, because of the COVID. But thank God we’re through that now and we’re back at tournaments and we’re back meeting kids, we’ve got kids coming for visits. So I enjoy that piece of it, trying to piece together teams that are willing to work hard, especially at the Ivy League schools where education is still very important. Education here is always number one and we hope squash and the team is number two and then all the other aspects of college, the social life and the fun, is further down the list. So we’re looking, the recruiting is very important. There’s no crystal ball so [we are] trying to recruit kids that want to continue over the four years, want to continue to work hard to improve their game, are open to changing, open to working together, being a good team leader. There are so many different aspects and I think that’s what I enjoy the most about it. It’s probably why I’ve got more gray hair now as well but at the end of the day, it’s still very enjoyable and we’re working hard. We’re trying to move up, we’re competitive. We finished ninth last season overall so we want to try to push up into the top eight this year. Again, I still have that competitive edge from my playing days in my coaching. I don’t like to lose, I want to play hard, I want to play fair, I want my kids to have the same attitude and having that difference, knowing that the hard work…and that’s what we’re trying to…it’s a long season, we start in August, and we train in the pre-season a little bit. Then we go into season and we try to maximize our training hours, which are restricted at an Ivy League school; we only get them for a certain amount of hours each day. Outside of that they’ve got to navigate studies and school and everything. There are so many different aspects that I really like about it, not just the match days or not just the wins, it’s the day in day out seeing them, getting to know them. So I really enjoy it.

Brian  

You’re on a college campus, which is a great environment too. So you’re coaching the Cornell men’s team, the Cornell women’s team and you’ve also had the opportunity to work with some pretty amazing currently top ranked players. How did those relationships evolve and what does that look like from a coaching or mentoring standpoint? Are you doing that concurrently with college coaching? What does that look like?

David  

It started before I was at Cornell. I was seven years down in Florida and I moved just at the end of my career. I got an offer from a couple of families, believe it or not from Orlando, to move down and coach their kids and we were looking for a bit of a change. We were in Boston and the idea of going south to the warm weather was appealing. My daughters were very young at that moment and we thought why not, not knowing if it would be a one year thing and it ended up to be seven years. I worked with different families down there coaching their kids with the idea of getting them good enough to be recruited at a top program. So that was the first. I was on the other side of the fence back then I was a coach working with the player and then when I got down there, I got asked by a few PSA players could I come and train. Long story short, I set up my own academy down there, as well because I had plenty…I coached the kids after school. I had all day free to do what I wanted to so I started to work with a few squash pros. They came down and based themselves down there and I would work with them through the day. I’d coach them in the mornings early, I coached them early afternoons and then would I go over and coach the five or six kids that I had in the junior program. So it grew quickly. From there, I had some good success, I took some players quickly up into the top ten and they won lots of titles. Then I worked with one of the top Egyptian players, Mohamed El Shorbagy, he was formerly number one and he was going through a bit of a bad period; he dropped back a little bit and we started to work together. So when I moved to Cornell, I wanted to try to keep that aspect, maybe not as many players but I sort of still had ambitions to coach a little bit in the PSA store. So I continued up here in Ithaca as well in Cornell. It’s the same same type of thing. Obviously, we have lots of work to do, but the team trains late in the afternoon up here so I would bring up players…I thought it would be fun for the team to have some world class players around too – while they’re in finishing training and the team’s walking in – to see a world number one on the court training. You would only hope that it’s inspirational for them as well. During the COVID period, it backed off a little bit, obviously, everything shut down with traveling and there were a few changes as well, like couldn’t travel to all the tournaments because mostly my main job was at Cornell and our squash season is a winter sport so we’re really busy from November till March but I couldn’t travel to the tournaments. Before COVID, all the tournaments were streamed and I could call the player between games. So it was a pretty unique situation, I could be sitting home, it could be two o’clock in the morning, and I’m watching a match somewhere on the other side of the world. Then in between games, they come off with their headphones on and I’d be on the phone to them and I’d be talking to them like I would be if I was there in person. Lots of coaches were doing that and that was good for a couple of years and then the professional game made a rule that they decided they didn’t want players doing that. That’s a different topic, but they stopped doing that so that made it a little bit difficult to coach as many players as I wanted to because I couldn’t travel to the all the tournaments that I probably needed to. I’ve gotten busier again, I’m still actively coaching three or four players at the moment that are all in the top 12, top 15, in the world. They come up here in between tournaments different times of the year to work with me, sometimes it’s for a week, sometimes it’s three weeks, it just depends on on their schedule. But I still enjoy the program, I still watch it a lot. Like I said, my daughter is into it, she sits down and watches it with me. So I like that part of it. I still enjoy watching the program, learning from looking at the top players, studying them. I feel like no matter who you were or what level you are, you can always still learn things and I’m looking for that edge, anything I can use to give the edge to my team here at Cornell. So I still enjoy that, the PSA and coaching the pro players.

Brian  

So if a pro player is going to you…let’s say they travel to Ithaca and they’re going to be there for a week, what does that look like? What are you doing specifically with them during those mornings? How long is your time with them? What are you working on? What are you talking about? What are you doing through the week?

David  

Sure. Normally, the morning session we’d start early like eight thirty nine and probably go for 90 minutes. I try to base it more on a technique, tactical type of session. Then the afternoon session would be early afternoons because Cornell, normally the teams come in and train from about four o’clock, so I have to be ready for the team. The afternoon session, it might be like one thirty to three and that might be more match play, it might be more fitness in the afternoon. It’s nice when I have a couple plays here because I can pair them up together as well. It depends a little bit…every player is different and I treat everybody individually. Certain players, like in any sport, need different things we’re working on. I try to design…I know when they’re coming, I’ll put it on paper, okay, we’ve gone for seven days, what are their next tournaments? It depends a little bit how they’ve been doing in their previous tournaments, what’s been working, what’s not been working. How can I help them prepare for the next one; so it could be on technique, it could be on movement, it could be a combination of a couple things. Or it could be that they’re right in the groove, they’re right in the zone and I’ve just got to keep them keep them healthy and keep them on track. So it is a little bit individual, very individual, depending on where they are and where they are in the season as well. Sometimes – the squash season starts in September and goes all the way through May and then the summer is off a little bit as well – I’m trying to get them to peak. You still have big tournaments, like the World Championships, you’ve still got the British Open, you’ve got some big tournaments in America. Just had the US Open three or four weeks ago in Philadelphia at the brand new…there’s a really beautiful new National Center in Philadelphia that was built, a lot of big tournaments there now. But the pro players, it just depends a little bit where I feel I can help them the most, and five to seven days is not such a long period of time. Ideally two to three weeks is where you can really make changes. I know sometimes in the schedule, they can only come for five days or six days, so we make it work depending what they really need at the moment.

Brian  

So we’ve talked about playing at the professional level playing at the college level. Let’s reduce the skill level even further and talk about the club level. If you were coaching somebody who, let’s say, knows the basics of the game as a decent player, maybe a 4.0, 4.5, what kinds of things should that player do to improve in order to take his or her game to the next level? And by the way, I’m asking for a friend.

David  

Okay. Again, after watching them, not complicating it, I find, a 4.0 to a 5.0, if there is a step up in that to go from a 4.0 to a 5.0, there has to be some pretty good improvements. I think people over-complicate it, especially these days, there are so many coaching videos, so many things that you can watch, which are good, but can be too contradicting or too confusing. So I would just try to pick one or two things to work on. Where am I winning points and where am I losing points? A lot of it’s still basic stuff, like a lot of points are won still on the serve and the return of serve, so at a club level, they would be the first two things I’d be looking at. Movement is important depending how old they are. That’s a nice thing about squash, that you can have different ages, and you can have a good 60 year old guy play and be competitive with someone in their mid 30s. Because the older generation style is going to play smarter, play a little slower, the younger person’s going to try to play fast and just hit the ball hard. So I think it’s great that you can have different ages, different levels, play against each other. But I think just in general, trying to keep it very, very simple and picking one or two things to focus on and not thinking ten things. Squash is very fast, it’s muscle memory. I think the basic technique has to be looked at because it’s hard to improve. If you’re doing the same mistake over and over again; if you’re not holding the grip correctly, or your start of your swing is wrong, if you’re doing that continuously, it’s hard, no matter how hard you try if you don’t make changes, then it’s going to be the same every time, the ball will come in the middle of the court or it will hit the tin. So for me, it’s trying to try to keep it pretty basic and simple, which I suppose probably sounds a little boring. But that’s the way it is. The top squash players at all levels, all ages, make it look easy and smooth and move around the court like they’re not even really running, and have the control. I think power is overrated in squash. I think that’s something people – especially coming from other sports maybe like tennis or racquetball – they think the power is more. But I feel power in squash at the right moments is effective, but it’s the undoing of a lot of bad habits and errors as well.

Brian  

That’s great feedback, great insight. I appreciate that. You mentioned right at the beginning the Olympics question and of course, I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask it. In spite of the worldwide popularity, I read that there are about 20 million people who play squash in almost every country of the world, not only is squash not an Olympic sport, but I just read that it was passed over for the 2024 Paris Olympics by break dancing, sport climbing, skateboarding and surfing. Why hasn’t squash found its way into the Olympics and do you think it ever will, Dave?

David  

It’s a frustrating thing. It’s definitely not from the lack of effort I have seen. I’ve been involved in the game now for 25-30 years and it’s definitely not from a lack of effort. I know the professional PSA, the World Squash Federation, have tried multiple times to gain entry into the Olympics and going through the IOC and giving presentations and a lot of the players over time are very generous with their efforts to go and do exhibitions and talks. So it’s definitely not from a lack of effort from the players or any of the organizations. Again, I really don’t know, there are lots of different factors. I don’t know why it wasn’t added years ago when sports like badminton and table tennis were put into the Olympics. That one I don’t know. You would think, back when they were added, that squash would have been added as well. I know tennis got added a lot later than those sports as well. I’ve been fortunate to compete at the Commonwealth Games a number of times and Commonwealth Games is probably as close to the Olympics format as we got. I suppose it was frustrating to see how great the Commonwealth Games was and to know that the Olympics would be another higher level and we never were able to achieve it. We seem to tick all the boxes, like he said, number of players, number of countries. We’re not really a complicated sport to put up a squash court, the glass court…we’re very fortunate; I’ve played world opens in front of the pyramids in Egypt, where they put up a glass court in front of, 100 feet from, the Pyramids. There’s a tournament in Grand Central Station every year run by John Nimick, who’s one of our best promoters; what an amazing setting. So we’ve been very fortunate to have these glass courts that really can go up anywhere; in a shopping mall, outdoors, indoors. But yeah, it’s frustrating. I think in recent times I suppose they’re looking to get the younger generation more involved. I think they probably think that squash is a little old and tired and boring and the young kids are maybe more interested in break dancing or rock climbing. I think, from a professional point of view, I think we’ve been frustrated that they added tennis. Early on, tennis, a lot of the top players never played the Olympics, because it was always clashing with the US Open and they saw the Grand Slam bigger than the Olympics. In recent times, it’s got better but I think that was a frustration. In the Rio Olympics, they added golf and none of the top golf players went to play it. So that’s frustrating – and I love golf – but I think if you add a sport in the Olympics, you’ve got to have your best players play it and compete for it. I know we tried hard for Paris and it didn’t get in. I think the 2028 Olympics is in LA, I believe, and we’re hoping that the popularity of squash…I think it’s been added possibly to a shortlist of sporting consideration for the 2028 one. But I won’t lie, what we’re hearing is pickleball is the front runner as well. That’s a sports that’s definitely taken off. So I think our game, again, I think we don’t get enough TV coverage. Not to go on too much, but I think sports have to be live, like where we have this really good streaming site through the PSA and you can watch the tournaments and it looks great. But at the end of the day, it’s got to be on live TV. It’s got to be on the ESPN and the sport channels or the NBCs and it’s got to be on Saturday, Sunday afternoons. It hurts me to switch the TV on Sunday afternoon, and I see pickleball and I see some crazy spikeball and I see cornhole on ESPN. So I think that’s one thing where we’re lacking, for some reason we never get on live TV, on the big sports channels. And again, that’s what people are watching and unfortunately, we haven’t been able to. I think that’s a combination of why the Olympics looks at squash and maybe think that we’re a little old and a little boring. They’re looking for new, younger things to try to get the younger generation excited for the Olympics. I’m not as involved as I used to be with it but I definitely would love to see it in there one day. It definitely deserves it that’s for sure.

Brian  

I really hope it happens. You mentioned young players and you’ve brought that up, again, you talked about Australia moving away from squash and really needing to introduce it with younger players. What advice do you have for younger players who are interested in taking up the sport, either as just a way to have fun and stay healthy and fit, or maybe even to compete at the college level or national or even international level?

David  

I think it’s a great healthy sport. It’s only problem is that we still don’t have enough court access to the general public. Something we still need is to add a lot more public courts, a lot more access, but there’s definitely a lot more schools getting involved – high schools, middle schools – that are adding squash courts and programs and that’s really great. Once you’re at a club, it is inexpensive, rackets are not that expensive, you don’t need a lot of equipment, I think that’s a positive. You can play it year round, there are no weather impacts, not like an outdoor sport. I think it’s a great game and I feel it’s a life game. Once you get into squash, you don’t have to be involved with squash for the rest of your life, you might go away from it. It’s popular in the colleges, I’ve already seen it in my six or seven years that players play it in juniors, they get recruited to college, they play four years of college squash, then they get a great job. Then they work in one of the big cities and they might stop playing, then all of a sudden, 5-10 years [later] they get back involved again with it and they’re back playing again. You’ve got the hardball doubles, which is a bit of a smaller tour that’s on a bigger court but that’s an option as well, when squash becomes a little bit too hard to play the singles part of it. But I think kids have just got to give it a try. I think once you get into it, you understand it. It’s really a fun, fun game. And it’s still a good numbers game, like I still think if you’re looking to get your kids an opportunity to play in college or high school, we’re definitely so low numbers compared to the mainstream sports in America, compared to the kids that are playing soccer, basketball, volleyball, tennis, golf; you’re talking like hundreds of thousands of kids, and with squash, we’re nowhere near that amount. So with the recruiting in the college there is still a very good chance. You don’t need to be number one or top five in your age, there’s kids ranked 25, 30, 40 in the country, and they’re still getting recruited to really great programs. So it’s a good numbers game at the moment for college and it’s a safe, fairly inexpensive, healthy sport.

Brian  

It’s a great sport. It’s a lot of fun. It’s certainly a great workout, and the people who play it are pretty good people too. Dave, thanks so much for being on the show today. It’s been great getting to know you. And I love that we’re exposing our audience to the great sport of squash.

David  

Happy to talk, happy to spread…it’s nice to think about my career. I don’t bring it up much. So it’s nice to hear it every now and then, to put a smile on my face. I think it’s great that [it is] new to people, it can only help grow our sport. Happy to be here, anytime.

Brian  

Awesome. Thanks again, and to our listeners and viewers, thanks for tuning into LifeExcellence. Please support the show by subscribing, sharing it with others, posting about today’s show with squash pro David Palmer, and leaving a rating and review. You can also learn more about me at BrianBartes.com. Until next time, dream big dreams and make each day your masterpiece.