Squash Magazine

by James Zug
Photos by Steve Line/SquashPics.com

Twenty minutes before he went on court for the last match of his professional career, Jonathon Power was, as was his wont, hanging out near the sponsors’ tables. He did this at most tournaments. Power’s affable personality meant he hated the interminable wait before his matches went on and so instead of huddling below the bleachers, headphones covering his ears, he stood in the crowd and talked.

We talked. I asked him if he was thinking about the fact this was the 10th anniversary of his breakthrough win at the 1996 Tournament of Champions (remember that he had won six PSA tournaments beforehand, but all of them minor ones). He gave me a short précis on the win: beating Zarak Jahan Khan, Rod Eyles, Peter Nicol and then Craig Rowland in the finals, 15-9 in the fifth after blowing match points in the fourth. Simon Parke walked up and added the edge to the story. Power had shredded his sneakers in his semis match against Nicol (four games, 13-15, 15-13 in the last two). As Parke walked out of the Heights Casino in Brooklyn to catch a flight back to London that evening, Power asked him if he could borrow his sneakers (Power, unlike Parke, had no sneaker sponsorship at the time). Parke handed over his size nine Hi-Tec shoes, and the following night, his feet pinched by the half-size too-small sneakers—Power gave me his standard “What, no let?” grimace as he recalled the pain—he tip-toed to his first major PSA title.

GETTING DOWN Jonathon Power was the
master of the dropshot on both sides of the court.

Typical JP. In a profession dominated by shorthaired, tunnel-visioned grinders, Power always played the outsider. He was born in Comox, on Vancouver Island off the coast of British Columbia (where Pamela Anderson grew up) and maintained an air of provincial nonchalance. He was the free spirit without a credit card. He was the combustible complainer to referees. He was the partier who based himself in Amsterdam rather than the north of England and then Montreal rather than Toronto. He was the guy in the leather jacket.

His retirement was the same. While his archrival Peter Nicol carefully planned a year-long goodbye to all the major squash cities around the world, Power announced his departure literally overnight. It was so sudden that he had already signed up for the next tournament on the circuit, the PSA Masters in Bermuda, where he was the defending champion (they were forced to do a redraw). When I asked him why he decided to quit, he talked about being tired of all the hassles of being a world-class athlete: the travel, the waiting, the constant hydrating, the eating right, sleeping right, the massages, the injuries (he endured his share: hamstring pulls, foot bruise from an errant golf ball, the bizarre basketball accident with his father that left him with badly-torn ligaments in his ankle and, most severely of all, recurring back spasms). He loved squash—he just loathed what he had to do to get on court. He sounded exactly like a Dead Head leaving the road.

Behind the disestablishment veneer was a very shrewd businessman. He got his act together in the late 90s—a combination of maturity, his coach Mike Way and his wife Sita. He got sponsorship deals: with Dunlop with his own signature racquet; Hi-Tec shoes, but this time in the right size; then his own line of sparkly Wicked-Witch-of-the-East jumps; instructional videos and DVDs; and his own elite camp at Dartmouth, charging $4,000 a kid. He was fiercely competitive on court and fiercely loyal to friends off-court. Once, when we were having dinner in Toronto, he passionately defended a friend who was briefly the subject of faint praise. He grew up to such an extent that he even began dispensing elder-statesman advice to some of his younger friends on the tour about how to manage the boredom off court.

TEAM PLAYER Power captured the
2002 Commonwealth Games gold medal
over Peter Nicol and was swarmed by Shahier
Razik, a longtime Canadian teammate.

His style was also one of deceptive control. He was a shot-maker, to be sure, with great disdain for attritional rallies and a rare capacity for risk, but he was not a manic, desperate shooter. He was a connoisseur. He rarely shot off the serve and almost never dove unless pressed at the end of a game. He totted up dozens of variants of his shots, especially his floating backhand drop and his low, crosscourt flicks. He stood up straight, his back stiff, his large legs and rear backing into the T. When he served, he never bounced the ball and when he stood waiting to receive a serve, he brushed his hair off his face or lightly cupped the bridge of his nose, staring with contemptuous impatience at the server.

He easily bore the moniker “The Best North American Ever,” for he never seemed particularly interested in history and felt disconnected from Canada’s hardball past, but was very keen on being one of the greatest squash players in the world. Ever.

When he retired, he was. He was one of just six men to achieve the three modern pinnacles of pro success (British Open, World Open and the No. 1 ranking). He was No. 1 for 14 months (tied for fourth longest since the computer rankings started in 1983) and holds the record for the longest gap between number one rankings (four and a half years). He captured 37 PSA tour titles (fourth all-time and more than double David Palmer at No. 5). He won the Commonwealth Games gold medal in 2002 and seven Canadian national championships and because of his unexplained last-minute withdrawal from the 1999 Pan-Am Games and his absence in 1995 and 2003, he retired with just one gap in his trophy case.

His career had a number of highlights—reaching the finals of the World Juniors in June 1992; beating Parke the week after his 1996 ToC triumph in the finals of the German Masters (and he didn’t give the sneakers back); and crushing Ahmed Barada in the 1998 World Open quarters in 29 minutes—but his most memorable match was perhaps his five-game loss to Nicol in the 2001 ToC finals, down 2-0 and winning the third and fourth games 15-13. This was the best match of the best rivalry in squash since Jahangir v. Jansher.

There was something of the New Yorker in Power. I asked him about the timing of his retirement and he talked about how on the first of March he had regained the World No. 1 spot on the tour, a goal he had set for himself a year ago. I told him that he was ranked No. 1 in January, that he could have retired then, either in Chicago or in Toronto. But North America’s greatest waited until he got back to New York. He loved New York, the press of humanity, the people. He knew the city’s secrets: How many touring players go out enough to have the decided opinion that the best pizza in New York was at a small joint on a quiet, cobblestone street in Soho?

New York was also the site of so many of his milestones. It was where he first paid notice, by beating Anthony Hill in the first round at the 1993 Tournament of Champions. It was where he won his first big tournament. It was where he won four times (more than any other city).

Immortality is nontransferable, so we are left with our memories and the wonderful fact that at this exact minute or 10 years from now you can cue up, for just 50 cents a pop, more than 50 different matches of his on the web and see for yourself just how great he was.