NY Squash Legend: Dr. Quentin Hyder, Pioneering Booster of the Softball Game
Creator of the Hyder Trophy, The Longest Running Softball Tournament in the US

By James Zug
June, 2024

Part One: The Slower Pellet

In December 1968 O. Quentin Hyder hosted a squash tournament at New York Athletic Club.

Bob Lehman reported on the event in the Metropolitan Squash Racquets Association’s 1969-70 Yearbook. This is his entire report: “COLONIALISM LIVES, as English squash tries to invade these shores. Quentin Hyder, dedicated and newly bearded upper echelon B player and Britisher, came up with a provocative idea and possible door-opener for equalizing the games. He initiated the Hyder English Squash Invitation at his NYAC, had a good intercity field. The old school tie came through, with Graham Sharman, a couple of years out of London, emerging triumphant. It was interesting.”

The reason that last line of Lehman’s report resonates was a quirk in the history of the game. Squash was unstandardized in its earliest years. For decades after Harrow School students created the game in the 1850s outside London, there were no official rules about the size of court or type of ball or how to score. All around the world, people played their own idiosyncratic versions, indoors or outside, with slow balls or fast balls or balls with holes in them, in alleys or courtyards or barns. In the 1930s two versions became dominant: hardball in North America and softball in the rest of the world. It was akin to grass and clay court tennis. The British said they invented the game; Americans pointed out that they were the first to standardize the rules. It didn’t matter. The crucial difference was not so much in how bouncy the ball or how you scored points but the official court width—eighteen and a half feet in hardball versus twenty-one for softball. You can always change the ball or a rule but it is hard to move a weight-bearing wall.

In 1968 softball squash officially did not exist in the U.S. There were no softball courts. No one sold softballs in pro shops—they only appeared courtesy of someone’s suitcase. The U.S. Jesters, a philanthropic, social group, had an annual afternoon tournament held one Saturday each year. Otherwise, the British version of squash was entirely, completely unknown. But globalization was afoot. More suitcases were arriving. Squashwomen and men, in the new era of jet travel and global corporations, traveled more. In 1967 a half dozen nations, including the U.S. founded the International Squash Racquets Federation (now the World Squash Federation). Right out of the gate, Stuart Brauns, the U.S. representative to the ISRF and US Squash president, traveled to a dozen countries. Even the holy grail of squash, the Olympic Games, hove into view. A gaggle of American squash players went down to Mexico City for the 1968 Games and represented the U.S. in frontenis, one of five Basque pelota demonstration sports; there was subsequent talk of squash joining the 1976 Montreal Games.

It was interesting. So Hyder decided to have a second iteration. He moved to the tournament away from the busy winter months and into the spring. (At the time, hardly anyone played squash from April to October: when the weather got warm and humid, hardball was a no-go because hardly any courts had air-conditioning. In the heat, the hardball pinballed too fast.) There were so many entrants to the second Hyder in April 1970 that he had to organize a qualifying tournament. A smattering of illustrious New York-based players entered, including the current national champion, Anil Nayar , who had grown up playing softball in India and had won the British Junior Open U19 title. Befitting the new era of globalization, there were also three players from New Zealand, two from South Africa and Canada and one from Australia, Bermuda and England. One of the South Africans, Gavin Lumley, endured a brutal semifinal, topping Bart McGuire, 9-7, 9-5, 6-9, 5-9, 9-5. In the finals, Lumley faced Nayar, who also had struggled in earlier rounds, going to five against Kevan Pickens and then a 10-8 in the fourth escape over Frank Satterthwaite. But in the finals that Sunday afternoon, it was a different story as Lehman related: “The astounding Bombayan brooked no nonsense in his final with Lumley. Granted that Gavin had been really extended in the AM, Anil was in no mood for playing around, had the tall South African bewildered and shaking his head in wonder, dismay and frustration as he went down 2,0 and 2.” Remarkably, Nayar reached the finals again, in 1986, sixteen years after his first appearance. The first winner of the Hyder, Graham Sharman, couldn’t defend his title: he had left the cozy confines of the Heights Casino and decamped to Boston, then Toronto and finally to Santa Fe (Sharman did return in 1972 but lost in the first round).

Hyder was a delightful revolutionary. He was born in England. When he was three weeks old, he sailed with his parents to Bengal where his father was a physician on a tea plantation. They returned when he was four years old and he grew up in Ipswich. He came upon squash for the first time at Wellington College, and at Cambridge University he played squash for Jesus College. In 1960, after getting his medical degree and practicing for a few years, he emigrated to New York. He did a three-year residency in psychiatry at Columbia, playing squash on old courts at the students’ dormitory. In 1966 he became a U.S. citizen. He later got a masters in divinity from New York Theological Seminary. Hyder specialized in marriage and family therapy and was author of several books, including the Christian Handbook of Psychiatry. He became one of the nation’s leading referees and for a long time chaired US Squash’s referee committee.

Another example a British invasion around the Hyder was Jonah Barrington. At the second event, Hyder screened a video of the 1967 men’s British Open finals, a match between Jonah Barrington and Aftab Jawaid. For most observers it was the first time they had seen world-class softball. At the third Hyder, just after the finals, Barrington himself appeared in the flesh. He played an exhibition with Sharif Khan, five games in seventy minutes. “His style is strange,” wrote Lehman, “a stooping stance and a constant stamping on the back foot each time he launches into a slashing smash.” Sharif won the exhibition by one point in the fifth game.

The proverbial butterfly flapping its wings and unleashing a typhoon, the Hyder changed the world of squash. At lunch on Sunday at the second Hyder in 1970, plans were hatched to continue playing softball that spring. A softball men’s league appeared in New York, with three-person squads from the Downtown Athletic Club, Harvard Club, Heights Casino and NYAC (Harvard swept that inaugural year, losing only one individual match in twelve). And an inter-city tournament was held in New York just before Memorial Day Weekend, with five-person teams from Boston, Montreal and Pittsburgh (Montreal won).

At the other end of the global spectrum, the Hyder provided the perfect warmup for the World Team Championships. In 1973 a group of Hyder veterans—Dinny Adams, Jay Nelson, Tom Poor and Frank Satterthwaite—represented the U.S. at the first-ever World Men’s Team Championships, held in South Africa. Subsequently, players aiming to make Team USA entered the Hyder. Players training for the Maccabiah Games (which added squash in 1977) also found the Hyder the ideal preparation for their summer excursion to Israel.

By the mid-1970s, Lehman had to expand his report on the Hyder to a fleet of softball events, writing in his inimitable style. “The coterie of aficionados of the Australian Yellow dot or ‘international’ ball seems to be growing a bit,” he wrote in 1972, “the opinion being that it is a good early conditioner, affords a refreshing change of pace later and for the year-rounders is a slower pellet for the summer’s heat.” Two years later Lehman added another delicious phrase in a report on softball: “Less expert players can get better action out of that ball, which doesn’t need the hard hitting to make it relatively playable. This version is a good ego padder, and the successful chasing and subsequent extended points make it a good pre-season conditioner.”

Part Two: Taste the Imported

Spurred by the Hyder, softball activities accelerated in the 1970s. Harvard Club seemed to usually win the New York softball league and winning begat activity and they started a softball invitational in October. The New York spring league grew to eight clubs in 1974 and added a B-C league with ten clubs and a D league with eight. More than 150 different players played in the 1975 league; the next year there were too many teams and the leagues had to be split in two and playoffs added to determine a winner. In addition, the Met SRA hosted individual skill-level tournaments. And, finally, a women’s league was created in 1976, with Fifth Avenue winning it the inaugural year. In 1980 a total of forty-four teams participated in the summer league; three years later it was up to seventy-six. The canary in the coalmine was singing loudly—softball was here to stay.

New York wasn’t the only place where softball began to make inroads. The Hyder-inspired inter-city tournament began to move around. Both Boston and Philadelphia hosted it. In 1971 Buffalo sponsored a softball tournament. Boston, under Denny Bourke, started a summer league. In 1977 Newport launched what is now The Steamer, a popular summer softball event. By the summer of 1981 there were nine softball tournaments around the country and numerous softball leagues.

The Hyder itself started to expand. In 1972 Quentin created two draws, a Hyder I for professionals and top amateurs (and a tiny prize-money purse); and a Hyder II for regular A players. To fit it all in, he had to borrow courts at the University Club of New York. The best players on the continent came, including players who had grown up playing softball like Sharif, Mo and Gul Khan, as well as Ken Binns. “Domestic English-squash players are like wine,” commented local amateur Dinny Adams after the event. “We’re OK until you taste the imported.” It was Mo v. Sharif in the 1972 final, and it was epic, with Mo winning 10-15, 10-15, 15-7, 15-11, 15-11. The scoreline didn’t really reflect the strange fifth game, when Sharif went up 7-1 and 10-3 before blowing the match. He made errors on eleven of the next twelve points. By 1972 Sharif had clearly eclipsed Mo on the hardball tour, but the 1972 Hyder was a nostalgic moment for Mo, the former British Open champion, one final time for him to reiterate his supremacy.

Quentin had trouble finding funds for the pros prize money, so the next couple of years only amateurs entered, and thereafter, when funds were raised, the draw was often kept small and open to local professionals only. In 1975 Quentin added a 40+ draw; in the mid-eighties, with demand growing, he created even more age-group draws: 30+, 35+, 45+, 50+, 55+. The tournament director put down the clipboard and played in the event each year, except in 1979 when he was severely wounded after a guard dog attacked him while jogging. In 1988 he played down from the 50+ to the 40+ just to fill out a weak draw; it ended badly for him when he pulled a hamstring. Hyder paid for all the trophies, including the permanent silver trophy, but he never took one back home: a half dozen times he lost in the finals of a Hyder draw.

The biggest change came in 1977. In September 1976 Uptown Racquet Club opened with two softball courts (and twelve hardball), the first regulation softball courts in the country. By the spring of 1977 two other new clubs, Broad Street and Park Place, had opened, each with one softball court. The Hyder went from an event centered at 59th Street and always on hardball courts to one that criss-crossed the island like a lost owl in search of a nest. A, B, 40+ and Women were the four draws that year (Quentin lost in the finals of the 40+); all main draw matches were on softball courts, all consolations on hardball. The effect of playing softball on a proper twenty-one-foot court meant that seedings, based on hardball rankings, often went kerflooey. The four top seeds in the men’s A all fell early in 1977.

The Hyder, despite the city-wide travel, was a legendary event. Uptown annually hosted a cocktail party on Saturday night, the only time all the players saw each other over the weekend. Even when Broad Street disappeared in 1982, the Hyder stubbornly stuck to the three softball courts. In 1986 Quentin gave each player a questionnaire to fill out, concerned about find the right mix of hardball and softball rules and customs. “Our unflappable host quietly goes his way,” Bob Lehman wrote, “bending with the punches and the backswings.” In the end, it really didn’t matter what the court or scoring or serving rules, according to Lehman: “Squash is still played with a racquet and ball, and whoever maneuvers himself and these implements more effectively will inevitably wind up the winner.”

With the 1977 move to Uptown, where there were women teaching pros and dozens of women members, came the long-awaited arrival of a women’s draw in the Hyder. It was immediately a noteworthy event. The inaugural draw included famous marathon swimmer Diana Nyad and “her enthusiastic backhand follow-through,” future Women’s Sportsmanship winner Adrienne Brandriss, softball guru Mariann Greenberg and future U.S. Squash Hall of Famer Carol Weymuller (who won the event). Alicia McConnell, growing up in the city, was an early mainstay. She won the Hyder in 1980 and two years later repeated as champion but also entered the men’s open draw (almost beating Ron Beck in a tight tussle). But a four-year gap of women’s draws occurred in the mid-1980s due to “insufficient entries.”

The Hyder led to more softball courts. John Schellenberg, a longtime Philadelphia squash player, fell in love with softball after winning the 35+ at the 1985 Hyder. Schellenberg was a driving force behind the first softball court built in Philadelphia, at Cynwyd Club in 1989. Steve Green won the 45+ at the 1985 Hyder before going to the Macciabiah Games. In a couple of years, he built a softball court at his Manhattan office building on 36th Street and put up the prize money for the men’s main open draw at the National Singles, now named after him. By 1989, Green was hosting Hyder matches at his court.

More and more players entered the Hyder in the 1980s, especially after US Squash launched a National Singles for softball in September 1983. The Hyder soon became a twin of the National Singles on the calendar—one at the beginning of the summer, the other at the end—that anchored the summer softball season. All kinds of people entered the Hyder: teaching pros, college players home for the summer, amateurs falling in love with softball and overseas players who timed a visit to New York.

Many outstanding junior New Yorkers played in their first softball event at the Hyder before going on to win national titles—players like Will Carlin and Richard Chin (the 1996 Hyder winner). At the other end of the spectrum, veteran play was spellbinding and sometimes curious. Jay Nelson gave evidence of his future Hall of Fame career as the best veteran player of all-time when he won the 35+ draw at the 1987 Hyder. In the finals, he faced Peter Stephan, a notorious New York squash figure and former pro at Uptown. They had a history. Two years earlier, Stephan had been up 2-1, 11-6 in the finals of the Met 40+ hardball against Nelson before he dropped eighteen straight points. It was an extraordinary blitz, perhaps unprecedented in the annals of top-level squash in New York. At the Hyder in 1987, Stephan was down 1-0, 14-3 and then gave up: he shook Nelson’s hand and exited the court.

In the mid-1990s the scene in New York evolved dramatically. Some clubs closed; others spent millions converting courts (the price tag for some was over $1 million per court). The Hyder became even more peripatetic. In 2002 for instance, Uptown hosted the event, while early matches were also played at the Harvard Club, Princeton Club and Yale Club. In 2006 the Hyder left Manhattan for the first time and migrated entirely to Brooklyn, with the Heights Casino and Eastern Athletic Club serving as hosts. Later it was held at the Printing House, StreetSquash’s SL Green facility in Harlem and other clubs. Uptown closed in January 2016, ending its forty-year relationship with the Hyder.

In the 2000s, the Hyder went from being the flagship softball event in the country to one of literally thousands of softball tournaments. It remained a central fixture on the New York calendar (in the 2000s the tagline was “The MSRA’s Premier Squash Event”) but keeping it special required work. The amateur draws turned from age-groups to skill levels and more than doubled—some years there were more than a dozen draws and over two hundred entrants. (In 2010 a third of the entrants were women, an all-time high.) And NY Squash (renamed in the 2011) had to balance the Hyder with the Grand Open, a similar event usually staged around the Tournament of Champions in Grand Central Terminal.

The big change was raising the prize-money purse and integrating the open draws into the world tour. This process began in 1989, when the Hyder’s men’s draw was sanctioned by the men’s pro tour; three years later the women’s draw got sanctioning. By the mid-1990s, the Hyder was firmly a part of the pro circuit: Angus Kirkland, who reached world No.19 won it in 1997 and 1999; in between Jonathon Power took the title, a significant steppingstone for the Canadian on the way to his winning the world championship later that year. Throughout the next years, the Hyder winners were a who’s who of the best in the world: Wael El Hindi, Martin Heath, Shelley Kitchen, David Palmer, Graham Ryding, Alistair Walker and Sharon Wee. Sometimes an American burst through, as Team USA giants like Chris Gordon, Natalie Grainger, Latasha Khan and Julian Illingworth grabbed the title. For Illingworth, a 2024 U.S. Squash Hall of Famer, the 2008 victory was special as he topped his former collegiate rival Yasser El Halaby in the final.

Eventually, the Hyder dropped the PSA and returned to its roots. “The tournament is unique as it draws top PSA stars but is under no sanctioning body” Satya Seshadri and Dov Kleiner explained in 2014. “As a result of no ranking points, no pressure, and a fairly decent payout for a couple days, it tends to be a lot of fun—if the player plays in the ‘spirit of the Hyder.’”  That year, the semis of men’s draw featured all New York-based pros. Illingworth topped Ryan Cuskelly in a two-hour 14-12 in the fifth barnburner, while Chris Gordon overcame Zac Alexander; in the finals Gordon topped Illingworth. In 2019, it was another local youngster, Andrew Douglas, who in traditional Hyder Trophy fashion, upset a couple of higher-ranked pros. The Penn sophomore lost to Auguste Dussourd in three tight games in the final.

In the mid-1990s the scene in New York evolved dramatically. Some clubs closed; others spent millions converting courts (the price tag for some was over $1 million per court). The Hyder became even more peripatetic. In 2002 for instance, Uptown hosted the event, while early matches were also played at the Harvard Club, Princeton Club and Yale Club. In 2006 the Hyder left Manhattan for the first time and migrated entirely to Brooklyn, with the Heights Casino and Eastern Athletic Club serving as hosts. Later it was held at the Printing House, StreetSquash’s SL Green facility in Harlem and other clubs. Uptown closed in January 2016, ending its forty-year relationship with the Hyder.

In the 2000s, the Hyder went from being the flagship softball event in the country to one of literally thousands of softball tournaments. It remained a central fixture on the New York calendar (in the 2000s the tagline was “The MSRA’s Premier Squash Event”) but keeping it special required work. The amateur draws turned from age-groups to skill levels and more than doubled—some years there were more than a dozen draws and over two hundred entrants. (In 2010 a third of the entrants were women, an all-time high.) And NY Squash (renamed in the 2011) had to balance the Hyder with the Grand Open, a similar event usually staged around the Tournament of Champions in Grand Central Terminal.

The big change was raising the prize-money purse and integrating the open draws into the world tour. This process began in 1989, when the Hyder’s men’s draw was sanctioned by the men’s pro tour; three years later the women’s draw got sanctioning. By the mid-1990s, the Hyder was firmly a part of the pro circuit: Angus Kirkland, who reached world No.19 won it in 1997 and 1999; in between Jonathon Power took the title, a significant steppingstone for the Canadian on the way to his winning the world championship later that year. Throughout the next years, the Hyder winners were a who’s who of the best in the world: Wael El Hindi, Martin Heath, Shelley Kitchen, David Palmer, Graham Ryding, Alistair Walker and Sharon Wee. Sometimes an American burst through, as Team USA giants like Chris Gordon, Natalie Grainger, Latasha Khan and Julian Illingworth grabbed the title. For Illingworth, a 2024 U.S. Squash Hall of Famer, the 2008 victory was special as he topped his former collegiate rival Yasser El Halaby in the final.

Eventually, the Hyder dropped the PSA and returned to its roots. “The tournament is unique as it draws top PSA stars but is under no sanctioning body” Satya Seshadri and Dov Kleiner explained in 2014. “As a result of no ranking points, no pressure, and a fairly decent payout for a couple days, it tends to be a lot of fun—if the player plays in the ‘spirit of the Hyder.’”  That year, the semis of men’s draw featured all New York-based pros. Illingworth topped Ryan Cuskelly in a two-hour 14-12 in the fifth barnburner, while Chris Gordon overcame Zac Alexander; in the finals Gordon topped Illingworth. In 2019, it was another local youngster, Andrew Douglas, who in traditional Hyder Trophy fashion, upset a couple of higher-ranked pros. The Penn sophomore lost to Auguste Dussourd in three tight games in the final.

In March 2020 when the Covid pandemic emerged, the Hyder was one of the many events postponed and then cancelled. After a two-year absence, the 2022 Hyder returned with a vengeance, with the finals of the open divisions being played on the glass court at Grand Central during the J.P. Morgan Tournament of Champions.

And now the Hyder heads into its fifty-fourth annual edition, the iconic silver trophy still an enduring symbol of squash excellence.

James Zug is the author of the bestselling squash books Squash: A History of the Game (Scribner, 2003) and Run to the Roar: Coaching to Overcome Fear (Penguin, 2010). The first time he played softball in New York was in 1986.