NEW YORK -- Vicky Botwright is recalling the most insane week of her life. A professional squash player who is ranked 10th in the world, Botwright gamboled into the national headlines of England, where she lives, after she announced plans to wear a sport bikini to play at the 2001 British Open, the most prestigious tournament in the country. The league would have none of it. Botwright was ordered to wear something more modest and she agreed, though not before releasing a batch of photos of herself in the offending outfit.
"I've never been so popular in my entire life," Botwright says. "I was in seven of England's newspapers, with a lot of ridiculous headlines, like 'Hot Bot!' "
Thierry Lincou, right, whups David Palmer at the Bear Stearns Tournament of Champions in Grand Central Station.
(Cary Conover For The Washington Post)
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It was, you'll have to admit, a pretty good story: Fuddy-duddy sport bans skimpy attire. Does it get any better?
Actually, it does. The beautiful part of this mini-scandal was that it was a carefully planned public relations drama. It was conceived by Andrew Shelley, executive director of the Women's International Squash Players Association, and the guy cast as the Victorian killjoy in this tale. He'd asked for a volunteer among the female pros to play thong martyr, and Botwright, after some persuading, agreed.
"No squash player would ever play in a thong," Shelley chuckled during a transatlantic phone call last week. "That just wouldn't be comfortable."
Yes, even in England, where the game was born, winning media attention for squash takes guile and ample buttocks. In the United States, even that isn't likely to work. Squash here has about as high a profile as curling, and, to complicate matters, it's largely seen as a lunchtime workout for University Club elitists. It's rarely on television. Even the name is weird.
For fans, this obscurity is a little maddening. They tend to think creatively, and evangelically.
Which explains the large, brightly lit rectangular box, about 32 feet long and 21 feet wide, that stood last week in Grand Central Station. The Bear Stearns Tournament of Champions brought a couple dozen professionals on the men's and women's tours -- Botwright included -- all of them sparring in a court with glass walls, under the chandeliers of what's called Vanderbilt Hall, just a few yards from the 42nd Street entrance. Seating was set up on three sides, room for nearly 500 spectators, with some tickets selling for $110 a night. But the view from the front wall, which is tinted like spy glass, was free. Thousands of gawkers streamed past the court, eating pizza or sipping coffee or cell phoning friends to say things like, "Alex, you are not going to believe what I am looking at right now. You have got to come here immediately."
Squash started at an English prep school in the 19th century and is named, according to lore, for the ball, which is soft and squishy. The rules are simple: Each shot has to hit the front wall on the fly, and if it bounces twice or lands outside the red in-out lines, you lose the point. When the players get in each other's way, which happens pretty frequently, a "let" is called and the point is repeated.
The man to beat at this year's Tournament of Champions was Thierry Lincou, the world's top-ranked men's squash player. Lincou has bristly black hair and a knowing smile, and he plays Puff Daddy on his iPod to psych himself up before matches. His origins sound scripted by a Hollywood hack. The son of a French father and a Chinese mother, he hails from Reunion Island, which is about 400 miles east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. The place didn't have a squash court until Lincou's father built one for a kids' rec center. The specs were a little off -- it was about eight inches short -- but it was about 100 yards from Lincou's house. By the age of 12, he could whup anyone on the island, including his brother, four years his senior.
"He cried the first time I beat him," Lincou said, toweling off after winning his semifinal match. "After that, he was my first supporter."
Lincou, 28, moved to France when he was 18, where he studied and trained, and by last year he was the country's first champion. He's known in the squash world for agility, Zenlike focus and feathery drop shots, which seem to die of natural causes before an opponent can retrieve them. In France, of course, few people know his name.
"We just don't have any squash culture in my country," he says. "It's a young sport there."
Nobody in this tournament, it turns out, feels famous. Certainly not Vanessa Atkinson of Holland, who won the world championship in December.
