Blogalot

One rainy afternoon at Wellington, the kind that soaks every plan before it begins. Outdoor games were off the list, and I was sulking at home when Dad looked up from his newspaper and said,
“Come along. Let’s play squash.”

Squash? The word itself sounded cramped. A small room, walls for opponents, a gallery so close it felt like people were breathing down your neck. I hesitated, clutching my badminton racquet as if it were a lucky charm.

The first time I stepped into that glass box, I felt exposed. Every thud of the ball echoed like a drumbeat announcing my clumsy swings. The racquet sliced through air more often than the ball. My serves? Disasters. My pride? Bruised.

But Dad didn’t laugh.
“Eyes on the ball,” he said. “Forget everything else.”

He made me drop to the floor for pushups, squats, stretches, what felt like punishment then, I now know was preparation. My forearms toughened, my backhand grew sharper, and slowly, my timing began to whisper back to the ball.

Yet, I kept losing. Every Single Game!

Dad’s smirk after each rally was both infuriating and magnetic. He wasn’t just faster, he was thinking faster. I was reacting, he was predicting. That’s when he said something that changed everything.
“Squash isn’t power. It’s deception. It’s chess at lightning speed.”

I began to see the court differently, angles, traps, feints. I learned to make my opponent believe the ball was going one way and send it another. I started playing not just in the court but around it, using speed as weight, movement as a mind game.

Four months later, I’m still learning, and still losing, but only sometimes now. But the sound of the ball ricocheting off the wall now feels like music. The court no longer feels small. It feels like an arena.

And every rally with Dad?
A lesson, sometimes in sport, sometimes in life.