A punctured ball at Harrow "squashed" rackets into squash
Squash traps two or four players in a four-walled room with a hollow rubber ball they must keep alive off the front wall. Around 1830 Harrow boys found that a punctured rackets ball—squashing on impact—created a fiercer, more varied game.
Players alternate hitting so the opponent cannot make a legal return. The sport grew from nineteenth-century prison rackets in London, then leapt through English public schools. Early Harrow courts hugged pipes and ledges; dimensions stayed chaotic until clubs proliferated. North America’s first court opened in 1884 at a Concord, New Hampshire prep school (St. Paul’s); Philadelphia’s 1904 national association became the earliest of its kind worldwide. The Titanic even offered a first-class court on G-Deck in 1912 for eight pence an hour. Britain's Squash Rackets Association—now England Squash—formed in 1928 after a 1923 Royal Automobile Club rules meeting.
International singles rackets may measure at most 686 mm long and 215 mm wide, with up to 500 cm² of string bed and a 255 g weight cap—most frames sit between 90 and 150 g at roughly 25–30 lb tension. Balls are 39.5–40.5 mm across and 23–25 g, two rubber halves glued into a hollow sphere. Competition standard is the double-yellow-dot ball introduced in 2000; orange-dot balls serve high altitude, while Dunlop's Intro-to-Pro ladder scales bounce for ability. Non-marking shoes and polycarbonate eye protection are widely required, especially for juniors and doubles.
After the serve from a box, each legal shot must strike the front face between the metal board (the tin) and the upper out-of-court line, optionally clipping side or rear walls on the way. Dominating the T—the court's central cross—positions a player to retrieve; "rail" drives up the side wall reset the rally. Expert exchanges can exceed thirty shots, so aerobic and anaerobic fitness decide attrition wars. Hardball doubles courts stretch 7.62 by 13.72 m with at least 7.32 m of ceiling—larger than international singles rooms to absorb a livelier ball and four bodies.
Graphite frames displaced English-ash rackets in the 1980s as Cambridge factories closed and production shifted to East Asia, while hardball's North American niche yielded to the international code that now dominates clubs worldwide.
Source: Squash (sport)
