The Jonah Barrington Column: September 2023

One of the sport’s greatest thinkers and a pioneer for the professional game, Jonah Barrington offers his thoughts on all of squash’s biggest talking points in his monthly column – written exclusively for the PSA World Tour website.

In this month’s column, Jonah reflects on the first Platinum event of the new season – the Paris Squash 2023 – and discusses the role of coaches.

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By Jonah Barrington

So Paris has been and gone. I do hope it is the first of many.

I have always wanted our sport to be everywhere and the iconic French capital is a must after so many years away from the fray.

Sabrina Sobhy’s second win over Hania (El Hammamy) stood out, but the younger sister is a considerable talent and now well able to challenge the best in one-off matches and back-to-back adventures are surely to follow.

The final between Nour El Sherbini and Nouran Gohar was scrappy by their elevated standards and remember that familiarity without a personal edge can neutralise competitiveness and quality.

The men’s game without Mostafa (Asal), whether you prefer it or not, can be almost anodyne at times.

Ali (Farag) and Paul (Coll) produced a match of exceptional quality and it’s good to see the former with his formidable skills so evident and his knee looking good and the latter returning with considerable confidence and calmness to the level I would have expected.

I enjoyed watching the US Open tennis and my current thoughts on players and coaches in our sport came to the forefront of my strange mind as I followed the encounter between Coco Gauff, now a wonderfully mature young Grand Slam champion, and the febrile and classy Caroline Wozniacki.

Coco was struggling and a recent addition to her “team”, Brad Gilbert, was persistently shouting instructions until her father told him to shut up!

Shortly after she followed suit.

Coco then proceeded to do the opposite from the advice from the great guru and then immediately started to take the match away from her inestimable opponent.

I loved that!

Many players really do need coaches, others perhaps not so much!

Certain things do need to be said at times and not hidden away under the carpet.

Like Jamie Maddox I rather enjoying stirring the pot anyway and there is little wrong with a bit of mischief.

The squash pros today seem to have followed those in tennis who fill their boxes with an assortment of witch doctors while I am from a generation rather wary of the medicine men, but fully understand why the support industry has become so substantial – we have invariably made ourselves much more important than we actually are.

The best players have to have an instinctive intelligence once the elite formative phase is nearing completion.

The two illustrious ‘JKs’ got on with it and although under very sad, difficult circumstances, Rahmat (Khan), a good technical player himself, provided a necessary sanctuary for Jahangir (Khan), worked on court with him, and above all managed the rapidly emerging star.

In my opinion Jahangir could have been coached by a parrot and still have become world champion!

Likewise Jansher (Khan) and more recently ‘The Maestro’ (Amr) Shabana who never seemed to be in need of much aid and who managed to still comprehensively outplay the young Mohamed ‘ES’ (ElShorbagy) in at least their initial 10 engagements and on a sick knee.

Then of course there is the nonpareil Ramy Ashour (yes his brother Hesham was often in attendance).

Ramy was probably uncoachable and all he needed really was medical back-up in the vicinity!

Chris Dittmar, perhaps the greatest squash leftie to walk the earth I (certainly for one hour matches, believe me) told me that when in his prime he had no need of a coach and Rod Martin at that time also felt that he fully understood what the game was all about.

I’m just thinking out aloud!

These days there does seem to be a remarkable amount of ‘hedge-hopping’, as I call it. As I said before everybody talks about their ‘team’, apart from Nasrullah (Khan) and Azam (Khan), I would have preferred my current dog and best friend ‘Badger’ to anybody else purporting to be a guru!

But Mohamed ‘ES’ was with me as a young teenager and I was a much privileged mentor rather than a coach.

He rarely almost always hit the ball with more ferocity than any young player I had ever seen.

His biggest problem (weakness, call it what you wish) was, in my opinion, still is, an ability to concentrate, focus, for extended periods before breaking out into a too random celebration of his skills and desperation!

Although he has sought the answer to perfection from David Palmer, Rod Martin, and currently Gregory Gaultier, the coach who has been at base camp in Bristol, Hadrian Stiff, should perhaps be mentioned and thanked more often.

Actually most players do need technical and physical guidance with the mental aspects being ultimately the key strengthening at the highest level.

So I am being really mischievous in inferring that coaching is overrated.

Malcolm Willstrop, coach extraordinaire, would even from the grave, provide the complete riposte to that!  

Enough said.