SQUASH RACQUETS

Press, Volume LXIX, Issue 20988, 17 October 1933, Page 5

SQUASH RACQUETS

ORK.'IN OF STKKNTOCS (iAMK In a rectangular walled space at the Royal Melbourne Tennis Club the annual squash racquet championship of Australia is being played (states the Melbourne "Argus" of October si. Among the entrants are men and women from Victoria and from other states. These contestants have not casually entered for a gentle competition, which will enable them to pass their afternoons quietly. They have been in strict training. Their eyes must be keen, their nerves sure and alert. They will need stamina. With their slender, long-handled racquets they will have to hit a small, hollow, india-rubber ball, which rebounds with amazing speed from the walls against which they will play. In anticipating its bounce and in using the walls for tactical manoeuvres marked skill and judgment, arc essential. Unlike Royal tennis, squash racquets has no famous historical associations. It appears to trace its origin to the pupils of Harrow 'England,! about the middle of last century. Using blank walls which happened to run at right angles to one another, the boys played the game with a soft, hollow ball, the sound of which striking the wall caused them to name Ihe game squash. Little interest, was taken in squash racquets in Great Britain until after the war. but in 1924. when the game had been standardised, international competition began with the visit of an English team to the United States. The Prince of Wales, who has competed for two amateur championships, has been a strong influence in promoting interest in the game.

In an address to the Wanganui Rotary Club Mr T. W. Dnwr.cs said it was a mnsi unfortunate tiling thai a book written by Sir William Pember Reeves was being taken as a standard work, for the book contained statements regarding Maori art which were most misleading and absolutely untrue. "The book states,"' said Mr Dowries, "that Maori art never reached higher than the monstrous, and that the attempts at portraying the human face and figure resulted only in the grotesque and the obscene." Certainly, Maori art was grotesque, continued Mr Dowries. The Maori was a master cjf the grotesque, and there was no other, ancient or modern, to equal him; but he had also a fine sense of beauty, and everything he used was decorated, even to his canoe baler, for which a European would use a jam tin.