Walker retires from the PSA World tour.
Chris Walker, three times a World Champion, a former England No.1 and England Captain, and still one of the fittest men on the competitive squash court, is to retire from the international softball circuit as he approaches his 37th birthday.
After nearlyMe? Retire? 18 years on the circuit the left-handed, close-cropped Essex boy says: “I still feel like I can stay with the younger professionals in individual matches, but with the sheer demand of training and back to back tournament matches week after week my body is telling me it’s about time I should think about doing something else!”
He has discovered hardball doubles and plays the doubles circuit in partnership with Canadian David Kay, and increasingly he is moving towards coaching and player preparation.
“Dave and I reached fourth seeds on the hardball tour three years back but it’s been a bit fragmented due to by my activities on the PSA (Professional Squash Association) Tour, so we are hoping now to start making a real impact on what is an exciting competitive area of the North American game,” he says.
“I am now coaching some of the younger generation in the U.S. as I look for opportunities to develop that aspect both in America and here in Britain, where I think I can offer and input my own experiences for players who want to focus on the international professional scene. I want to put something back into a game that I love; a game that has given me so much pleasure.”
Walker was in at the very beginning of what many consider to be the best period of English men’s squash. A good group of Essex youngsters gathered at Ardleigh Hall, the Essex club owned and run by his parents in the late 1970’s. Del Harris was another star who emerged from that group. They and a host of others, including Tony Hands, Mark Allen, Robin Godden, Lee Drew, David Taylor and Graham Drysdale, came up through Ardleigh Hall first under the tutelage of Stuart Hands, then with influence from the likes of Ahmed Safwat and Hiddy Jahan.
They were a forming element of the great years of the Ardleigh Hall American Express National Squash League team that also pulled in the talent of Peter Marshall, Jason Nicolle, Mathew Oxley, Mark Cairns and John Ransome. It was a young, successful, and almost entirely blonde line-up that competed against and defeated the more gnarled formations of other clubs.
Not too surprising then that the squad that won the Men’s World Team Championship for England for the first time, at Cairo in 1995, was led by Harris and captained by Walker.
This was Walker’s first fine competitive period. He went to the US Open Final late in 94, to the Mahindra Challenge Final in 95, beating Rodney Eyles in an epic semi-final, and won the Apawamis Open in New York at the start of 96. Eyles got him back in the World Open that year, winning their semi-final 15-14 in the fifth game. A second World Team championship came to Walker and England in 97 when he captained his side to victory in Malaysia clinching the winning rubber in the final against Canada. In 98 Walker added his third World Crown by way of the World Doubles Championship in Hong Kong with partner Mark Cairns where they overcame one of England’s greatest rivals, Australia, in the final. Walker was England Captain for over seven years, has collected more than 70 caps (the third highest count ever recorded) and helped win 10 European Team Championships for his country. He won the individual European Championship three times and took Bronze medals in the Commonwealth Games for Doubles in both Kuala Lumpur and Manchester.
Walker and Tony Hands launched the British Squash Professionals Association (BSPA) in 1992 and were the first players to ever put on a World ranking PSA event with a Perspex court in the UK. The BSPA is now responsible for managing professional squash events across the whole of the UK, has raised over £50,000 for Leukemia research and Walker is still on the board of directors today.
Walker always had a desire to be involved at every level of the game throughout his career and served on the PSA board for three years as vice president. In the run up to the Manchester Commonwealth Games he was also involved at National level on the board of the UK Competitors Association, which represents the competitors across the whole spectrum of sports under the Lottery Program, and the board of the UK Sports Institute, chaired by Sir Rodney Walker (no relation) and including Sir Steven Redgrave, Steve Cram MBE, Frank Dick OBE and Sir Robert May.
After a six-month trip around the world, a period that might be seen as semi-retirement, Walker returned to the PSA Tour with renewed vigour in 2001, finding new resolve and moving his base to the Squash Courts at Dolphin Square in London, and the discovery there of Yoga stretching.
He was the first player to reach the final of the British Open having played through the qualifying rounds, went on to defeat defending champion David Evans, Ong Beng Hee and John White, each over five games, before coming within one game of winning the final; leading David Palmer 2-0 before eventually going down in another 5 set match.
“That would have been a win to retire on,” he recalls. “But I just didn’t have anything left in the tank for that last period. It’s definitely one tournament I’ll never forget.”
Arguably, his finest competitive performance, though, was earlier that year when, playing second string for England against a Scotland side generally expected to win the European Team Title with a squad including for the first time Peter Nicol, John White and Martin Heath; he survived a massive battering from White over most of three games and then fought his way back to a stunning all-court victory over five games to edge a final place for his team.
Walker acknowledges, “I have had so much support through my career that to name everybody would take all week, but I would like to extend a special thank you to the major influences and they know who they are. Frank Barrett, Ahmad Safwat, Jonah Barrington MBE, Dave Clarke, Simon Harris, Neil Harvey and of course Mum, Dad and Neil.”
When asked about the secret of his
longevity on the circuit, Walker added, “The last three years of my career
have definitely been the most precious. One of the biggest single influences on
my state of mind has been simple – it’s just about HERE and NOW. There’s a
certain ex-squash player/living legend in Wales called Adrian Davies who said to
me on many occasions after he retired, ‘Willy, stay in the game as long as you
can boy oh!’ All I can say to that now Wizard, if you are listening is, ‘I
tried!’.
May 18th 2004
more stats and interview with Chris at http://www.squashtalk.com/profiles/cwalkerstats.htm