At Grey High School it was expected that all 500 boys were to participate in a spring and autumn sport. I loved all sports and participated in rugby, cricket, tennis, athletics, field hockey and was famous for my diving expertise! While I was reasonably talented in sporting activities, I was never good enough to make any first or second-level teams, except in field hocke,y where I played for the school’s second team. In field hockey there were only a first and a second team so, no, being in the second team was not a breakthrough moment in the history of the Melmed Sports Hall of Fame.
One day, my brother Colin taught me to play squash and I absolutely loved it. Initially, the only person I played with was Colin and I became very good at it. When Colin returned to UCT for his next semester of university and I had no one with whom to play squash with I enticed my friends by offering to teach them to play. I soon had a cadre of buddies to play squash with.
As time went on my friends improved to the point that games with them became more competitive, except against one friend, Allan, who never really got a good grip on the game. He often asked to play with me and since he was a good friend, I did not want to turn him down. Playing against him was frustrating because our games were not challenging at all until I devised a way to make it so. I played against him holding the racket in my left hand. When the score in a game got close, I switched to playing with my right hand. Making it hard for Allan to beat me was the only way I could get him to improve. With time, he did improve.
During 12th grade, I happened to see a notice at school that there was to be the first-ever squash tournament at Grey. I looked at the names of students who had put their names on the list to compete and they were all school boarders. I was not.
Grey school boarders had this mystique of toughness about them that was intimidating. Maybe it was their country upbringing, the Afrikaans heritage of some of them, or the fact that they lived in an all-boys boarding house. As I looked through the names of the boarders who had put their names down to compete, every one of them was bigger than me and all more athletically talented than me. I put my name down to compete in the tournament anyway. I’m quite sure that when these boys saw that Melmed had entered the competition, there was a good deal of sniggering and negative comments. I was an unknown name in the world of Grey High School sports. The competition was a straight knockout tournament and even though I had no idea how good these boys were, I was confident that I wouldn’t survive the first round.
I told my squash-playing friends but none of them entered the tournament. I didn’t prepare or practice for the tournament which was still a few weeks away but continued to play a couple of times a week with my friends.
The tournament didn’t garner any attention or speculation at school so when I showed up for my first round game there were no spectators, no referee. Just the two of us who were competing. My opponent was one of the boarders and he was a boy who was a good athlete but hadn’t really distinguished himself in any sport.
We warmed up by hitting the ball off the front wall and I gauged him to be a competent squash player who knew the intricacies of the game. I was nervous and this gave me some added energy. The score was pretty close until I got the measure of his style and ability. He hit the ball really hard but I had better placement of where the ball went than he did so I won the match 3-0. My opponent was obviously shocked that I had beaten him but I felt really invigorated to have beaten a boarder. I would now be playing in the quarterfinals.
My quarterfinal opponent was indeed a boy who had done well in school sports. My heart sank when I saw his name listed as my opponent so when I arrived at the squash courts to play him I was even more nervous than for my first round match. I warmed up with him in a way that I hoped would intimidate him. I smacked that ball so hard each time I hit it that the sound of the ball hitting the front wall echoed through the court.
This was a much closer match but I confounded him especially with my serves which I placed as close as I could to the right back corner of the court. I was very happy to win the first game 9-7 and by the end of that game I felt much more relaxed. Even though I lost the next game 8-10, I won the next two games, resulting in a 3-1 victory. Wow! I was feeling really good about my ability. I was going to show these boarders that day, students could be good at sports too.
Now my semifinal opponent was another boarder. This one was a first-team player in several school sports and I knew he would be hard to beat. I was indeed awed to see how hard he hit the ball during our warm-up.
His serve was excellent and hard to return and I struggled but kept hitting the ball so that it paralleled the side wall as close as I could get it. I won the first set 9-6 though it was a lot closer than the score suggested. In the next 3 games the score was incredibly close and the lead changed several times. He won the second set, I won the third and he won the fourth. In the deciding game I set my mind to winning but I kept the ball away from him, making him run from one corner of the court to the next. This strategy worked and I beat him quite easily. Final set score 3-2. Of my 3 opponents, he was most shocked to lose. Maybe he was a little embarrassed to lose to a lowly athlete such as me. However, I was the superior squash player who was moving to the tournament final.
My opponent in the final was another boarder, Bill McAdam, probably the preeminent sportsman in the whole school. He played virtually every sport with distinction and was the cricket first team captain. I didn’t know it at the time but he would become one of South Africa’s best cricket players. I had one advantage over him. I was born on October 2nd and he was born the day after me. So, being Bill being younger than me…..
He was in my class at school and was a friendly boy who showed no bravado with anybody and he maintained this as he and I warmed up before our match. Seeing him play squash for the first time, I could see that he was really good but I was going to give him a run for his money.
He won the first game 9-5 and of all the games I had lost in the preceding games, I was more thoroughly beaten than in any of those games. I had few answers to his smash shots against the front wall and his drop shots to the front corners, giving me no chance. He won the next two games quite easily to become the first Grey squash champion. While I felt that I had not done well, he complimented me by saying that I had given him a tougher time than any of his opponents. When I attended the University of Cape Town, I played competitive squash for the university’s 3rd league team and while I won most of my matches, my opponents I lost to were not nearly as good as Bill McAdam.
At the end of the Grey High School academic year, the school’s annual Year Book was published. I was surprised to see an article in the Yearbook about the squash tournament. While Bill was lauded for being the school’s squash champion, the article heaped praise on me, stating how surprising and pleasing it was to see a squash player who was not a boarder succeeding in reaching the school championship round.
The article was kind enough not to say how thoroughly I had been walloped by the great Bill McAdam!