Donald Strachan

Donald Strachan, a Germantown Cricket Club tennis prodigy, captained the 1931 Princeton squash team and lost in the inaugural national intercollegiate singles in five games in the finals (that spring he also lost in the finals of the national intercollegiate tennis doubles in five sets). Strachan won two national singles titles, in 1935 and 1939; he also reached the finals four other times, squandering five match points when he lost 15-14 in the fifth in 1931. A brilliant, intense left-waller, he took the 1946 national doubles (with Charley Brinton). Boasting one of the best backhands in squash history, Strachan captured many tournaments, but his defining statistics are about longevity: he played in the final of a major invitational singles event in four different decades and reached the finals of the national singles nineteen years apart—both records still unmatched today. “He was a total pressure player, perhaps the most aggressive the game has known in going for the throat on every stroke, ” Jack Barnaby wrote. “He played as if he had never heard that conservative phrase, ‘keep the ball in play.’”