{"id":176632237,"date":"2008-06-15T18:14:23","date_gmt":"2008-06-15T18:14:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/squashword.wpengine.com\/?p=176632237"},"modified":"2015-05-15T18:15:13","modified_gmt":"2015-05-15T18:15:13","slug":"sports-illustrated-covers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.squashword.com\/?p=176632237","title":{"rendered":"Sports Illustrated Covers"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Speaking of magazine covers featuring squash,\u00a0Sports Illustrated<\/em>\u00a0has been on my mind recently. It is the fiftieth anniversary of the first (and probably, the way things are going, last) time a squash player was featured on the cover of the world\u2019s most famous sports magazine.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The cover\u00a0<\/a>of the 10 February 1958\u00a0Sports Illustrated<\/em>\u00a0issue featured Henri Salaun and Diehl Mateer. Henri was in the foreground and Diehl leaned, in a classical pose, against the side wall. Dan Weiner took the shot in an old court at the University Club in New York. Weiner had scheduled a late afternoon photo session. Diehl later told me that he had been rushing from work and arrived just in time to change into his whites and so did not have time to shave. (You can\u2019t notice.) Diehl was wearing shorts. In a few years, once his singles career wound down, he wore only cricket flannel trousers on the squash court, in what became a signature look.<\/p>\n

The big storm about the cover was Henri\u2019s pose. He held out his Bancroft racquet, the emblem on the throat almost thrust at the camera. Henri later told me that it was innocent, that his racquet just happened to be there when Weiner was shooting. But for many in the squash world, the joy of having squash players on the cover of\u00a0SI<\/em>\u00a0was instantly tainted by the fact that Henri was hawking a racquet\u2014he worked as a salesman for a sporting goods firm (he started his own company in 1969,\u00a0Henri Salaun Sports,\u00a0<\/a>a firm that he still runs today at age eighty-two.) Interestingly, Diehl played with the same racquet, but his left hand (consciously?) covered the emblem on the throat.<\/p>\n

Perhaps Diehl and Henri, as cover boys, might merit a short obituary in\u00a0SI\u00a0<\/em>when they die. Joe Alston, the only badminton player to grace a\u00a0SI\u00a0<\/em>cover (in March 1955) got a mention in the \u201cFor the Record\u201d page when he passed away this spring.<\/p>\n

As for the other racquet sports, there is a\u00a0SI\u00a0<\/em>shutout. A racquetballer has never appeared on the cover, nor champions of paddle tennis, racquets, court tennis or ping pong. But tennis, yes. Seventy-eight times.<\/p>\n

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 15th, 2008 at 8:05 am and is filed under\u00a0General<\/a>. You can follow any responses to this entry through the\u00a0RSS 2.0<\/a>\u00a0feed. You can\u00a0leave a response<\/a>, or\u00a0trackback<\/a>\u00a0from your own site.<\/small><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

One Response to \u201cSports Illustrated Covers\u201d<\/h3>\n
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  1. Matthew<\/cite>\u00a0Says:
    \n    June 30th, 2008 at 2:35 pm<\/a><\/small>By following the link to the SI archive, you can see the contents of this issue, which features a spread of color photos of Salaun and Mateer going at it. Despite all the differences between 1950s hardball and the game we play today, you can still sense the common thread from these pictures.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Speaking of magazine covers featuring squash,\u00a0Sports Illustrated\u00a0has been on my mind recently. It is the fiftieth anniversary of the first (and probably, the way things are going, last) time a squash player was featured on the cover of the world\u2019s most famous sports magazine.\u00a0 The cover\u00a0of the 10 February 1958\u00a0Sports Illustrated\u00a0issue featured Henri Salaun and … Continue reading Sports Illustrated Covers<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-176632237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.squashword.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176632237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.squashword.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.squashword.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.squashword.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.squashword.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=176632237"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.squashword.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176632237\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.squashword.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=176632237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.squashword.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=176632237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.squashword.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=176632237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}