The squash court is among the most intimate spaces in sport. Two players, a shared space of roughly six metres by nine, a ball travelling at speeds that permit almost no delay between thought and action, and a shared responsibility — legally and morally — for one another’s safety. In this context, the rules of etiquette are not decorative. They are structural. Without them, the game degenerates into a succession of disputed points, crowded swings, and the particular atmosphere of mutual suspicion that settles over a court when neither player trusts the other to call fairly. The conventions exist because the game requires them. Understanding why makes following them considerably less like obedience and considerably more like sense.

The Let and the Stroke: Accuracy and Honesty

The let and the stroke are the two instruments by which squash adjudicates the most common source of dispute: one player’s right to strike the ball being impeded by the other player’s position on the court. A let replays the point. A stroke awards it. The distinction rests on whether the player requesting the decision was in a position to make a winning shot — and whether their path to the ball was genuinely obstructed, or merely inconvenient. Serious players develop a precise vocabulary for this distinction. They know the difference between asking for a let because they were blocked and asking for one because they hit the ball into their opponent’s body and found the resulting difficulty inconvenient. Only the first is legitimate. The culture of a good squash club is one in which players are honest about the difference, even when the point is close, even when they are behind in the game, and even when no referee is present to verify the claim. This is not an ideal held casually. It is the minimum expectation of a serious player.

Ghosting the T — returning promptly to the centre of the court after each shot — is both good tactics and good manners. A player who occupies the T for longer than the exchange of positions demands is not simply gaining a positional advantage: they are creating the conditions for interference. The conventions around clearing — moving out of your opponent’s direct line to the ball, even when it requires moving in a direction that is tactically disadvantageous to you — exist for the same reason. In a game played in such proximity, the assumption of good faith is not sentimental. It is the precondition of play.

The Post-Match Handshake and Club Membership

The post-match handshake is one of the oldest conventions in racket sports, and squash is no exception. It occurs at the net in tennis, at the front wall in squash, and in both cases communicates the same thing: the contest is over, what passed in the heat of competition remains there, and the relationship between the two players continues on the footing of mutual respect that preceded the match. A squash player who refuses to shake hands — or who does so perfunctorily, with a studied indifference that communicates contempt rather than civility — announces something definitive about their character. The announcement is rarely flattering. In a club environment, where the same players encounter one another weekly across years and sometimes decades, character accumulates in visible ways. The player who competes fiercely and concedes gracefully is invariably the one you will find, after the match, at the table in the corner with the good tea, talking about the game with the unhurried pleasure of someone who has genuinely enjoyed themselves.

Club membership in squash carries with it a set of expectations that are largely unwritten and entirely real. You are expected to book courts and to be on them when you said you would be. You are expected to keep score accurately, to call lets fairly, and to know the rules well enough to apply them correctly without needing to consult a third party after every point. You are expected to leave the court in the condition in which you found it: ball collected, court door closed, gallery steps uncluttered. These are small things. Their consistent observation is the difference between a club that functions as a community — where the glass court at eight on a Tuesday evening is a place people actively want to be — and one that merely rents hours of floor time to strangers. The culture of squash, at its best, is the culture of people who have made an implicit agreement to conduct themselves with some standard of care. Nick & Tin was founded by two such people, on a court governed by precisely these conventions, and we remain committed to them.