JONATHON POWER: POWER & THE GLORY
Jonathon Power has no one to play squash with. The former World No.1 yearns for the intensely competitive play he used to thrive on during his days as a professional. Since he retired from the sport in 2006, he has practised with the same opponent at his club, week in week out. “You know the sad guy you see at the squash club who only ever plays his buddy?” he explains. “That’s me. I’m relegated to that.”
It’s a million miles from those heady days in the late 1990s and early 2000’s when Jonathon – or the Magician, as he was known – was winning major titles and destroying rivals with his incredible wristwork and intense mental game. “I just can’t get that nowadays in practice. In fact I can’t get that anywhere in Canada.”
In North America, Jonathon was an exception within his sport. The only World No.1 ever from any nation across the Americas, he has had a huge impact on squash. His energies are now focused on a new National Squash Academy he’s developing inside an old aircraft hangar in Toronto, the city he now lives in with his wife and daughter. Together with business partners, including former doubles champion Gary Waite and coach Jamie Nicholls, Jonathon has leased the old military facility from the government with a view to opening a 10-court training hub, mainly for juniors, by late summer this year.
“Squash in North America is different from squash elsewhere in the world in that it’s a closed-door, private club sort of sport,” he explains. “You have to be a member of a club. My focus has been trying to break down those barriers and create a centre that is accessible for kids. Most of this is philanthropic. It’s a labour of love to get kids playing more. If you’re into squash for the money, you’re in the wrong sport.”
He certainly has a large local pool from which to draw talent. Jonathon says Toronto is “the biggest city in North America for squash”, and that there are close to 100,000 players across the metropolis. “Being a northern society, we spend a lot of time indoors. With our winters, it’s the perfect sport for Canada.”
Jonathon is involved in several other projects, too. He recently signed a multi- year sponsorship agreement with Harrow Sports, and is closely involved in their racket design, and strategy for branding, marketing and distribution. He has also
signed up for a Legends Tour which will take place in the autumn which he hopes will prove popular with squash fans.
What was most remarkable about Jonathon’s original playing career was how he managed to hold the World No.1 status on two different occasions – a staggering four-and-a-half years apart, the longest such gap in squash history.
He first reached the world top spot in 1999. “Then I whooped it up for a while, had a good time,” he admits. “Basically I wasn’t as motivated. The weight was off my shoulders. I’d done what I wanted to do.”
In 2006, Jonathon once again clawed his way to the top. “I had to reinvent myself. I got a trainer, a person to stretch me, my massage guy. I put in a good year and got back to No.1 in the world. Then I was, like, ‘Okay, done it. See you later’. I had proved to myself that I could adapt to the new high intensity of squash.” Just weeks later he retired for good.
Given his imminent return to competitive play, albeit at exhibition status on a Legends Tour, it’s fortunate Jonathon’s body has held up well after so many years of tough matches. “I can get myself in pretty good shape pretty quickly. I left squash when I was still healthy and at the top of my game. That was a big part of why I left when I did: I wanted to enjoy sport and squash for the rest of my life. I didn’t want to beat my body down so I couldn’t walk any more.”
As a pro he was playing at least ten times a week. In retirement that has now shrunk to twice a week maximum. However, yoga, light weight-training, and the odd game of golf or tennis keep him on his toes.
And he hasn’t put on weight as some former professionals do. “I drink a lot less than I used to when I was competing,” he says. “I have a lot less anxiety so I don’t consume as much alcohol.”
Jonathon wears his 36 years well. Interviewed from his home in the Yorkville district of Toronto, he still has that dark, intense look in his eyes, and that gaunt, stretched Willem Dafoe face. His voice is croaky, and his hair even messier than usual – both probably because he has risen so early for the interview. Occasionally, in the background, his wife Sita and young daughter Parker pass by.
Thanks to Jonathon’s considerable
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earnings through squash, he and his family now enjoy a far more comfortable lifestyle than they used to. “Yes, we live in a smart part of town,” Jonathon says, with slight embarrassment. “It’s a bourgeois area. My wife and I are not from this world – believe me. We laugh at our situation now.”
Both were forces kids. Jonathon’s father was an athletics director in the Canadian army which meant the family (parents and younger brother and sister Ian and Courtenay) flitted between military bases all over Canada: Edmonton, Kingston, Prince Edward Island, Borden, Montreal, Toronto… Jonathon knew them all, but only briefly. Coincidentally, the facility in Toronto he is now turning into his National Squash Academy was the very same one his father originally developed 20 years ago for the army. “My father actually had squash courts built there because he was athletics director on the base,” Jonathon remembers. All these military sports facilities, coupled with his father’s squash coaching, gave Jonathon a superb grounding in the sport as a youngster.
There were other benefits to growing up in the army; namely, cheap international travel. “I used to fly military flights to the tournaments in Europe when I was a kid,” he remembers. “I’d sit in these big cargo nets and fly long-haul overseas, sat next to all these military guys with their backpacks. I didn’t have a whole lot of money back then, so it made things easier having free flights. I just had to pay three dollars for the sandwich.”
During his time on the professional World Tour he then criss-crossed the globe dozens of times, from tournament to tournament, city to city. For much of his career he revelled in all this travel.
“From the age of 16 to 28 I loved it. I was the travel guy. Just get me on another plane, another match, another party. I wanted more, more, more.”
Towards the end, however, that non-stop circus of trains, planes and automobiles quickly lost its appeal. “Once you’ve been to every city in the world ten times; once you’ve been to every nightclub, every hotel, every restaurant, and you’ve played in all the same arenas, it starts to get dull.”
Nowadays he certainly doesn’t pine for the world travel. It’s the intense competition of squash that he most misses. Jonathon desperately needs a new buddy to hit with down at his squash club.
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