Gold Standards
We’re mere days away from Memorial Day, or the proper start of seersucker season unless you’re below the Mason-Dixon line: you’ve shaken out your seersucker and madras on Easter Sunday!
Today’s issue is all about ringing in summer in true club rat fashion.
Ishaan Jajodia shares an update on this week’s National Squash League tournament in New York City. Yours truly writes about the makings of a gold standard club—just in time for those searching for summer memberships.
Ishaan Jajodia brings you Dispatches like none other can.
Do take note of our new format with more in-email content and a new “Members Only” section for paywalled content. And, as always, please be sure to forward this Clubland USA issue, brought to subscribers by Double Dot Squash, with everyone who will love it. You’ll be our favorites if they subscribe here, or by using your unique referral link below.—LR
What is a Gold Standard Club?
By: Leonard Robinson
Here at Clubland USA, we’re often asked via email or in-person by readers for insights on what makes a good club. This is often a matter of personal preference with some, for instance, preferring stuffy city clubs and others preferring frat-lite country clubs with rowdy bars and colorful characters.
Nonetheless, there are three characteristics that we believe are essential for a Gold Standard club experience.
#1: Clubs are owned by members, not corporations
Ishaan Jajodia, during an editorial meeting, once said, “I don’t trust a club that is good with money.” All jokes aside, this means that clubs should be concerned first with satisfying their members than turning a profit. Breaking even is just fine.
This is not as much of a concern for clubs that are structured as nonprofits or share cooperatives where members own a portion of equity in the club. Many newer (and dare we say, “trendy”) clubs, such as SoHo House, Casa Cipriani, or The Ned, lack this structure and, as a result, are more akin to “private restaurants” than clubs.
#2: Reciprocity required
Any gold standard club must have reciprocal relationships and no, your club’s second branch in Miami or Palm Springs doesn’t count. This means that your Club must actively seek to build relationships with other clubs outside of its geographical orbit and, ideally, with a membership base that is compatible but different than yours.
Reciprocal clubs also serve another clever purpose: it ensures that your club is enforcing the most basic norms of Clubland. Club rats love nothing more than going back to their club and sharing about a reciprocal visit elsewhere. Think truly about the endless possibilities of what can be shared about your club. We’re sure that you’ll fall on the straight and narrow then.
#3: Dress for the best
This is the most simple. Your Club needs a standard for how members should present themselves. Does that always mean a jacket and tie? Not necessarily, but it should be unacceptable to show up to the Club as if you'd come back from a seven-mile run and faced a mauling by a black bear.
Need help? Let Ishaan Jajodia show you how to dress the part.
Squash Pros and Skyscrapers
By: Ishaan Jajodia
As Clubland USA’s chief squash correspondent, it should be known that I will not pass up an opportunity to watch professional squash. Spencer Lovejoy, who played #1 on the Yale Men’s Squash team, and then let loose on the pro squash tour, invited Clubland USA to watch a National Squash League game at Open Squash in Manhattan’s Financial District.
The National Squash League reinvents professional squash, capitalising on the fast-paced nature of professional squash. Instead of the regular, single-player, best of five games to eleven format that squash follows, the National Squash League brings to the fore a radically different format: two teams of three players each go head to head with each other over the course of two twenty minute and one thirty minute periods. Teams are permitted a limited number of substitutions and powerplays. A powerplay is when the opposing team cannot win points for a brief period of time.
While squash leagues are familiar sights in Europe, and there are a few in the United States at the amateur level—my club participates in the Connecticut Squash League, and I play on their team—at the professional level in the United States, the National Squash League is a welcome addition.
Started by Lovejoy and Harvard’s Timmy Brownell, the NSL features both men’s and women’s teams competing in north and south divisions, the winners of which play the finals. Now in its second season, with an expanded roster of teams, the NSL’s Greenwich Panthers competed against the New York Knights on their home courts. Even better, Clubland’s favourite squash player, Juan Camilo Vargas, was playing on the top of the ladder for the Greenwich Panthers.
This was my first time watching a new format of squash. There’s something enchanting about watching professional squash. It is even more bewitching when your friend is on court. Seeing Vargas—or Juanca, as our squash-playing friend likes to call him—on court is like seeing a well-oiled machine crank out shot after shot with remarkable accuracy and resounding power.
Being able to see six-world class players in one evening is quite the spectacle, and the NSL delivers a high-paced game that changes the way squash players watch the sport. The Greenwich Panthers featured Juanca, Malaysia’s Sanjay Jeeva, and Brazil’s Diego Gobbi. On the other hand, the New York Knights had at their roundtable the Malaysian Eain Yow Ng, American Dillon Huang, and the stodgy Brit Simon Herbert.
While the Panthers took the lead early in the first and second period, by the time the third period came around, the path for victory seemed more like a steep climb uphill. The Knights put up a remarkable fight, strategically using their powerplays to move away from the game of attrition that was being played, and adopting a more aggressive, attacking stance. While the first period was plagued with mega-rallies ending in lets and the occasional stroke, the referee, Canadian squash player Nicole Bunyan, cracked down on the blocking and the intentional uses of lets to keep the scoreboard from racking up points.
The Knights’ magisterial powerplay in the third period was the beginning of the end for the Panthers, and while Juanca tried his darnedest, he lost crucial points in a row, resulting in a 34–27 victory for the New York Knights on their home courts.
We’ll be back to watch more NSL matches. In the meantime, unlike the rest of the Pro Squash tour, which requires you to go through positively Victorian streaming technology, you can watch the NSL on YouTube.
Members Only
As noted in today’s introduction, Clubland USA will be featuring more material inside of each week’s newsletter. The exception to this however will be pay-walled content which will appear in this Members Only section.
Have an idea for a good story? Want to shoot a pitch? Email us at edops@clubland.us
Please stay tuned to this section in the coming weeks for articles that are only available here at Clubland USA.
Dispatches from Clubland
The Raging Bull Prevails. At the World Squash Championships in Chicago, the Egyptian Ali Farag tried to be the matador to the Raging Bull, fellow countryman Mostafa Asal, but, having put up a valiant fight, lost 3–0 in a shocking turn of events. We would’ve pegged the score at at least 3–1, but with Asal in trouble with the referees and the Professional Squash Association for egregious blocking that resulted in his opponent, the Malaysian Eain Yow Ng, being thrown to the ground a few matches ago, with an outstretched leg, there was less leniency for his alleged cheating and definite blocking. The Raging Bull still has trouble wrapping his head around the fact that squash courts aren’t open pastures for grazing and spreading oneself out to abandon. In the women’s half of the draw, two Egyptians featured yet again, with Nour El Sherbini winning against Hania El Hammamy in a 3–1 match. Both Asal and El Sherbini have had long runs on the PSA tour, and have dominated the game in recent years.
Vogue meets Buzzfeed on Clubland. In an interesting turn of events, the fine men and women at Vogue decided to put together a quiz about what club one ought to join. All well and fine, with the exception that they included “clubs” like Casa Cipriani and Zero Bond—run for $$$, not of, by, and for members, as Leonard explains above in Gold Standard. Remember, your club’s owned by you. Not some private equity or “hospitality” schmuck looking to make a quick buck. It’s almost as bad as the time the Journal called a brothel an exclusive “club”. Thank goodness Vogue included some real clubs, including Century Association.
From Jail Cell to Championship. Scottie Scheffler, currently the world’s best golfer, was charged with second-degree assault of a police officer, among other things, the morning before he was to play the PGA Championship at the Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville, KY, last year. The arresting detective was overzealous and wouldn’t let Scheffler, who won the Masters that year, into the clubhouse. The charges were dropped and Scheffler was able to make his tee time, but finally got his comeuppance this weekend, when he returned to Louisville to clinch the 2025 PGA Championship. — IJ