Brutal pace 🥵 A frantic rally between Soliman and ElShorbagy!

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[ewallt]

Rallies like this make tennis look like a stroll in the park.

[CaptainInsano]

Shame that match was ruined by MES behaving so appallingly.

[simesaid]

The Tyranny of Perspective in Squash. This was a _good_ rally, sure, but it was really just illustrative of the amazing squash played week-in, week-out, at this level. So, why did it _look_ so good then? Because we rarely get to see top play from this perspective!

Most of the time the camera is either higher and further back, or, on some rare occasions, lower and _much_ closer to the rear wall. Neither is really better than the other. Each brings its own advantages, and each brings its own disadvantages.

The first angle gives you a good understanding of the player's court movement, their overall tactics in the game, and it allows you to see the whole court without the camera having to manually pan from the forehand to backhand sides (as it does here).

The downside is that you feel a little remote. A little to far from the action. A little _too_ divorced from everything. For example, you can't accurately discern how good (low off the rear wall) the player's length is, or how low they are having to reach down in order to intercept volleys. Perhaps worst of all, though, the distance means you lose a good sense of the game's intense physicality. The price for having a Gods-eye view is foregoing much of the human drama of the game. And, as anyone that's played at least pennant level before will be able to tell you, there's a shitload of _very_ physical, _very_ combative, _very_ human drama going down there on court!

When you're seated in the VIP area, with space to stretch out your legs and take a look around, you lose that sense of raw urgency you feel when sitting watching the big fight from the front row. You can't see the sweat, you can't see the blood, and you sure can't see the tears.... but you _can_ see the whole court. Which, once again, _is_ kinda important. So there's that.

You get a fair bit more of all that good, desperate, half-dead-from-exhaustion stuff from this angle, though... It's a _great_ angle in fact! But then there's that little issue of not being able to see the whole court, which I'll admit, yet again, _is_ a slight negative for some!

The second most common view, the close-behind-back-wall one, benefits from getting you right up close and personal with the players, you can see them trying to suck down air between points, contort their faces in pain when they lose a close point, see how _close_ they must have come to tearing their hamstrings as they overextend on a retrieval, and see the look of elation (and relief) that they feel upon securing that final point. It's great, but then you get very little idea of the player's overall strategy, and the foreshortening of the court means that you can't really appreciate how much work their putting in at the front of the court. You _can_ see how low their drops and kill shots are, but you _can't_ see how difficult it was for their opponent to retrieve it!

And all of this isn't even to touch on the subject of which wall to focus through (for the TLDR just 4× the above!)

And thus... The Tyranny of Perspective in Squash. There are no truly _bad_ camera angles in squash, so long as it's faced somewhere towards the court then you can't help but pick up on, and appreciate, some new facet or other of this great game. But there's always that trade-off! You win some, you lose some. You gain a bit here, you lose an equal amount there.

The Tyranny of Perspective in Squash. There are no _bad_ angles to watch it from, but there aren't any really _good_ ones, either...

Which kinda sucks. It kinda sucks a _lot._