The College Squash Association (CSA) is sad to report that Victor Niederhoffer, who as a Harvard senior won the 1964 Intercollegiate Individual championship and later was inducted into the CSA Hall of Fame (in 1992), the U.S. Squash Hall of Fame (in 2000) and the Harvard Varsity Club Hall of Fame (in 1988), died of natural causes on August 4th at age 82.
Niederhoffer is the only player, man or woman, to ever capture the Individuals without ever having played or even seen squash prior to entering college. He had, however, as a youngster growing up in Brooklyn excelled at tennis and in a number of the many “wall games” played at the Brighton Beach Baths, a sports complex located near the Niederhoffers’ home that featured more than 20 one-wall handball courts and was therefore known as a mecca for that sport. Although Harvard’s legendary coach Jack Barnaby usually didn’t directly oversee a player’s development until he became a sophomore — leaving the task of coaching freshmen to Harvard’s longtime freshman squash coach Corey Wynn — he made an exception in Niederhoffer’s case, spending at least 45 minutes in the court almost every day with his fast-developing prodigy, the rough edges of whose game and personality Barnaby gradually smoothed over, and whose learning and improvement curves were so steep that Barnaby later remarked that he “never had a boy who learned faster, assimilating everything I threw at him and coming back for more.”
Early in his sophomore year, Niederhoffer, although unseeded, swept to victory in the U. S. National Juniors, defeating his defending-champion teammate Bill Morris 15-12, 12 and 12 in the final. He played No. 1 in all three seasons of his varsity career at Harvard (freshmen were not allowed to play varsity sports until the 1971-72 season), which won the Ivy League all three years. Prior to the start of Niederhoffer’s sophomore year, Harvard and arch-rival Yale had split their last 14 dual meets against each other during the period from 1948-61. The Elis, who had barely edged Harvard 5-4 in the 1961 dual meet (when Yale’s No. 3 player John West eked out a 15-13 fifth-game win over future U.S. National Security Advisor Tony Lake), appeared poised to win in 1962 as well when their No. 9 player Joey Holmes led Niederhoffer’s classmate John Francis 11-6 in the fifth game of the deciding match. But Francis then won nine consecutive points, thereby jumpstarting a Harvard dual-meet 28-straight winning streak against that didn’t end until 1990.
Niederhoffer’s junior 1962-63 season saw him continue his impressive ascent, including winning the prestigious Harry Cowles Invitational, the University Club of New York Invitational and the Massachusetts State championship. In his first appearance in the U.S. Nationals, he defeated the top-seeded defending champion Sam Howe (a College Individuals finalist in 1959 and 1960) in the quarterfinals before losing to the eventual champion Ben Heckscher in the semis. At that tournament’s Saturday night dinner party, everyone present at the Harvard table — namely Barnaby, Niederhoffer, the five team members who had out-played Montreal that afternoon in the USSRA Five-Man Team final, and Crimson alums Heckscher and Charlie Ufford, who had qualified for Sunday’s Men’s Final — rose up to deliver a spontaneous rendition of “Fair Harvard,” the college anthem. At season’s-end, Niederhoffer advanced to the finals of the Individuals, out-playing 1962 Individuals finalist and Yale No. 2 Bob Hetherington in the semis before losing the final to Hetherington’s teammate (and defending champion) Ralph Howe, Sam’s younger brother, in the final.
However in 1963-64, with Ralph Howe having graduated, Niederhoffer swept through an undefeated season that culminated with him winning the Individuals with a decisive final-round win over Amherst star Tom Poor. After then losing in the finals of the 1965 U.S. Nationals to Steve Vehslage. Niederhoffer then won that tournament — for the first of a record five times, the other four occurring from 1972-75 — with narrow victories in the semifinal and final rounds over, sequentially, Ralph and Sam Howe. Niederhoffer would also win the U.S. National Doubles three times, in each case with a different partner — with Victor Elmaleh in 1968, Jim Zug Sr. in 1973 and Colin Adair in 1974 — and by winning the North American Open (considered the Wimbledon of hardball squash) and defeating the six-time defending champion Sharif Khan in four games in the finals, Niederhoffer became the last amateur to annex this crown and the only American to achieve this feat (other than when Ralph Howe did so in 1967) during the 24-year period between Diehl Mateer 1959 win and Mark Talbott 1983 win.
He also gained a great deal of notoriety on Wall Street as an investor, trader, hedge-fund manager and author. The best-known of the several books he wrote, The Education Of A Speculator, published in 1996, became a national bestseller and was praised by George Soros for the “original mind and eclectic approach” with which Niederhoffer “takes the reader from Brighton Beach to Wall Street, visiting all stops of interest along the way. He will be remembered as one of the most impactful squash players in the history of the sport.
