That’s Yale coach Dave Talbott on the right, making nice with Chris Smith, the former Northeastern University coach and now Harvard’s number two. Behind them is Yale’s main exhibition court—pretty nice, but everyone has one of those. Uh, except Harvard… But over Smith’s right shoulder you can see a gallery leading to more squash courts. Unseen, to Talbott’s left, is another gallery that snakes around to two more open-design exhibition courts, and links all 15 of the Brady courts.

Here is a schematic of the layout (rotated 90 degrees clockwise, because otherwise it won’t legibly fit into this blog):

If you are into squash trivia—and why else would you be reading this blog?—you have already spotted the poster with Mark Talbott, Dave’s younger brother, in the gallery entryway over to the left. Dave and Mark used to coach Yale’s men’s and women’s teams, respectively, until Stanford lured Mark away to coach its brand-new, Title-IX-complying women’s team. You’ll want to read my ferocious puff piece about Mark here.

Both Talbotts are spectacularly friendly and fun to be around. In the 1980s, they played exhibition matches against each other, sometimes dressed in formal wear, sometimes dressed in swimsuits. The day I stopped in to meet Dave, he characteristically kept several important college coaches and assorted squash nabobs waiting while he walked me around the Brady. We had all been booked in at the same 10 a.m time slot: No worries!

What’s amazing about Brady is that it was entirely retrofitted inside of Yale’s ghastly, sarcophagal Payne Whitney gymnasium, not to be confused with Manhattan’s ghastly, sarcophagal Payne Whitney psychiatric clinic, temporary abode of Marilyn Monroe, poet Robert Lowell, and novelist Mary McCarthy. The way Talbott tells it, Yale’s fundraising pros said that Brady, captain of the 1952 varsity squash team and treasury secretary under Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush ¹, wouldn’t come across with the dough.

But he did come across, with $3.5 million of ...

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