James Green sat down with Bill Buckingham, the host of Squash Radio, and a professional MC for squash events, to talk about his career in squash and what it’s like being one of the voices of our sport!
Buckingham started out his career in the hotel business, then as the Sports Marketing Director for the region of New Haven, Connecticut, and then worked at US Squash for 18 years, finally finding himself now as a podcast host and MC.
He started at US Squash in 2007 as a small group of 3 people in the New York office. When he started at US Squash, he felt that US Squash was not looked upon fondly in the squash world, and that the way to fix this would be to embrace the pros, and help build things from the ground up, and “the tide changed really quickly.”
He said he was very good at naming things in the squash space, and “You name it, I think pretty much any kind of title of any program that US Squash did, I came up with the title.”
During his time at US Squash, one of his most fun experiences was playing with Hugh Jackman who was looking for a court in NYC at the time, and Buckingham helped him find one to play on! “Hugh actually sang in the shower the first time, and I thought that was really cool.” He laughed.
Buckingham also says that when a picture of himself and Jackman was posted on Instagram, he was bombarded with comments saying he looks like UK celebrity Jeremy Clarkson, which he didn’t appreciate!
As for his pivot to MC’ing, he first began around 2011 at the US Open at Drexel University, where the qualifying and first rounds were being played. Nicol David, one of the most decorated and famous players of all time, was playing, and Buckingham said there was no real organization at the courts. To fix this problem, he was sent to the courts to take control of the situation. “It was easy, but it was boring.”
He eventually decided to take the microphone and introduce the players, and eventually started interviewing them post-match, which led to him being asked to introduce the semis and the finals of the US Open that year, and that's how his career in squash MC’ing started.
Amr Khalifa, our Head Pro at Open Squash FiDi, after seeing Buckingham at the US Open, invited him to come to Egypt for the Black Ball Open and work there, and that's how his career fully took off with the PSA World Tour!
Buckingham started working on his podcast before he retired. He began working on Squash Radio as a duo, and decided to introduce shorter-form chats about the PSA World tour, with some more provocative and funny segments to get their listener rate up.
Buckingham feels that due to his age and being later in his career, and having no real ties to the PSA anymore, he can bring more honesty and controversy to the podcast, a side which isn’t seen too often in the squash world!