W. Palmer Dixon Gives Funds to Squash, Tennis

W. Palmer Dixon '25, long one of the foremost supporters of squash and tennis at Harvard, has given $140,000 to the Program for Harvard College to be used mainly to renovate the University Squash Courts on Linden Street. When the renovating process is completed, the varsity squash team will use these courts as its home base during the season.

In particular, $120,000 of the gift will be used to build four gallery courts in the Linden Street building, with each pair of courts having a gallery capacity of about 300 persons. This will remedy one of the major difficulties with Harvard squash, for at present only about 30 or 40 people can comfortably watch a match in Hemenway Gymnasium.

The new facility will enable about 150 spectators to watch an individual contest, and considering the College's propensity for turning out top players of championship caliber--Henry Foster, Charlie Ufford, Ben Heckscher, and Larry Sears, to name only few--this represents a very desirable improvement.

This renovation will also bring the squash team back into the College after a prolonged residence in the Harvard Law School, Hemenway Gymnasium being located next to the Law School dormitories. In the past, of the few spectators who could fit into the tiny Hemenway galleries nearly half were law students.

The remaining $20,000 will be divided between the Funds for Squash and for Tennis, bringing the tennis fund up to $25,000 and the squash fund to $15,000. This will mean an approximate annual income of $2,00 to finance trips to national championships, the Prentice Cup, the southern tour for the tennis team, and other events.

Dixon himself was one of the greatest Harvard squash players of all time, winning the national championship when a Senior in College and repeating the following year. In the 1925 championship he competed in both the team and individual tournaments, playing an average of four matches a day. He was one of the masters of position squash, and was of such high calibre that even in 1946, when he was past his prime and badly out of practice, he was able to give coach Jack Barnaby, then one of the leading professional players in the country, a very tough match.