Peter Nicol hopes his new New Jersey club can help squash ride the racket sports wave thanks to the growth of padel and pickleball.
Nicol, the Scot who is now living in the US, is opening his second club, but first of-its-kind facility which will feature indoor squash, padel and pickleball.
The facility is billed to be the world’s first newly-built club to combine the trio of racket sports and one without tennis.
The club will have four pickleball courts, three squash courts and two state-of-the-art indoor padel courts.
Two outdoor courts for padel and pickleball at Nicol New Jersey will be added in 2025. The Nicol club will be a public club, combining membership with pay-and-play.
Squash seems to be cast into the sidelines when it comes to racket sports in the US. The hope is that squash can be the standard bearer with Nicol’s initiative.
“People love playing racquet sports, and they love that feeling of competing, socialising, having a community — it’s really important,” Nicol said recently.
Nicol’s wife Jess Winstanley added: “People have combined these three sports in country clubs, but those clubs are private so they’re inaccessible to most people. We are doing it in the public environment in a for-profit business. We believe it’s going to work. It will open squash up to a much larger demographic and become part of a much larger racket sports conversation.”