Malaysia

The "Special Information" briefing for my next pro event listed the following text: "The tournament will be attended by Royal Highness of Negeri Sembilan". I had so many questions. And I couldn't exactly point to where the Malaysian state of Negeri Sembilan, or it's capital, Seremban, was on the map but at my level in the pro ranks when you're given a spot into any main draw, you take it, and when you're told someone named the Royal Highness of Negeri Sembilan will be attending, well you just grab your bags and head straight for Seremban. So that's what I did.

Palm trees dotted the landing strip in Kuala Lumpur as my overnight from Australia touched down into some sort of early morning dense layer of something - fog, steam, clouds, snow? Being it was 91 degrees outside I crossed off snow but couldn't narrow it down further- not until a blanket of all the other options smacked into me outside the airport, officially commencing my visit to Southeast Asia. The Malaysian guys I met on tour told me the seasons here were "hot, hot, hot and hot" and that felt about right. Already sweating bullets I read off what I was told to do next: train to Bandar Tasik Selatan, taxi to Majlis Sukan Negara, Bukit Jalil, Gate C. I was told any taxi driver would know where it is, which I've learned is actually code for no taxi driver will know where it is. Sure enough four circles and five friendly "where are we?" in Malay conversations later and a napping Addeen Idrakie was notified in his dorm room at Majlis Sukan Negara, Malaysia's National Sports Complex, that his foreign friend had arrived.

I had met Addeen during the New Zealand tournament circuit back in June and he was nice enough to invite me to crash with him and his four squash roommates in their dorm room at the complex in Kuala Lumpur, and train there for the weekend before the tournament. It was like an Olympic Village but just for Malaysian athletes- an intensive training institute where the only students are its country's best athletes across all sports. Limited internet access, no social media, no distractions. The mission: eat sleep study and train, with all expenses funded entirely by the Malaysian government to develop their future Olympians...And on occasion, to let a wandering American player crash the party.

Lunchtime in the cafeteria felt like a SportsCenter commercial, Malaysian edition: over there are the soccer players, walking past are the gymnasts, sitting down now is a top sprinter. I powered through my chicken and rice next to the sprinter, made fast friends with the omelette chef, watched Asia's Got Talent with the soccer team and tried my best to blend in. 

Athletes were everywhere as one player pulled around his scooter and I held on tight as we took off for squash practice. We hit on the all-glass court surrounded by stadium seating in the Nicol David Arena, proudly honoring the Malaysian native who is the current and 8-time world champion, one of the best ever to play the game. Our shadows danced under the bright flood lights above the court as the ball zipped around the glass in the otherwise empty, hollow Nicol David Arena. Adrenaline spiked and for an hour inside inside her stadium, you quietly pretended to be a world champion too. 

Addeen had to leave campus unexpectedly so his squash roommates, without skipping a beat, took over. They led me past the sport stadiums and down the side streets, in a taxi around street vendors and past the mosque goers and toward a table at their favorite restaurant, a non descript outdoor Malayasian barbeque joint somewhere in Kuala Lumpur. I barely knew Addeen, and didn't know any of these guys who were now showing me their go-to spot, asking me how I am enjoying Malaysia and refusing to let me pay for my meal. All little things. Little things I'll remember most.

At dawn on Monday morning we were gone for Seremban. I snagged a spot on a school bus of players and with a few twists and turns, climbed out of Kuala Lumpur and into the highlands of the region of Negeri Sembilan, far away from everything and closing in on the tournament and His Royal Highness himself. 

Turns out we weren't headed to the capital city of Seremban, or any city. If you got lost driving toward Seremban and then got lost again, you'd end up in the rural village of Kuala Pilah somewhere in the Malaysian countryside and hours from anything. And that's where we went. Wandering sheep and goats grazed in the road as our school bus sped by and our skilled driver deftly dodged the roadside herd of cows and occasional pack of monkeys who seemed as confused as I was as to why we were here. Nothing about this place hinted of hosting a professional squash tournament- or a professional anything, really.

But the Royal Highness of Negeri Sembilan happens to love watching squash, and so sure enough our bus slowed to a stop at the top of a hill on the outskirts of the village, bordering a thick forest of jungle where we were warned "no man has entered before." We had arrived at the Royal Sri Menanati Golf & Country Club where two beautiful, spotless, brand new courts awaited us. 

I bunked at the Melang Inn with two British buddies from past tournaments- Adam Murrils, a 25 year-old and #128 in the world, and Alex Noakes, a 19 year-old just outside the top 200. I shared a bed with Alex and in the first round got thumped by Adam, who would go on to reach the semi-finals.

At the welcome dinner banquet for the tournament I sat at a table with the Brits and a few other friends playing the pro women's event- Cheyna Tucker and Alexandra Fuller from South Africa, Lotte Erikson from Norway and American Maddy Gill, the Stanford women's #1 taking a gap year to play the tour. It was a luxury to be with friends who doubled as teammates for this tournament. We scooped homecooked Pakistani-style chicken and fried rice out of a massive bucket made fresh from a friendly Pakistani volunteer in the village, picked apart Malaysian barbeque ribs hot off the grill outside, laughed and watched and wondered what exactly was going on as local musicians and dancers welcomed us to Kuala Pilah, rural Malaysia.

I had just about given up hope when he arrived. It was my last morning in Malaysia and I was on court practicing my Malay ("obagus!") while teaching squash to forty eleven-year olds when,in an instant, things suddenly seemed serious. The kids' teachers started to shuffle outside the court, cleaning up the area and fixing their hijabs. A police officer walked into the entrance and a well dressed waiter laid out two bottles of water at the main table in the entryway. Out the back window, sirens flashed from the road as a motorcade of police cars and motorcycles escorted the Sultan of Negeri Sembilan, one of the nine royal sultans of Malaysia, into the parking lot. Emerging moments later from what had to be the only shiny black Bentley in all of the village of Kuala Pilah walked an elderly man dressed in plain courdory pants, a plaid button down shirt and a thick, neatly combed moustache. His Royal Highness had arrived.

Spectators parted as he walked down the stairs and everyone in the building bowed as His Royal Highness made his way onto the court. I quickly bowed too, and kept bowed for an extra few seconds just to err on the side of caution and not be the guy who unbowed too soon. At that moment I wished I knew more about Malaysia, wished I knew how to say something more than "good!" in Malay, wished I wasn't so sweaty while now standing next to the sultan himself. He didn't seem to mind. He smiled as we shook hands, someone told him I was from America and at that moment I couldn't help but smile too- the king and me standing on court in middle of nowhere Malaysia, on the edge of a village and a jungle, on a Thursday morning unlike any Thursday morning I've ever had. I didn't know what to say. "So...really enjoy squash, I take it?" His Royal Highness of Negeri Sembilan turned to me and smiled. 

Sydney

Fly a swift fifteen hours south of San Francisco and you get to a huge island that looks a lot like where you left. Sun, sand, vegan diners and yoga studios came quickly into view as my train from the Sydney airport wandered toward the city, setting me back up with top notch squash and another pit stop at my favorite couch in the world.

Trading kale cooking for couch crashing in Bondi, Adam sorry that this is a pretty lopsided deal

It had been six months since I first passed through Sydney and crashed with my childhood buddy Adam on his couch alongside Bondi Beach. This was round two and I had a few weeks to make it count. This time I was ready- I knew who best to train with at the Willoughby Squash Center, why the 333 is the better bus than the 381 or the 380, what time the family-run corner market stays opens til on Tuesdays, where the best protein shake in town could be found (Jet Bar Cafe, ask for Coop to make you the Re-Coop). My legs dangled off a couch roughy half my size across from Adam's bed, which was more than fine because it allowed me to end each night sharing stories and laughs with my friend since the 7th grade. I had forgotten what it felt like to come back to something totally familiar, to know the little things about it, to feel comfortable from the get go. It felt good.

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I returned to the courts at Willoughby different from when I left in August. Mentally I had learned more about how to best compete on my own on tour, and physically, especially from the last five weeks of workouts in California, I felt like my body could now better sustain the beating that was guaranteed to come it's way in a pro match. It came together well in the quarterfinals of the Willoughby Open, where I battled another pro around my ranking to a tight five setter that he ultimately edged me out in by a few points. 

Matches like that one are the occasional markers that can be used to determine progress. But these markers aren't as frequent and visible as I would have thought, at least when trying to gauge progress on a more regular basis. If the journey as a player is a sail across water to some promised land that is your full potential, the pieces of real evidence are sights of some faint land somewhere on the horizon, but otherwise it's you and the water. And it's up to you to believe that the land is coming.

Any training run should end on Victory Street

I think the hardest thing, to me at least, is that believing part- believing that on the whole your development as a player is consistently going forward. Maybe not every day but that overall that the trend line is sloping up- that it's improving and not slipping, stagnating, standing still. You lose that belief and you're done. I feel that I need all the moving pieces - every muscle, movement, shot stroke - to be clicking just to compete. Just to not slip. When it's all syncing, I can push on that little bit of extra juice that lifts me up past the last plateau and into the next one. But first, it all has to be clicking and those are a lot of moving pieces to click at once.

Coolest lap pool of all time

I knew I was spoiled several times over by my Sydney setup and also knew my time was here was short so I just went all in. Hustling through morning training sessions and tournaments, chasing down the running trails alongside the ocean, hitting the regular yoga and stretching sessions at Yogatime up the hill. When I wasn't on court I was finding a way to the water and like I did as a kid in Santa Barbara I made it a mission to jump in every day. In the early mornings before I left for practice, at lunch in between sessions, at night as the sun dipped below the cliffs. Under the sun or during a downpour I jumped in each day and each day hit the salt water wondering if this was really real and half expecting to wake up from the dream and be late for work. I felt so alive. My day to day was simple the routine unchanged and I loved every minute of it. I wasn't home but it was the closest thing to it I could get while on the road.

"You know they say sequels are never better than the original" my buddy Adam said with a smile as I packed up my bag before leaving. I told him half jokingly it this may just be part two of a trilogy. As I then reached for my carry on, the zipper broke. 

Uh oh. 

Anything but the zipper. Half my life's contents began to spill out the bag, as if I didn't already understand the consequences of this dilemma. I carry with me almost nothing of value- one pair of jeans and two button down shirts, a couple pairs of shorts and a ton of dri-fits. Take any of them, but leave my zipper alone. In an instant the trusty gatekeeper to my racquet bag, the one valuable thing I owned and that still was functional, had given up. 

I didn't have time to mourn further. I scooped up the scattered pieces of my stuff, shoveled them back into the bag that I now held like a newborn around my chest, shuffled awkwardly to the bus stop in North Bondi and headed for Malaysia.

Shovel, check. Axe, check. They're ready for anything Down Undah

Came for the waves, stayed for the babes (the babes took the picture....)  

Back through home

My chewed up Asics still smelled of dried Zambezi River mud with a touch of dead warthog as I stumbled out of a New York City cab from the airport straight into the lobby of a gym somewhere on the lower east side. Bright lights electronic house music and hip fitness goers on ellipticals above the entry welcomed me back to the frigid northeastern USA after eight months away. Four flights and twenty-one hours of flying after leaving Zimbabwe, the last of the Zamebzi mud flung off the sneakers in the gym cardio area just in time: I was less than 3 days away from my opening match in the Wimbledon-of-squash-tournaments and really had to get moving. 

The coolest court around- in the middle of Grand Central Station NYC. Site of the main draw for the Tournament of Champions

I crashed on the futon of one of my best friends, Dan, who had one request: wash everything. Laundry?! Now? But how?? My mind began to race - laundry has been a multi-day (possibly weeklong) adventure with a wide variety of outcomes that doesn't always result in clean (or returned) clothes. Dan sensed my anxiety and showed me his phone. On the screen, an app - the Über of laundry - showed a blinking dot of someone coming to take my life's stock of sweaty clothes and bring them back the next day, fully washed. Well damn.

I was bracing for a huge culture shock but didn't really get one. Some things took longer to readjust to - it would be weeks before trusting any tap water, anywhere - but mostly I was just thrilled to eat at Chipotle again. If there was one thing that stuck as I wandered around Manhattan, it was just how lucky I was to get to come home here. That sounds incredibly cheesy but that's what I felt. In every town, city, country I've come across so far, at least one person or another who tells me of the same hope- to visit America, maybe even live there someday. They watched  me describe New York City and the California coast in the same way I sat awed about stories of their home on an island in the South Pacific or along the rim of northern Africa or on the desert outskirts of Dubai. For most of these new friends of mine, their visit will never happen- visa issues, immigration hurdles, red tape. I stared at the cover of my passport as I touched down back at JFK, passing back through customs without a hitch and right out onto New York pavement, thinking then of my other friends who are dreaming of that moment.

Two days later and I was ready as I'd ever be for my big match. Taking the court against me was New Zealand #1 and world #49 Martin Knight, the first friend I had made on tour. For the first time in a long time, I had home court advantage with faces I recognized. Goosebumps ran wild as "Michael Lewis, of the United States" was called out by the referree in front of my parents, one sister, my uncle and a handful of college friends and former teammates among the crowd.

On the dark and chilly and otherwise uneventful mid-January night at a squash club in midtown Manhattan I threw everything I had at my friend. It was brutal. Long rallies, heavy legs, chest burning. Wind knocked out and no air to breath, like like being taken to the ground by a punch to the stomach. Again then again. The rallies stayed long and I started losing more of them, gasping for oxygen when I wasn't hurling towards every corner of the court, chasing tortuous cycles of deep punishing drives to the back and short unforgiving drops to the front.

When it was all over I had lost in straight sets. But this time I held my own. It was respectable. I limped off court dead and defeated, legs shot, knees buckling. I hugged my dad, my coach that night and since the beginning. He smiled. This time last year I was working at a desk. Tonight his son was a professional athlete. It was defeat, but it was progress. 

It's official: lunging with chains through a neighborhood is as awkward and miserable as it sounds

The secret recipe for February: something involving avocados and tons of eggs

With a break in my tournament schedule after the match, I began work toward closing the next gap. While losing to Marty was respectable, it was still losing, and no one likes to lose. I sat at #218 in the world rankings, a best for me but still on the outside of the top 200 with a long way to go. I headed to California to double down on workouts around Stanford, staying with my cousin and her family a few minutes from campus. 

For the next month all the couches, strangers, confusions and unknowns that characterized my first eight months on the tour disappeared. In their place was a routine: a set regiment for eating, sleeping, training and, in between those things, House of Cards watching (what a show) and very loud TSwift album repeating (guilty). Strength and cardio at the gym in the mornings, on court hitting drills with the recent Stanford Men's #1 in the afternoons, family dinners at six followed by card games at eight, out by eleven. Eating became a much more frequent but much less interesting activity: eggs and more eggs, meat and fish, more eggs. Bye bye dairy, grains, booze, gluten. Life became monotonous, straightforward, simple. Just what I signed up for. The reality of trying to get better. 

About a year ago an older guy, who now has a wife and kids and works in finance but had played the tour as a young college kid a while back, told me that the actual tournaments would be the easy part- it was the training that would be killer. It took me until now to realize what he meant. By the end of the month I was just starting to survive the sunrise workouts, beginning to get by the afternoon hits and finally winning a few games of Go Fish. I could make a mean four egg steak scramble plus avocado with my eyes closed, blast out all the words to Shake It Off. I was nearly settling into a real routine when my night flight out to Sydney came rolling in. 

Lucky to train every day with a class act and budding squash stud Mark Wieland, Stanford's 2013 Captain and the latest American to turn pro 

Hanging with the stars of Squash Drive, San Francisco's urban youth enrichment program doing big things: www.squashdrive.org

What's a stop in the USA without a celebration of July 4th and jean shorts???

Off day at the ocean with high school buddies