Squash saved my eyesight

Authored by Mike Dale.

Published Squash Player Magazine October 18th 2024

Brian Hammett’s eyesight was so bad that he was unable to drive a car or ride a bike for over a decade – but six months ago, his world became clearer and an opthalmologist deemed him safe to get back behind the wheel.

The secret behind this miraculous breakthrough? Playing squash.

Not only is the 67-year-old now able to enjoy rallies and compete with other members at his home club Hibiscus in Brisbane, he travelled to Amsterdam in August to take part in the men’s 65+ draw at the WSF World Masters. It’s an astonishing change from a year ago, when his squash matches consisted mostly of guesswork based on the direction and timbre of sounds off his opponent’s racket and the walls. He played “a heck of a lot” of air shots.

Brian’s extraordinary story begins with being born with a lazy right eye. At school, he wore special glasses with one blacked-out lens and endured the cruel taunting that such an obvious visual difference often provokes from other children. Aged 10, he ditched the glasses and relied totally on his functioning left eye.

He was a gifted sprinter but sports like cricket, where you have to judge distances and react rapidly, were very difficult. He was a decent bowler, but batted down the order and close fielding wasn’t his forte. He took up squash as a way of trying to improve his lazy eye, but when he started working in nightclubs in his late teens, he discovered new distractions and his squash racket went in a cupboard.

In 1983, aged 26, Brian woke up one morning and quickly realised “something was drastically wrong” with his working (left) eye. A surgeon diagnosed Coats’ Disease – a very rare abnormality which sees blood vessels in the back of the eye leak fluid and blood, often causing blindness (most often in boys aged under three). Luckily, a world-class opthalmologist in Brisbane used hi-tech laser surgery and restored Brian’s vision.

However, 27 years later, Brian again experienced a very sudden deterioration in the same eye. The Coats’ Disease had returned more aggressively than before. The leakage from the vessels was untreatable because it was so close to his optic nerve. Several different attempts to ameliorate the condition (by the son of his original opthalmologist) were unsuccessful.

Brian was left with vision that was “like looking through a very hazy piece of glass,” with peripheral light but no definition. An astigmatism added further complexity. As CEO of an international digital signage company, this was a significant professional as well as a personal setback. “It totally changed my life,” he says. “In Australia you have to be able to read the fifth line of the eye chart in order to be legally safe to drive. I could only read the second.”

Brian’s response was that of a stereotypically phlegmatic Aussie. Ignoring offers of government funding and discounts, he soldiered on, catching the bus daily and using large magnifiers to work at his computer.

“You can’t sit around moaning,” he says. “It is what it is and you’ve just got to get on with it.”

He was given eye exercises to do at home that involved moving his finger repeatedly from near his eye to further away and back again. Bored of this and seeing little impact, around two and a half years ago, he told his surgeon that he wanted to try squash.

The surgeon’s reaction was not encouraging. He regarded squash (along with hockey and badminton) as one of the most dangerous sports for sustaining eye injuries (your author, having only one working eye due to sustaining a detached retina from a skid boast straight into my eye socket aged 17, can attest to this). Doctors suggested Brian try chess instead. Undeterred, he bought safety goggles, dug out his racket and went on court with his son.

“I played a heck of a lot of air shots, but I figured the exercise of watching the ball go up and down the wall, coming back towards me at 100-150 kmph had to be better than watching my bloody finger go backwards and forwards,” he says.

There was no discernible improvement in his vision for the first two years, as he played at the lowest possible grade in Brisbane and continually swished at thin air. “Any high lobs, I simply couldn’t see the ball at all,” he laughs. “Players who knew me would just lob serve me, but it was good fun. The support that I got from all the other players in the squash community was just phenomenal.”

Then, he tested out a specially tailored contact lens just for playing squash. “The ball at my racket head was fuzzy and at the front wall it was fuzzy, but I could pick it up mid-journey,” says Brian. “My opthalmologist was very excited. He’d tailored a contact lens for a specific purpose.”

That turned Brian’s squash game, in his words, from “absolute rubbish to just rubbish!” He wasn’t doing quite as many air shots and he continued, with admirable determination, to play five times a week. But six months ago (early 2024), he began to notice that his lazy eye was improving. The strength and the focal point had altered. “I was able to watch the ball go up and down the wall,” he says. “I played a game without a single air shot, whereas 12 months previously, it would have been about 15 minimum!”

Brian’s surgeon was astounded.

“He understands the journey I’ve been on so he can say with expert judgement that it is squash that has made this difference,” explains Brian. “I now have better distance vision than I’ve had in the past. My opthalmologist has changed opinion from, ‘Do not play squash,’ to ‘Squash has made this difference."

From only being able to read the second line on the eye chart, Brian can now read the sixth line of letters. He has been cleared to legally drive a car again after 12 years. “It’s just squash – that’s the only thing I’ve changed,” he reeals. “I can only put it down to watching that ball like a hawk at speed for 45 minutes five times a week on the squash court. The eye has undergone a massive change. The human body is amazingly resilient.”

Brian has now started experimenting in order to improve squash as an experience for others with visual impairments. He’s bought special tyre paint to change the colour of the traditional black ball to yellow, which he feels is the optimal colour for picking up its movement.

“Black is actually a really hard colour for the human brain to see,” he explains. “If we change the ball colour to make it more visually accessible we’re going to open the game up to more people.”

He adds: “What I’ve done might not work with other people, but it’s certainly worked for me. I’m seeing life a whole lot differently. The problem is, I’m 67 so the rest of my body now has to keep up with my eyes!”