Introduction
Some squash games only last three minutes. Yes, three. After twenty years of dutifully booking 40-minute court slots — and many evenings vanishing into “league matches” that swallowed entire nights — I suddenly find myself exposed. How do I now justify leaving home at 6 p.m. and re-emerging near midnight if a game to 11 can be wrapped up faster than brewing a cup of tea?
Naturally, I assumed my CASIO stopwatch was broken. So I strapped chest heart monitors onto players, roped in a “sentient referee” (i.e., Dave from the bar), and let a smug laptop keep score and time. The laptop confirmed what I refused to believe: some games really were over in three minutes.
Cue an existential crisis. Was squash the same brutal test of endurance I’d always believed, or was it just a short, sweaty flash that I had exaggerated into epic saga length?
Local Tournament Match Times
30 matches were played in our local Squash Tournament and we were able to capture data from 10 of these matches via Bluetoothed Heart Rate Monitors. A match was the best of 3 games, with each game to 11, or to win by 2 clear points if the score was 10-all.
To be clear, Rally length = time interval between the Referee updating the score. So, this includes time to retrieve the ball, serve preparation as well as the time rallying before the point is decided.
Here is the Tournament Summary,
- Minimum Match time was 3 minutes. Yes you read that right — 3 minutes. It was 13 rallies as the score was 11-2 and the mean rally time was just under 14 seconds.
- 13 rallies × 14 seconds = 182 seconds which is 3 minutes and 2 seconds!
- Maximum Match time was 12 mins, which seemed like an eternity.
- Mean Match time for 10 Games was 6 mins.
And, if you want to see the data broken down further into Rally Times, it’s at the end of this article.
My technique for measuring the Match Score with the Heart Rate enabled me to extract Rally Time information. And here is the Summary:
- Total Rallies for the 10 Matches: 160
- Mean Rally Duration: 18.64s
- Max Rally Duration: 58.06s (Match 20, Rally 1)
- Min Rally Duration: 6.16s (Match 18, Rally 1)
Example PSA Match Rally Lengths
To sanity-check my findings, I turned to YouTube and pulled up a 2018 Grasshopper Cup match between Karim Abdel Gawad and James Willstrop. These are professionals — the absolute top of the game — so surely their rallies would stretch into the kind of epic struggles that justify my 40-minute bookings.
The first rally? Nine shots. Lasted 13 seconds. Blink and you miss it.
The second rally? Three shots. Over in three seconds — which is barely enough time to sneeze. Add in the serve prep though, and it clocks in at 17 seconds. Ah yes, in our bid to get squash in the Olympics are we mimicking tennis: the only sport where preparation usually lasts longer than the point.
The third rally? Another nine shots, 15 seconds.
So across the first three rallies, the average was… 15 seconds. Which means that if the scoreline had been a brisk 11–2 (13 rallies total), the whole professional match would have wrapped up in 195 seconds. Just over three minutes. Three minutes! I could microwave a lasagna in longer.
Of course, in reality this particular match turned into an 86-minute marathon (AI told me so, because YouTube highlights are chopped up with adverts for food delivery apps). But my point remains: even the pros don’t actually make rallies last as long as we imagine. We spectators inflate time in our heads, probably to help justify why we’re still sat watching with a pint an hour later.
Racketlon Rally Time and Game Times
Because of the aforesaid problems of timings from YouTube, I decided to measure rally and game times from a live match where I was there in person – the 2025 FIR Racketlon World Championships in Rotterdam, Netherlands. And I decided to study home favourite Koen Hagaraats V defending world champion Luke Griffiths. It was a high level match, the semi final. And here is a summary of the data collected.
Total Game time was 26 minutes. One reason this is a long time is that a racketlon game is played to 21 points whereas a PSA or League match is played to 11 points. And this includes a 2 minute break at score of 11. If we halve this time it gives 13 minutes which we can estimate as the time if it had been played to 11 points. This Racketlon semi-final was a close match which ended 21-18, that’s 39 rallies (including lets, of which there were 2).
Mean rally duration was 41.1 seconds
Mean shot count: 14.7 shots
Shortest rally by time was Rally 12 → 14.0 seconds, 4 shots, won by Koen
Longest rally by time was Rally 2 → 2 minutes 46 seconds (166s), 81 shots, won by Koen
Minimum shot rallies was 3. These were serve, return, kill and this occurred 4 times, twice by each player. These 3 shot rallies took longer than you might expect but remember the rally time is measured from the end of one rally to the end of the next rally which therefore includes serve preparation time, etc.
– Rally 11 → 22.0s, 3 shots, won by Luke
– Rally 15 → 17.0s, 3 shots, won by Koen
– Rally 23 → 17.0s, 3 shots, won by Luke
– Rally 29 → 19.0s, 3 shots, won by Koen
Overall: the match averaged 41 seconds and ~15 shots per rally, with Koen winning both the longest and shortest (time) rallies, while the minimum shot rallies (3 shots) were shared evenly between Luke and Koen.
Rally 2 is the longest by both time and count. The rally duration was 2 minutes and 46s (166 seconds) which accumulated from 81 shots played. However this point ended after 16 shots with a let and then played out with a 65-shot rally. The time also included a brief non-playing time when Luke challenged a no-let decision at the end of Rally 1.
Rally 1 was the longest continuous rally without a Let which lasted 72 shots and 111 seconds. Perhaps each player was testing the other out. The rally was in fact a mix of shots, not all length shots as the advantage gained and waned between each combatant with neither wanting to concede the first point.
The Biggest Winning Streak is 4 winning rallies in a row. This occurred thrice in the match, twice for Luke and once for Koen. If you want to see a comprehensive break down look to the end of the section. A graph summarises this at a glance… Note the red spike in the middle encompasses the Game Break (a pause) at score 11.
Match Progression Graph
Wannabe Summary → Calorie Time
Squash is a brutal sport. It feels like a long-distance race condensed into four walls and a small rubber ball. But when I checked the stopwatch, those gladiatorial battles often lasted about as long as a kettle boil.
Einstein told us in 1915 that time is not constant — it bends with gravity. I’d like to extend his theory: time also bends when you’re running around in ridiculous shorts, chasing a ball you can barely see, and burning calories at a rate that terrifies Fitbit.
Here’s my discovery: Calorie Time™. The principle is simple. Sitting at a desk, you burn about 70 calories an hour, and time drips by like cold porridge. On a squash court, you torch 700–1,000 calories an hour. That’s ten times the burn rate, which — obviously — stretches time tenfold.
So a four-minute game doesn’t feel like four minutes. It feels like forty. Which means I can now stop feeling guilty about being out all night for “one quick match.” Science says I was playing for hours.
Coming soon to a TED Talk near you.
Actual Summary
My forays into heart rate measurement didn’t uncover any secret formula for winning squash. Heart rates, rally times, number of shots, match duration — none of it pointed to the magic key.
So was it all a waste of time? In absolute terms, maybe. But in Calorie Time™, it was hours of meaningful discovery.
And that’s the point, really. It’s not the length of the match that matters, it’s what you pack into it. Long rallies, short rallies — who cares? The only thing that counts is whether you made each shot worthwhile (and whether you had fun pretending you were in the PSA final).
And when people say exercise makes you live longer, maybe it’s not about biology at all. Maybe it’s just that the extra calorie burn is stretching your personal timeline. If that’s true, then squash players are basically time travellers. Which, if you ask me, is an even better excuse for being late home after “just a quick game.”
Acknowledgements
Much appreciation and thanks to the competitors of the Porthcawl Squash Club Tournament, its organizing Committee, Squash Wales, FIR Racketlon, Lasers Are Us and The Kenfig Club for making this possible.
ChatGPT was used for data analysis and some definitions. I corrected many errors it generated! But maybe some got through!
— Simon Lau, Lasers Are Us
Heart Rate Tournament Match Details
Match 11
Duration: 4 min | Rallies: 16 | Score: 5–11 | Winner: Player 2
Mean: 15.00s | Max: 30.48s (Rally 12) | Min: 8.09s (Rally 13)
Longest Win Streak: Player 2 (5 rallies: [6, 7, 8, 9, 10])
Match 12
Duration: 4 min | Rallies: 16 | Score: 11–5 | Winner: Player 2
Mean: 13.96s | Max: 20.21s (Rally 6) | Min: 7.61s (Rally 10)
Longest Win Streak: Player 2 (4 rallies: [1, 2, 3, 4])
Match 13
Duration: 6 min | Rallies: 16 | Score: 11–5 | Winner: Player 1
Mean: 22.50s | Max: 41.50s (Rally 9) | Min: 12.75s (Rally 4)
Longest Win Streak: Player 1 (last 6 rallies)
Match 14
Duration: 5 min | Rallies: 17 | Score: 11–6 | Winner: Player 2
Mean: 17.65s | Max: 29.72s (Rally 9) | Min: 8.53s (Rally 4)
Longest Win Streak: Player 2 (5 rallies: [1, 2, 3, 4, 5])
Match 15
Duration: 4 min | Rallies: 16 | Score: 11–5 | Winner: Player 2
Mean: 15.07s | Max: 24.53s (Rally 9) | Min: 9.04s (Rally 4)
Longest Win Streak: Player 2 (4 rallies: [2, 3, 4, 5])
Match 16
Duration: 3 min | Rallies: 13 | Score: 11–2 | Winner: Player 2
Mean: 13.82s | Max: 26.74s (Rally 4) | Min: 6.47s (Rally 8)
Longest Win Streak: Player 2 (last 5 rallies)
Match 17
Duration: 7 min | Rallies: 22 | Score: 10–12 | Winner: Player 1
Mean: 19.09s | Max: 57.48s (Rally 8) | Min: 8.42s (Rally 2)
Longest Win Streak: equal Player 2 (4 rallies: [3, 4, 5, 6]) and Player 1 (4 rallies: [7, 8, 9, 10])
Match 18
Duration: 7 min | Rallies: 24 | Score: 11–13 | Winner: Player 2
Mean: 17.50s | Max: 26.47s (Rally 11) | Min: 6.16s (Rally 1)
Longest Win Streak: Player 2 (6 rallies: [3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8])
Match 20
Duration: 9 min | Rallies: 20 | Score: 11–9 | Winner: Player 1
Mean: 29.91s | Max: 58.06s (Rally 1) | Min: 11.61s (Rally 3)
Longest Win Streak: Player 1 (5 rallies: [16, 17, 18, 19, 20])
This match was actually measured at 12 minutes long, however one rally included an instance where the ball broke and a new ball was warmed up before play resumed.
Racketlon Match Koen V Luke Data
Rally Data
| Rally # | Rally Duration (s) | Shot Count | Winner (from list) | Winner (CSV) |
| 1 | 111.0 | 72 | P2 (Koen) | P2 (Koen) |
| 2 | 166.0 | 81 | P2 (Koen) | P2 (Koen) |
| 3 | 52.0 | 18 | P1 (Luke) | P1 (Luke) |
| 4 | 47.0 | 22 | P2 (Koen) | P2 (Koen) |
| 5 | 27.0 | 9 | P2 (Koen) | P2 (Koen) |
| 6 | 34.0 | 11 | P2 (Koen) | P2 (Koen) |
| 7 | 29.0 | 12 | P1 (Luke) | P1 (Luke) |
| 8 | 51.0 | 14 | P2 (Koen) | P2 (Koen) |
| 9 | 61.0 | 33 | P1 (Luke) | P1 (Luke) |
| 10 | 50.0 | 17 | P1 (Luke) | P1 (Luke) |
| 11 | 22.0 | 3 | P1 (Luke) | P1 (Luke) |
| 12 | 14.0 | 4 | P2 (Koen) | P2 (Koen) |
| 13 | 36.0 | 8 | P2 (Koen) | P2 (Koen) |
| 14 | 29.0 | 12 | P2 (Koen) | P2 (Koen) |
| 15 | 17.0 | 3 | P2 (Koen) | P2 (Koen) |
| 16 | 19.0 | 5 | P1 (Luke) | P1 (Luke) |
| 17 | 30.0 | 14 | P1 (Luke) | P1 (Luke) |
| 18 | 29.0 | 9 | P1 (Luke) | P1 (Luke) |
| 19 | 26.0 | 8 | P1 (Luke) | P1 (Luke) |
| 20 | 36.0 | 8 | P2 (Koen) | P2 (Koen) |
| 21 | 141.0 | 12 | P2 (Koen) | P2 (Koen) |
| 22 | 31.0 | 12 | P1 (Luke) | P1 (Luke) |
| 23 | 17.0 | 3 | P1 (Luke) | P1 (Luke) |
| 24 | 32.0 | 14 | P1 (Luke) | P1 (Luke) |
| 25 | 79.0 | 31 | P1 (Luke) | P1 (Luke) |
| 26 | 30.0 | 4 | P2 (Koen) | P2 (Koen) |
| 27 | 45.0 | 20 | P2 (Koen) | P2 (Koen) |
| 28 | 29.0 | 11 | P2 (Koen) | P2 (Koen) |
| 29 | 19.0 | 3 | P2 (Koen) | P2 (Koen) |
| 30 | 58.0 | 27 | P1 (Luke) | P1 (Luke) |
| 31 | 29.0 | 5 | P1 (Luke) | P1 (Luke) |
| 32 | 40.0 | 20 | P2 (Koen) | P2 (Koen) |
| 33 | 33.0 | 9 | P1 (Luke) | P1 (Luke) |
| 34 | 31.0 | 7 | P1 (Luke) | P1 (Luke) |
| 35 | 14.0 | 5 | P2 (Koen) | P2 (Koen) |
| 36 | 16.0 | 5 | P2 (Koen) | P2 (Koen) |
| 37 | 33.0 | 14 | P1 (Luke) | P1 (Luke) |
| 38 | 17.0 | 4 | P2 (Koen) | P2 (Koen) |
| 39 | 21.0 | 5 | P2 (Koen) | P2 (Koen) |
