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New York's Glenn Greenberg, Powerful Slugger

TWICE NEW YORK STATE CHAMPION, TWICE NATIONALLY TOP FOUR

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Sept 2003, By Rob Dinerman © 2002 SquashTalk
Photos: © 2001 SquashTalk

Scion of Hall of Famer Hank Greenberg Went His Own Way

Glenn Greenberg was always an imposing presence on court. © SquashTalk LLC

One of metropolitan New York's most formidable regional fixtures, and arguably the region's most dominant amateur player during his prime years in the late 1970's, big Glenn parlayed his imposing physical presence and relentless competitive determination into two New York State titles ('78 and '79), two Met A championships (also '78 and '79), a total of nine regional MSRA finals and a
pair of placements in the top four of the USSRA national rankings.

Eldest scion of the legendary Hall Of Fame home run hitter Hank Greenberg and the older brother of former major league baseball deputy commissioner Stephen, Glenn was a first-team all-Ivy defensive tackle on Yale's great Brian Dowling-Calvin Hill teams of the late 1960's (where he and equally large sidekick Bob Greenlee formed the Valley Of The Jolly Green Giants) and was selected in the 1968 draft by the Cleveland Browns.

Greenberg had spent a number of his grade-school years in Cleveland while Hank had been general manager of the Indians, but he chose not to pursue a career in pro football, moving back instead to his native New York that fall and taking up squash during the next several years while earning an MBA at Columbia Business School. After winning the Met B (and receiving the Bob Lehman end-of-season "Most Improved Player Award") in '72, Greenberg garnered the first of his six consecutive top-10 national rankings in '75, when his comeback five-game semi-final win over Penn all-American Joe Swain and subsequent three-game final over Len Bernheimer gained him the John Jacobs trophy and gave the squash world an early sign of the powerful forehand drives and intense aura (highly reminiscent of the no-nonsense attitude which his father had always exuded on the baseball diamond) that would become his trademarks.

In addition to his ability to generate pace, Greenberg also possessed surprising mobility for a man his size, particularly after de-bulking and dropping 30 pounds from his gridiron days, though one aspect of the Greenberg persona that did survive the remarkable transition between these highly differing sports was a football-derived willingness, even eagerness, to mix it up around
the T. Though he was deservedly known as a clean player, his on-court style was rugged and aggressive enough to make opponents think twice about being overly assertive while jockeying for position; especially when a match heated up, as it often did during that hectic period in squash's expansion; no one engaged in turf wars with Glenn Greenberg.

This latter quality belied a tactical shrewdness that was sometimes overlooked and/or under-rated by squash aficionados; he was especially good about mixing up his rail and three-walls, and his anticipation and ability to divine his opponent's intentions carried him through many of his close victories, as did the mental toughness he displayed in those crucial points that so often determine the outcome of a long and wearing battle. These traits emerged week-in and week-out in a slew of solid wins that consistently brought Greenberg deep into the draws of the major amateur invitationals, as well as in a number of airtight wins over well-ranked WPSA professionals, among which were his five-game '79 Met A final over Stew Grodman, his fifth-game tiebreaker win in the
Boston Open over Charlie Khan and especially his back-from-the-dead rally from 9-14 to 17-14 in the fifth game of his '79 Metropolitan Open quarter-final with the heavily-favored WPSA No. 9 Larry Hilbert.

In addition to winning the '75 Jacobs and the '76 Trenton Invitational (where he rallied from 0-2 to defeat John Bottger Sunday morning and then dominated long-time rival Gil Mateer in the final that afternoon), Greenberg also received the '79 Edwin Bigelow Trophy "For Excellence In Play" and won multiple club championships at both the University Club and the Yale Club, whose fourth
and last such title occurred in the spring of '87, shortly after his 40th birthday and soon after his season-long performance at No. 1 had brought the Yalies to the Met A league crown. Appropriately enough, in his last competitive match in the early spring of '91, by which time he was 44 and struggling with a bad disc problem in his back, Greenberg contributed a crucial play-off win
over a much-younger opponent to yet another Yale Club surge to the league championship.

By that time, Greenberg, now 56, had experienced great success in business as managing general partner of a highly respected mid-town investment advisory firm, Chieftain Capital Management, which he co-founded 20 years ago. His many years of intensely competitive athletics have taken their toll in the form of major injuries to his knees, back and both shoulders, but the next Greenberg generation is already preparing to make its mark. This seems especially true of Duncan Greenberg, the youngest of Glenn's three sons, who is captain of his high-school soccer team and a star on the baseball team, where as an outfielder he is playing the same position that his famous grandfather played for the Detroit Tigers when on the final day of the 1945 season he hit the
ninth-inning grand-slam home run that erased a 4-3 deficit and propelled his team to the American League pennant and ultimately to the World Series victory that followed over the Chicago Cubs.

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