Not quite a smash hit

The China Open 2015 squash tournament was held on the Bund and competitors face off in a glass cube overlooking the Huangpu River. [Photo by Gao Erqiang/China Daily]

The Stars on the Bund China Open 2015 was quite literally an over-the-top squash tournament.

For the past decade, organizers of this competition have brought the century-old sport to esteemed locations around the world, including under the chandelier of New York Central Station's Vanderbilt Hall, the Hong Kong Harbor, and even in front of the pyramids in Giza, Egypt.

This time round, it was held atop the Peninsula Shanghai, where competitors from across the globe competed in a specially-built glass cube on the terrace of the hotel's 110,000-yuan-per-night presidential suite. It was dubbed as the "largest world tour of squash in China". The view of the Shanghai skyline was stunning. The action taking place in the cube was exciting.

But the general mood in the crowd attending this exclusive by-invitation-only event was somewhat lackluster.

The underwhelming reception is perhaps unsurprising, considering how squash－birthed as a variation of older racquet sports in a British school in the 19th century－is still a relatively niche sport in China. Furthermore, squash isn't even an Olympic sport.

In fact, many of the people in attendance were not there to appreciate the finer points of the game nor support their favorite squash stars. Instead, a good number of those within the crowd were actually wealthy parents who were attending the event for a rather peculiar reason－they saw the sport as a potential ticket for their children to enter prestigious Ivy League schools in the United States.

One such parent was Cao Xiaojing, who learned about the game from her daughter's international school in the Chinese capital, which recently added squash as an optional course in the curriculum. The daughter has since picked up the sport over tennis, which is vastly more popular in China, and Cao believes that squash could turn out to be more than just a weekly workout, but also as a possible asset to use as leverage for school applications.

After all, Ivy League institutions do pay a little more attention to applicants who excel in sports, and squash's relatively low take-up rate in China means there's less competition to outdo.

"We have flown down from Beijing just for the game," says Cao, who was accompanied by her 13-year-old daughter. "She is growing fond of it. What's more, it's easier to make achievements when there are fewer peers playing this sport."