Jay Nelson will be awarded the 2019 Robert W. Callahan Men’s Sportsmanship Award at the 2019 FS Investments U.S. Open.

The ceremony will be on Tuesday, October 8, as a part of the sixth-annual Character in Sports Day. Purchase tickets here.

Jay Nelson is a legendary masters player. He played squash at Andover and Harvard and for the last half century has been a mainstay of squash in New York City. Inducted into the U.S. Squash Hall of Fame in 2013, Nelson has won thirty-one titles at the National Singles tournament. In hardball, Nelson won the U.S. national men’s 45+ in 1989 and 1990 and the 50+ in 1993 and 1995; in softball the 40+ in 1984 and 1985; the 45+ in 1987 and 1988; the 50+ from 1992 through 1996; the 55+ from 1997 through 2001; the 60+ in 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2006; the 65+ in 2007 through 2011; the 70+ in 2012 and 2016; and the 75+ in 2017 and 2019.

He is renowned as an example of sportsmanship. He was awarded NY Squash’s Eddie Standing Trophy in 1974 for exceptional sportsmanship and throughout his decades in the game has emphasized fair play and courtesy.

Character in Sports Day calls attention to the central importance of sportsmanship in squash. It welcomes all past recipients of national squash sportsmanship awards including the Callahan, Feron’s Wedgwood, the DeRoy (for junior players), the Skillman and Richey (collegiate individual awards) and the Sloane and Chaffee (team awards). In 2014 US Squash created the Robert W. Callahan Sportsmanship Award. Previous winners include Ed Chilton, Rich Sheppard, Richard Chin, Mark Talbott and Chris Spahr.

Bob Callahan was the men’s coach at Princeton for thirty-two years before he died in January 2015 at the age of fifty-nine. His teams won three national titles and more Skillman Awards than any other college in the nation. He founded the world’s oldest squash summer camp and in 1998 directed the World Junior Men’s Championship. He was inducted into the U.S. Squash Hall of Fame in the class of 2011.