h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Unfortunately, there are two conventions for labelling ball speed - the traditional labelling and the new Dunlop labelling. The traditional ball speeds were yellow (v. slow), white (slow), red (medium) and blue (fast) with the fastest balls being better for beginners and the slowest best for very good players. Dunlop (maker of the vast majority of squash balls) recently decided to introduce a new system of double-dot (v. slow, "Pro"), single-dot (slow, "Competition"), no dot (medium, "Max Progress") and blue-ball (fast, "Max"). There is also a High Altitude ball (green dot). The double-dot and single-dot use a yellow coloured dot and confusion with the old system (still used by other manufacturers) developed. The Max and Max Progress balls are also a little bigger, in the hope that beginners/improvers find them easier to hit.

The the difference between the balls, while labelled "slow" ,"fast" etc., actually is more about how hot you have to get them for them to bounce adequately - thus a professional (who plays long rallies with many hard drives) gets a good bounce out of a pro ball, where-as I would not (though it's hard to convince friends that "what's good enough for Peter Nicol, isn't good enough for them"). Personally, I recommend that you play with a ball for the level below where you think you are - most people overestimate their skill until they meet a substantially better player (i.e. in a tournament). High quality games of squash are usually dominated by good length drives down the side wall. If your game is predminantly a front-court, drop-shot sort of game then you're probably using a ball that's too slow for your skill level, as loose short shots are usually easy to punish with a decently bouncing (i.e. hot enough) ball.