YMG Capital Classic 2002

Canada's second seeded Jonathon Power has always showed a quiet determination to show his best stuff when in Canada, and in fact North America overall. He certainly was at his best last night in freezing the hot hand of Joe Kneipp.

Power, the Commonwealth Games Champion, went to the final of the YMG Capital Canadian Squash Classic in Toronto with a 53 minute 15-11 15-1 15-12 semi-final win over Australia's Joe Kneipp that was as sweet a home town victory as any athlete could have wished for.

BLITZKRIEG
At the heart of the victory was an eight minute attack of such speed, accuracy and sheer psychological domination that even the success hungry Torontonians in the executive seats erected around a brand new sparkling glass showcourt at the BCE Centre were reduced to a hushed awe.

The final will provide the clash that the promoter, John Nimick of Event Engine hoped for: Power against the defending champion, Peter Nicol of England, who later tonight disposed of Australia's Stewart Boswell 15-13 15-8 15-6 in 57 minutes showing no signs whatever of the ankle sprain he picked up in last week's league action in England and complained about feeling while beating South Africa's highly mobile Rodney Durbach in the quarter-finals.

"I was moving pretty well tonight after a patchy spell at the start of the semi-final," Nicol said. "I think that was mostly in my head because, once I got going I forgot completely about the ankle and I felt nothing after the match. I was able to think about shotmaking and that made me more effective.

"Stewart does not move to the front well all the time and I was able to construct my rallies to take advantage of that tonight. He thought he was getting close to me after our quite close encounter in Qatar recently, so it was quite good for future meetings to be able to force him back in his box a bit tonight." It was Boswell's eighth loss to Nicol over the past two years.

QUICK RECOVERY
"Now I am glad I made the decision to play here in spite of the ankle injury," Nicol went on. "We have the final everyone here wanted and this is such a good atmosphere in which to take on Jonathon. I think we can give them a better final than the one Jonathon won pretty quickly two years ago when it took pretty much everything I had after being injured for a while just to reach the end of the tournament."

A DIFFERENT GAME
Power's eight minute game was the fastest in the tournament so far. I was reminded, perhaps because I was mulling over the oddity that Joe Kniepp, a Queenslander of German extraction, may be the most effective exponent of spoken English on the professional squash court, although he lives in Amsterdam these days, that it once took Jahangir Khan about the same amount of time to win the opening rally of a World Open final from Jansher Khan in Amsterdam.

"Different game then and different tactical bases," Power said after this semi-final. They were working for position, for an obvious position from which to apply a winning shot with heavier rackets and less responsive balls on slower courts. We are looking for quick kills and nick shots with lighter quicker rackets on a court that just demands action and incident and rewards the adventurous."

Jahangir would often deliberately introduce a game in mid-match where he simply refused to end the play, forcing his opponent to run and run, eventually to deposit most of his staying power in that one game, or at least to come out for the next one knowing hen could have as much more of that pain as he fancied.

Power denied that there was deep tactical thought in the application of such a devastating eight minute attack. "I will fire one of those in whenever I can," he said. "It doesn't always work quite so well. Tonight I was moving well, able to take the pace up quite a lot from the start of the second, and the shots were going in when I hit them. As you could see in the third game that followed, it takes a lot to hit that level and maintain it for a whole game."

Kneipp claimed not to have been psychologically discomforted by the second game near-whitewash, in which his one point came from a minutely low long backhand drop shot from Power that was the Canadian's only mistake in the game. "I can come back from that sort of thing," Kneipp insisted. "I showed that in both the matches I won getting to the semi-final.

"Jonathon played brilliantly in that game. I could not get close to him. But I was not far off him in the opening game and I had the initiative for most of the third. I thought I was worth one of those games and, as I have shown here, with a game in the hand I am not that easy to get rid of."

He certainly won the talking prize. Within a few rallies Kneipp was out of the court encouraging the front row spectators to agree that the long backhand dropshot Power played for a lead of 8-3 was truly impressive, but wasn't it a shame, he asked them, that it was preceded in a long hard running and shot-filled rally by a bad pick up that the referee, Gerry Poulton, had completely missed.

Earlier, when Power gained two fairly cheap penalty strokes in a row for 7-2, the Australian came out to coach Poulton in the pronunciation of the phrase : "Let-ball to Power." When the official failed to follow his lead, Kniepp promptly manufactured an almost identical incident from which Poulton was forced to grant him a penalty point too.

"Kneipp was getting in the referee's head so the referee made a few bad judgements, but there weren't that many calls," said Power after the match.

None of this mattered much when Power opened up in the second game with a run of 13 unstoppable high speed rallies. Power was pleased with his second game attack.

"I really picked up the pace and got my drops going. He fell off the pace a little bit. I was really pissed off I didn't get that zero (sic 15-0). Those are rare. "My strategy was to get on top of him and play fast and it worked. I have a physical advantage. He's a really skilled racquet player, but I'm quicker than he is. I just started to use my athletecism and go a little bit faster than him. That was the difference."

In the third, though, Poulton needed to keep Power's nose to the grindstone as he tried to recover from the second game effort with a few judiciously selected let calls. "You need to go get those balls," the referee told the Canadian on one occasion and, another time when Power claimed to have asked on a ball that he failed to reach : "I didn't hear you call but, if you did, it is a no-let."

At 12-12 it looked momentarily as though Kneipp might launch another of his fightback spectaculars, but the chance slipped away from him under Power's counter-attacking pressure. The Australian hit a forehand out over the top joint of the front wall and the righthand sidewall, then fired a long backhand dropshot into the tin, and finally drooped away from a sharp forehand passing shot into the deep righthand corner.

So now Jonathon Power faces his nemesis and rival Peter NIcol on his home turf. Power was looking forward to the matchup:

"Peter is not at his best. It'll be more fun to play Peter tomorrow right here in front of a home crowd that at the European and Asian venues.

"For me the YMG Capital Canadian Classic is one of the most important tournaments of the year. It's the only time I play in Canada, For me it's the only chance to showcase my squash here at home."

YMG Capital Canadian Squash Classic
Toronto, Canada

Semi-finals Results:

Peter Nicol (Eng) bt Stewart Boswell (Aus) 15-13 15-8 15-6
Jonathon Power (Can) bt Joe Kniepp (Aus) 15-11 15-1 15-12