White Tops Power in Strange Way
Mar 17, 2005, by Martin Bronstein in London
SquashTalk Independent News Service © 2005 all Rights Reserved;

LIVE FROM CANARY WHARF, TUESDAY MARCH 15 2005 [complete draws and results]

POWER FALLS BEHIND, PULLS EVEN, THEN LOSES

Let’s start in the middle of the third game: Jonathon Power leading 5-3. John White hits a short shot front left and Power goes forward, calls a let, sticks his racket around White and strokes the ball which hits the front wall. Referee Peter Lawrence calls ‘No let’. Power, who has already had half a dozen questionable calls, gets very angry. Lawrence, unwisely gave his reason: “You should have played the ball.” Power’s jaw drops even further. “I did play the ball”. But Lawrence stayed firm on his ridiculous position.

Jonathon Power looks disgusted with his game, photo © 2005 Fritz Borchert

The first time I came across this referee was at the world junior championships in Cairo in 1996, the title that Lee Beachill should have won. He was easily the best player there. In the quarter-final he played a large ungainly Egyptian called Mistikawi who blocked Beachill right out of the game. Lawrence did not see a thing never once gave Beachill a let and never once penalized the Mistikawi. You would think this referee would have learnt something in ten years, no?

The title was won by Ahmed Faizy (who he?) . However in the team championships Beachill wiped Faizy out in four.

Why do I start by writing about this incident? Because up to this point in the match it had been the most interesting thing. I can’t believe I’m writing this, but two of the best, inventive players in the game played boring hacker squash up and down the wall – 40 shot rallies - with both players never having to travel more than three steps to hit the ball. I had a terrible moment where I though I was back in 1979 watching Bruce Brownlee playing Howard Broun. What the hell was happening? Was Power trying to take the legs out of White or vice versa?

Jonathon Power looked fine in spurts but couldn't sustain it, photo © 2005 Fritz Borchert

White won the first game 9-4 with nary a drop shot a winner to be bought for love nor money. By the middle of the second game things looked grave for the Canadian, who was looking worn and was wincing with a stiff back between points. At 6-7 he hit a cracking low shot which Lawrence called down. It was a call that he could not have seen from where he was sitting and should have called a let on the grounds of being unsighted. So instead of being 7-7 the score was now 8-6 in White’s favour and the match ended with Power playing with a broken racket and not worrying too much about the last point.

Power admitted later that the first two games were bad squash on account of his back which had locked up. “I had no movement, I couldn’t play my game,” he explained. “And then in the third it worked its way free and I could play properly.”

He led from the beginning of the third, White making three careless errors to help Power to a lead 4-1. It was after the dreadful decision at 5-3 that Power started to play his game, started moving and slowing the ball up. He won that game 9-7 and then raced through the fourth 9-0 – that’s right, 9-0- in four minutes as White decided to save his energies for the fifth.

He certainly saved well running to a 5-2 lead in the fifth but Power was now hitting his backhand chop drop tight enough to put White in trouble, and pulled within one point 4-5. In the next rally Power had White at his mercy twice and had him running in all directions, but as often happens it was Power who made the error and White moved to 6-4, and then 7-4 on a tinned backhand drop from Power. Power then hit a tight cross-court to get back to 5-7 and still with a fighting chance. But Power hit two more errors, strange silly errors and White had the game 9-5 in a match that last 81 minutes and changed styles several times. It was not a match that anybody will remember in years to come. Or come to that, in days to come.

ISS CANARY WHARF CLASSIC
SEMI-FINALS

John White (SCO) bt Jonathon Power (CAN) 9-4, 9-6, 7-9, 0-9, 9-5 (81mins)

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