SquashTalk >Cathay Pacific 2002, Hong Kong, China > Day One - Inside the Players After Match Ritual

Cathay Pacific 2002

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Player reports from Hong Kong by Joe and Dan Kneip

By Joe and Dan Kneipp

Joe’s first round encounter in Hong Kong was against former British Open Champion David Evans. Evans is currently ranked 14 in the world and has been a consistent top twenty player over the last three years. Their game was the longest match of the day at 62 minutes with Joe eventually winning 16-17, 15-13, 15-7, 15-8.

He now has a rest day in preparation for his second round match against Peter Nicol.

There was nothing easy about today’s match. For an hour and twenty minutes Dave had me sniffing every corner of the court. Try to imagine a puppy searching for ball on a squash court and bounding from corner to corner. That’s how I feel sometimes during a match. Now it’s finished I have no energy left and apparently someone has come and removed all of the oxygen from the building. But I have won and don’t play until the day after tomorrow as it is a split first round.

What can I do to get this hurting body fresh and ready for the second round?

My match finishes at 8:45pm and Beng Hee and Del Harris are on straight after me.

This means I have to vacate the player’s chair as quickly as possible making sure I don’t leave any spare racquets or shoes lying around. I head off to the change room to stretch my ailing body before the soreness sets in.

There’s a couple of considerations I need to make. I am dripping in sweat with every article of clothing completely saturated. It’s no good for my recovery to stay like this for too long, so I’ll usually change into a tracksuit to warm down. More than anything I just want to hit the showers and try to forget about how much my body is hurting. If I do this too soon not only will it mean that I haven’t warmed down properly, but an overly quick shower means that my body hasn’t cooled down properly yet and as soon as I leave the change room I’ll start sweating again and defeat the purpose of the shower in the first place. I can feel my body tightening up, making the stretching all the more important. If I don’t go through my proper stretches then the flexibility I have been working on so hard up to this point will be jeopardised and I’ll be even more sore tomorrow.

When I finally do get into the shower it makes everything good again and it feels like the pain is simply washing away and not going to be heard from again. But as I turn the taps off I am reminded that this is all a brief illusion. After changing I book into the Physio before I leave the club in the hope that he can help my aches on my day off.

After a particularly tough match it is easy to feel dizzy and feint. Danny will usually make me get some glucose into my body to keep my blood sugar levels replenished (usually with lollies – Roger Flynn), along with the mandatory liquid quantities that would embarrass a camel. During as average game like this I lose about 21/2 kilos (5 pounds) in weight from fluid loss and have on occasions lost as much as 5 kilos after a really hard match particularly playing somewhere like northern Australia where the humidity is extreme and the courts are never air conditioned.

I need to eat before too long, but as always after playing a hard match I am not hungry at all. I know I am not going to be even slightly hungry for about two hours.

So what happens now? Hong Kong is one of my favourite cities, but the post game scenario remains similar all over the world If there was such a thing as Squash Big Brother and cameras followed the pros around, the most frequently occurring activity of a squasher on tour would be tonight’s viewing.

The best label I can give it is watching the Recovery Channel. Put something on the tele (usually a DVD, if you travel for a living you can’t rely on hotel television for entertainment), lie on the bed and stretch. You’d be surprised at how many stretches can be adapted so that you can do them by yourself on a bed. It is such an unbelievably familiar position. Frequently you visit one of the other pros in their room and they are doing the exact same thing. Something blaring on the tele while they stretch on the bed.

So I watched tele for a couple of hours stretching on and off the whole time, waiting for the hunger to arrive. Even if it doesn’t happen food must be consumed as my body needs to recharge - it will be weaker without a decent meal. Ideally I would go out with a couple of other players to a restaurant within walking distance of the hotel, but my weary body doesn’t feel like walking around the city so I go with room service.

Most pros would have ordered the pasta, but I went for the biggest hamburger on the menu, hoping that it’ll entice me to eat. Despite not being hungry this meal doesn’t fill me up but leaves me reasonably satisfied. I go back to the Recovery Channel and begin waiting again, this time for sleepiness.

It is going to be a long wait. It’s always hard to sleep when your mind is occupied. It’s hard not to analyse your game and work out what went wrong and what went right. As usual more things went wrong than right, but in a way this makes the win more satisfying. Part of competing at the top level is being able to walk on court, not play your best but still grind out a win. It’s very frustrating though when it happens against you. So this is being played out through my mind, along with thoughts for my upcoming match against Nicol. What could I have done better last time I played him? Did he beat me or did I lose? How would I have gone today if I was playing him instead? Is John White putting on weight?

Just the important questions.

So with all of these thoughts racing through my head sleeping isn’t so easy. The six hour time difference between Hong Kong and Amsterdam also means my sleep patterns have been thrown into turmoil and I’m partly resigned to having to lie in bed for at least a couple more hours before my eyes will finally close and resign to the sleep that today’s work has meant I so desperately need.

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