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Messages to the WISPA tour from
Jenny Duncalf and Cassie Jackman

by Rob Dinerman

New York. Published Nov 14, 2003 © 2003 Squashtalk.com

The $37,000 2003 Weymuller U. S. Open, which ended several weeks ago, was memorable both for the manner in which one of the WISPA tour's most experienced players, Cassie Jackman, emphatically consolidated her return to the very top ranks of the WISPA tour, and for the breakthrough performance of one of the circuit's youngest players, Jenny Duncalf, who thereby ascended into the elite level of the women's professional game.

Duncalf, the 20-year-old Yorkshire resident, is coached by her step-father, the famed English senior coach Dave Pearson. She has evinced flashes of her abundant talent while learning her way around the tour during the past few years, but she entered this tournament never having defeated an opponent ranked in the top 20, never having been ranked in the top 20 herself (her current No. 22 position being her highest-ever placement) and having been a qualifying casualty, courtesy Pamela Nimmo, in last year's U. S. Open 11 months earlier.

Her solid four-game victory Sunday evening in the second and last qualifying round over No. 20 Shelley Kitchen was therefore a solid achievement in itself, though it proved only a prelude to what lay ahead 24 hours later. It was one thing to reach two spots above herself and out-play Kitchen; reaching TWENTY spots up and knocking off No. 2 Natalie Grainger was an entirely different matter.

And doing so after dropping a dishearteningly close third game to go down two games to one and falling behind to her more experienced and heavily favored opponent in the middle of the fifth game after taking an early 4-1 lead, as Duncalf did with a remarkable shooting spree down the stretch in the last match of Monday's round-of-16 action, was a truly singular accomplishment.

Even at that, Duncalf's mark on the tournament was far from complete; in her subsequent quarter-final against No. 5 Vanessa Atkinson, she rallied from a two-game deficit to win the third 10-9 on her SEVENTH game-ball (having in the process saved a match-ball against her) and battled her way to 8-6 in the fourth, just one point away from forcing a fifth game the winning of which would have given her two wins over top-five WISPA stars and a spot in the semis.

Atkinson had surrendered the fourth and fifth games on the same court and in the same round of the 2002 version of this event to Rachael Grinham, and she was
sucking wind by this stage of the match.

But the tin-defying backhand drop shot winner that had gotten Duncalf to 8-6 was to be the last point she would win, as Atkinson got the serve back on a nifty cross court drop shot and never relinquished it in running out the next four points, the last on a frantic front-court exchange that ended on a proper stroke call against Duncalf when she hit a wayward rail while stuck close to the front wall. Duncalf was out, but not before playing the match of the night for three consecutive nights and demonstrating that she is well on her way to realizing her considerable potential.

The toll her battle with Atkinson had exacted from the latter was visible one round later when Atkinson could put up little resistance against Jackman.

The second game did go to a tiebreaker when Atkinson engineered a late rally from 4-8, but Jackman was on a mission all week and was not to be denied. The former (1999) World champion came into her Atkinson semi buoyed by her four-game quarter-final win over Grinham, who had beaten her, also in four, just a little more than a week earlier in the British Open final. Grinham had taken the first game of this rematch fairly easily and led early in the second, but in mid-game, aided in part by a rare pair of consecutive unforced Grinham serve-return errors, Jackman found a groove that would ultimately take her all the way to the trophy stand for the third time (previously 1994 and 1996) in the Weymuller and the 25th in her 11 years on the WISPA tour.

Grinham, as noted, had defeated her (for the first time ever) in the final round of the most prestigious championship in the game; Atkinson had won two of their three matches last spring; and Jackman's final-round opponent, top seeded defending U. S. Open champion Carol Owens, the winner of eight of her last nine tournaments prior to being jolted by Grinham in the British Open semis, had taken all six of her matches with Jackman in the four years since losing in five to her in the '99 U. S. Open.

But neither this recent history nor the two back surgeries Jackman had
undergone in the last few years (the second of which sidelined her for the last
eight months of 2002) nor her fall out of the WISPA top 10 as recently as June
was enough to deter the 30-year-old former (for nine months in 2000) No. 1
from imposing her piercing ground strokes, deceptive short game, powerful
first step to the front wall and determined drive to regain the U. S. Open crown
she had previously won in October '99 (over Owens, Leilani Rorani and Michelle
Martin) right after also beating Rorani and Martin earlier that month in the
last two rounds of the Worlds.

Against Owens four years ago, Jackman had been shut out in the fourth game
before winning the fifth 9-6. This time she also had to rally, from 1-2, 5-7
after a four-point Owens run from 3-5 had seemingly sealed the outcome. The
New Zealand star had motored through to the final past Jenny Tranfield,
Rebecca Chiu and Natalie Grinham (who had recorded her first-ever win over fourth
seed Linda Charman in the quarters) without losing a single game. Although Owens
had dropped the first game of the final to Jackman, she had won the second and
third handily and her mid-game sprint over a visibly tiring Jackman to two
points from what would have been a successful title retention was based both
on solid positional play and the kind of bulldog resolve that has ensconced
Owens at No. 1 ever since March.

Which is what made Jackman's four-point spurt of her own from 5-7 to 9-7
and her subsequent superiority through the fifth to her first significant
title since her back surgeries an all the more remarkable amplification of her
charge to the British Open final (featuring a 3-0 semi-final win over
Grainger) 11 days earlier. Jackman's fifth-game charge to 7-3 and eventually to 9-7
(after a courageous Owens rally to 5-7) was marked by her forehand slams into the
right-wall nick, a series of backhand drives that put an increasingly tentative
Owens on the defensive and a level of ESP that on several occasions enabled
her to guess correctly and generate reflex-volley winners almost before Owens
had completed her follow-through.

Jackman's run to the tape was also given an unwarranted and unappreciated assist by a petulant gesture on the part of referee Mike Riley, who marred the entire conclusion and post-match atmosphere when he socked Owens with a conduct stroke after denying her a let request on her serve at 5-7, thereby selfishly indulging his own anger at her at the expense of the integrity of what otherwise had been a riveting and highly entertaining match. The no-let call itself was highly questionable, as witness the murmurs of disapproval that pervaded the gallery in its immediate wake; the conduct stroke that soon followed (which thereby gave Jackman a match-ball at 8-5) was inexcusable, particularly in the absence of any prior warning.

Mark Devoy, the marker for the match and the head professional of the host Heights Casino club, who ironically had himself refereed so many of the pre-semi matches so expertly before handing the baton to Riley, had an expression of disbelief at the ruling, as did Jackman, who wanted no part of a call that would tarnish her victory, and her and Owens's WISPA colleagues sitting courtside, at least a half-dozen of whom were polled afterwards, with all agreeing that nothing more than (at worst) a warning should have been issued.

Not even this shameful episode, which occurred just one point (a Jackman forehand cross court that died at the back) before the end, should take away from the magnificence of Jackman's performance, or for that matter from what a
wonderful tournament the 28th edition of the Weymuller tournament (and second
which also enjoyed "U. S. Open" status in this, its 11th holding as a softball
event) proved to be overall. Duncalf's early-tournament heroics accompanied
Vicky Botwright's courageous qualifying-round win, despite stomach woes that
brought her nearly to her knees, over Nicol David, qualifier Rebecca Chiu's advance to the quarters and Madeline Perry's win, also in the qualifiers, over Amelia Pittock after the latter had upset top qualifying seed Steph Brind.

There were some disappointments as well---Grainger could not have been pleased with her early ouster, 2002 U. S. Open finalist Tania Bailey had to withdraw after two games of her first-round match with Chiu due to a recurrence of the upper-respiratory problems that have plagued her for months, and the four American entrants (Latasha Khan and Meredeth Quick, members of the U. S. Pan
American Games gold-medal team, plus their compatriots Carlin Wing and
Shebana Khan) all lost in three games. But it was a great six days nonetheless,
another praiseworthy step for a WISPA tour that is clearly very much on the
upswing, and, through Duncalf's deeds, a possible first official sign of a true WISPA star on the horizon.

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