Bermuda - Major Player ...Power ...Wardrobes ... Parke ... "VOS" ... Virtual Spectator Global Gallery, April 12, 2005 Martin Bronstein, writes this month from his home in London. © 2005 All rights reserved. all photos© 2005, Debra Tessier

BERMUDA: FROM NOWHERE TO MAJOR PLAYER

The Virtual Spectator Bermuda Masters was an unqualified success and with another two years to run in their contract – climaxing with the 2007 World Open – this small island has become a major player on the world squash stage. Ross Triffitt the tournament director had an army of willing volunteers but most importantly they were well trained. Between games it was a great sight to see eight kids invade the court with towels wrapped around their feet or armed with sprays and cloths to clean the glass walls. At many tournaments they can barely muster one person to do the mopping up after a sweaty body has hit the deck.

The Bermuda Open Venue photo© 2005, Fritz Borchert

SOMETIMES IT’S NICE TO BE A JOURNALIST
It is amazing how many tournaments invite the press and when we get there, we are totally forgotten. All we need is a fair sized room and telephone lines. In Bermuda we had a decent room and broadband and wifi connections supplied by Logic, a phone company who was one of the sponsors. They had two experts on hand to help us get connected and in our goody bag (Yes! A VIP goody bag for journalists, by golly) there was a $20 telephone card. The catering section for the VIPS was just outside the press room and there was endless food at lunch and dinner. Even though for four days we were working from noon until midnight (honest) these conditions made it more than bearable.

THERE GOES THE WARDROBE
In the goody bag, in addition to a T shirt and a Virtual Spectator polo shirt, there was an Izod black polo shirt that was so good that it is now probably the best piece of clothing in my wardrobe. I have no alternative but to dump my entire wardrobe and buy a new one to match the glitzy Izod polo shirt. Expensive tournament…

ANOTHER GOOD REASON FOR NOT BEING A GOLFER
Bermuda is expensive: a fishcake sandwich and a glass of wine cost me $32 at my hotel. (I had a wonderful luxury room at the Fairmont in Southampton all to myself). And the Sunday New York Times set me back $9.50!! That paled in comparison to the suckers who signed up for the golf day on Friday. They all turned up ready for a nice round of golf, which they assumed was as last year, compliments of the promoters. Just before a ball was struck, they were asked to cough up $110. Quite a few jaws hit the ground, but they paid, as golfers do. And that did not include a meal or any drinks.

RUMOURS….
I heard from more than one source that the folks from the Bermuda Squash Rackets Association are getting so serious about their tournament that they are thinking about buying their own MacWil all-glass squash court. They would have had a terrific indoor sports hall but their bid for the cricket world cup came to nowt and so the building program has been stopped.

POWER-LESS

Power was fit and thin in Bermuda photo© 2005, Stephen Line

In one of my reports on the matches I referred to Jonathon Power’s use of his large buttocks to block. ( I was told this by some other players). If that is the case his weaponry may be decreasing. Part of his tremendous performance through five hard matches in Bermuda may be due to a new diet that he is following. His aim is to get down to 5 percent body fat. Be that as it may, his mental state was as good as ever I have seen him. Totally focused on his game plan of wearing his opponents down, even if they were younger than him. He wore out Gregory Gaultier, Thierry Lincou, John White and Lee Beachill. I gotta get me some of that diet.

SOME PLAYERS NEVER LEARN
Talking to Simon Parke at the end of tournament party and in the course of the chat he let slip that he is currently dating the daughter of an international referee. Now for a professional squash player to put himself in that situation makes him vulnerable from both sides – from the father if the player is less of a gentleman than he should be, and from the other players who might think he’s getting preferential treatment.

SPIN? WHAT SPIN?
The man known as The Vice of Squash …sorry that should be the Voice of Squash … was making a star of himself in Bermuda. It is some years since I have attended a tournament where I have had to put up with his “presentation” skills. Each night he told the spectators that the cameras they saw were filming for television and this action would be seen by, wait for it, would be seen by 600 million people. If you took four noughts off that figure, the claim could still be termed imaginative. But then that man has always had trouble differencing between fact, fiction and fantasy.

WANNA FEEL GOOD? TECHNOLOGY
When the spectators turned up to watch the quarters, semis and finals, they were confronted with huge screens, and cameras everywhere. First of all there was Pro-active, the company that films for television, then Virtual Spectator, the sponsor had cameras everywhere, including an overhead camera and, at the front of the court, an infra-red camera. They were seeing what they could do with their 3-D know-how and their high definition cameras. And then there was Horizon who responsible for putting the images on the big screens, showing reruns and imparting all sorts of data. They are the company who are webstreaming the matches for the PSA. I have to say, it gave the whole tournament a sense of importance and an aura of professionalism.