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Khan Advances To Women's Final In Pan American Games
First-Round Matches, Quarters and Semis
By Rob Dinerman © 2003; all rights of reproduction reserved.
August 12, 2003 

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Top seed Latasha Khan, the four-time and current U. S. women's national champion, moved confidently to the final round of the individual event in the 2003 Pan American Games with victories yesterday over Karen Anderson of Jamaica and Canadian Marnie Baizley. By subduing the third-fourth seeded Baizley 9-5 9-5 6-9 9-4 in last night's semi-final, the Seattle-based 30-year-old Khan created an opportunity for herself to become the first-ever American squash gold medalist of either gender in this the third edition of the Pan Am Games in which squash has been included.

But in order to accomplish this feat, she will have to defeat Baizley's compatriot Melanie Jans, the defending champion and 47th-ranked player on the WISPA tour (to Khan's No. 22), who may be still riding the momentum of her thrilling fifth-set tiebreaker semi-final victory over Samantha Teran, the Mexican star and No. 2 seed, who rallied from two games to love down and an 8-5 fifth-game deficit to force the climactic tiebreaker session before Jans ultimately prevailed 9-4 10-8 5-9 2-9 10-8. This was the third consecutive five-game match between this pair, who also opposed each other twice on the WISPA tour last year, with Jans prevailing in each case.

The Canadians are potentially poised to repeat their sweep on the men's and women's individual and team gold medals from the '99 version of this quadrennial competition in Winnipeg, as both teams are seeded No. 1 and the men's final will feature Canadians Graham Ryding, the '99 gold medalist and top seed, and No. 2 seed Shahier Razik. Neither has dropped a single game so far, and tonight's final will therefore represent the first real challenge for either of them.

Ryding's pair of Monday rounds were both against American opponents, and he encountered little resistance from Damian Walker, who succumbed 9-3, 0 and 0 after his solid round-of-16 Sunday win over Argentina's Robertino Pezzota, and none from Preston Quick, who had to default their semi-final after injuring his ankle earlier in the day in his highly praiseworthy 9-7 in the fifth quarter-final victory over last year's Federation Cup winner and '99 Pan Am Games silver medalist Jorge Gutierrez. This is an incredibly time-compressed event (the team portion actually begins today, even though the individuals doesn't even end until this evening), and the format provides virtually no recovery time for any in-tournament injuries that occur.

In this regard, even if Quick is permitted to play Razik's straight-game semi-final victim Ronivaldo Santos for third place today, he will have to be mindful of exacerbating his ankle problem, as each team roster consists of only three players (instead of the customary four), and the U. S. team entry, which will have its hands full with Canada a well as several other formidable opponents even under ideal circumstances, can ill afford either a default or a situation in which any player is less than 100 per cent. Quick in particular has had his problems in South America, where he had a very contentious match with Pezzota in last summer's Federation Cup and later contracted a case of Hepatitis A that sidelined him all fall, and he and coach Paul Assaiante will have to be careful as they assess the advisability of having him play in today's third-place play-off.

There are 10 men's teams entered and six women's teams. The Khan-Jans individuals final may constitute a preview of a possible gold-medal team confrontation a few days hence if both squads fulfill their pre-event seeding. Jans won when they met in the 2002 Federation Cup team final but, as noted, Khan holds a substantial 25-spot edge in the current WISPA rankings. The respective No. 2 players, Baizley and American Louisa Hall, would have met in the quarter-finals of the individual event had Hall been able to close out the two games to one lead she held over the wily Brazilian veteran Karen Redfern (who lost in a competitive four to Baizley yesterday morning), so that potentially swing match looks too close to call. Carolyn Russell and Meredeth Quick, the Canadian and American No. 3's, are both doing well in the Plate competition for No. 3 players (as are Canadian ISDA pro doubles star Viktor Berg and American Tim Wyant) and they will play important roles as well as the team portion of this event heats up later in the week.

Somewhat confusingly, there are not one but two facilities, both named The Body Shop, where the squash is being held, one (where a glass exhibition court has been set up along with the two regular courts) for the main event and the other for the Plate. The Pan American Games as a whole are being heavily promoted throughout Santo Domingo, with signs posted everywhere and one regular and one cable TV channel showing the games almost continuously, with screens set to both channels in the lobbies of the downtown hotels. Sports are seen as a way of escape in the Dominican Republic, where especially baseball stars like current stand-outs Sammy Sosa and Pedro Martinez are regarded as heroes and role models. The region seems to have heartily embraced the opportunity to host a sports event of this magnitude, and the athletes village is said to compare favorably with even its counterparts at the Olympic Games.

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