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Softly, Softly
First Day's Action in Sheffield
By Martin Bronstein © 2003; all rights of reproduction reserved.
August 13, 2003 

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SOFTLY, SOFTLY

I would like to report that the Prince English Open started with a bang at The Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, but ‘crucible’ was a dreadfully inappropriate noun to describe the first day ambience inside this venue which is best known for its snooker tournaments (where the prize money runs into many hundreds of thousands of dollars).

It was not the fault of the mis-matches on the court entirely; the spectators -and this is a notorious characteristic of Brit squash spectators – were quieter than mice, given to polite applause at the end of the rally with nary a whisper of emotion to be heard. They probably make a helluva lot more noise at wakes.

Anthony Ricketts and Alex Gough were given the honour of the first match of this brand new tournament played on a brand new glass court. Ricketts, ranked seven in the world was for the most part focussed and highly disciplined in his play. He took the first game 15-3 a little too easily and then really had to keep that focus in the second as the wily Gough warmed to the task at hand and made Ricketts do a lot of running to stay in the game, which went point for point all the way to 11-all. But Gough, who is over 30, paid more for the work than his opponent and two silly errors helped Ricketts to win the long (24 minutes) game 15-11.

Gough was far from finished however and continued to use all his experience and guile to stop Ricketts running away with the match. Indeed, Gough led for much of the third game and even got to game ball twice - at 14-13 and then again at 16-14 – but Ricketts, who works a lot with Rodney Martin – was single-minded about each point and finally ran out a 17-16 winner after 66 minutes of hard squash.

NICOL DEMONSTRATES THE VALUE OF ACCURACY
My forecast that Olli Tuominen, the very tough Finn, would keep the world number one on court for at least an hour was way off. Nicol was simply too fast, too tough and much too accurate for the Finn. Nicol’s shooting was clinically accurate – everything tight, good length everywhere and a superb touch on his fast volley drops. Poor old Olli was reduced to the role of reactor, the Step ‘n Fetchit role in this double act and while he may be proud of his victory in the qualifying over Paul Price, he learned very quickly that there was a huge difference between Nicol and Price.
Nicol won 3/0 in 32 minutes and left the court to polite applause and donned his promoter hat and worry about the ticket sales and other worldly things.

John White hit his usual number of outrageous winners and handful of errors while beating Simon Parke in three. It was by no means a walkover – Parke is far too experienced to allow that to happen - but he never appeared to have a game plan and spent much of his time scampering to pick up White’s slammed drives and cracking drops. After losing the first 15-12 in 23 minutes, Parke kept in the game and forged to a 13-11 lead in the second. White pulled back to 13-13 and Parke took the next point to stand at game ball. White was not going to lose this game and evened it up, Parke went for set three and again had game ball at 16-15 but White took the next two points to win the 22 minutes game 17-16. The point about the lanky ex-Aussie is that he makes it look so easy; he has the most relaxed swing in the game and sends the ball rocketing around the court with almost no effort. On reflection, Parke did well to even hold game ball.

As expected White took the third game and Parke once more left the court with the look of frustration – the look of a man who was once world number four and walked off the court more often a winner than loser. Parke is now over 30 and still plays a fine game of squash but his day has gone.

The final match of the night was between world number nine, Ong Beng Hee, and world number 60 Tim Garner. What??? How ??? Well, dear boy, Tim Garner is one of the promoters and was given a wild car straight into the main draw. All is now perfectly clear. He and Ong Beng Hee train together under Neil Harvey so they know each other’s game quite well. It’s just that Beng Hee is younger and better and the outcome was obvious from the start. Garner was gasping for air by the end of the second game while Beng Hee kept smashing and moving the ball impassively. That the match only lasted for 37 minutes was a relief to us all.

First Round:
[1] Peter Nicol (Eng) bt Olli Tuominen (Fin) 15-11, 15-4, 15-6 (66 mins)
[5]Anthony Ricketts (Aus) bt Alex Gough (Wal)15-3, 15-11,17-16 (32 mins)
[3]John White (Sco) bt Simon Parke (Eng) 15-12, 171-16 15-7 (60 mins)
[6] Ong Beng Hee (Mal) bt Tim Garner (Eng) 15-12, 15-4, 15-5 (37 mins)

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