Gordon Continues Quest
Aug 18, 2004, By Rob Dinerman; SquashTalk Independent News Service © 2004; local reporting by Chris Smith, Team Asst Coach

[individual draw/results]

Gordon Rolls To World Junior Round Of 16

U. S. under-19 champion Chris Gordon, the only American entrant remaining in the main draw of the 13th World Junior Championships, weathered a tight second-game tiebreaker and moved smartly into the round of 16 with a 9-0 10-9 9-5 victory today over well-regarded Sebastian Weenink of the Netherlands.

Having thereby fulfilled the expectations implicit in his 9/16 pre-tournament seeding, Gordon is now set to attempt an upset win over three/four seed Farhoon Mebhoob of Pakistan tomorrow afternoon. If he is able to accomplish this mission, Gordon will have successfully emulated the exploits at this event two years ago in India by current Yale star Julian Illingworth, who upset the three/four seed in this very same round.
The Gordon-Mebhoob clash, like virtually every main-draw match from this point onwards, will be contested on the four-glass-wall stadium court in Islamabad that has a seating capacity of 2000 people.

The enthusiastic (some would say boisterous) crowds have been very much a part of the action throughout the early rounds of this tournament, which might at least partially explain the host of upset that have already occurred, though probably a more pertinent reason can be found in how many top-level players have emerged in recent years in this age group, and how quickly the pecking order can change due to the improvements that can be realized almost from week to week at this still-formative level of one's competitive career.

The only other American to advance past the first round was Garnett Booth, who as a Harvard freshman this past season, recovered from a lingering lower-leg injury to play a major role in the first Ivy League championship since 2001 for the Crimson. After starting off with a first-round win over Pascal Tagaz of Germany, Booth ran into 5/8 seed Chris Simpson of England and lost in three yesterday afternoon. Today in the Plate he was defeated by Muhammad Azfar Azan of Malaysia. His teammates Joe Raho and Suleyman Saleem, who lost their Plate matches yesterday afternoon, both had today off and are scheduled to play in the consolation part of the Plate competition tomorrow.

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