USA Concludes with #14 Finish
Aug 29, 2004, By Rob Dinerman; SquashTalk Independent News Service © 2004;

[medal draw/results]     [team pool results]

For the fifth consecutive match, a lead-off victory, this time in straight games, by U. S. No. 1 Chris Gordon meant that his teammates needed only a split of the following two matches to clinch the team outcome.

But for the third time in that quintet of opportunities, the one necessary remaining win proved elusive and ultimately unattainable, as a willing but slightly out-matched American squad bowed two matches to one to Hong Kong on the final day of the World Junior Championships Team tournament in the battle to determine 13th place overall. The Championship final was won, also 2-1, by defending champion and host nation Pakistan, who thrilled an overflow crowd that jammed Mushaf Squash Complex in Islamabad by weathering a win by newly crowned Individual champion and Egyptian star Ramy Ashour at No. 1 and asserting their superior depth by claiming the Nos. 2 and 3 positions.

Gordon, who was eliminated in the round of 16 in the Individual tournament, went six for six at No. 1 in the Team event, punctuating his week-long run with a 9-0, 7 and 3 win over his hapless Hong Kong opponent Dick Lau. American coach Mike Calloway decided to substitute Suleyman Saleem at No. 3 for a fatigued Joe Raho, who played valiantly but came up short all week, and who had dropped an exhausting four-game match just yesterday to his Swiss opponent Benjamin Fischer. But Saleem went down swiftly to Ho Fai Chui, thereby creating a situation where, incredibly, for the fifth time in a row (previously against England, Malaysia, Singapore and Switzerland), the entire outcome of a U. S. team meet rested on the wrap-up No. 2 match.

Harvard sophomore Garnett Booth, who had missed the England match due to illness, had been on the firing line against each of the three subsequent opponents, rallying from match-ball-against to rescue the fourth game against Malaysia before being whitewashed in the fifth, rallying from two games to one down to win in five vs. Singapore and taking no prisoners against his Swiss counterpart Nicolas Muller in a dominant straight-game 32-minute win yesterday.

Perhaps it was just too many days without respite in this type of enervating pressure-packed environment, or perhaps it would have been asking too much of him to duplicate the peak-level performance he had put on against Muller barely 24 hours earlier.

Whatever the backdrop, Booth allowed Anson Kwong to jump out to an early lead, a crucial factor in such a late-tournament setting, where everyone is near the end of their rope both physically and psychologically, and the young Crimson star was never able to really establish any momentum as Kwong moved smartly to a well deserved 9-4, 3 and 3 meet-deciding victory.

General Pervez Musharraf, the President of Pakistan, was on hand to witness the final, after which he gave away the prizes, spoke enthusiastically to the crowd about the importance of sport in general and squash (in which he himself is a creditable practitioner) in particular, expressing his hope for a return of Pakistani players to the top Open level of a sport they had dominated for decades prior to a recent dry spell following the retirements of Jahangir and Jansher Khan.

In addition to awarding his country's junior team the two million rupees that had been their pre-tournament incentive for winning the Team competition, President Musharraf also awarded the program an additional three million rupees, thereby creating an overall total the equivalent of $90,000 which will be allocated to the team's members and coaches to cover future training and tournament travel expenses. He announced as well that any player from his country who wins an Individual world title will receive an additional one million rupees in recognition of this accomplishment.

The day concluded with a wonderful dinner for all teams, sponsors and guests under an enormous tent at the Serena Hotel, the premier such establishment in Islamabad. Five of Pakistan's most famous pop stars performed as a hectic two weeks of top-level junior squash ended in extraordinary culinary and musical fashion. A 5:00 a.m. flight tomorrow morning awaits the weary Americans, all of whom, however, had a competitive and cultural experience that is likely to enrich their squash careers and lives for many years to come.

13th place play-off:
[13/18] HONG KONG bt [13/18] USA 2-1
Dick Lau lost to Christopher Gordon 0-9, 7-9, 3-9;
Ho Fai Chui bt Suleyman Saleem 9-0, 9-1, 9-1;
Anson Kwong bt Garnett Booth 9-4, 9-3, 9-3

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