PanAm: Mexican Men, American Women win Gold
July 5, 2004, By Rob Dinerman; SquashTalk Independent News Service © 2004

US Men Garner Bronze

Mexico enjoys their Men's Gold and Women's Silver Medals at the PanAm 04 Contest. (photo FPS)

The 2004 Pan American Federation Cup concluded over the weekend with host Mexico winning the men's team gold medal over Colombia but falling short in their bid for a "double" when the Mexican women's team fell two matches to one to the United States contingent, which thereby successfully defended the Pan American Games title they had won for the first time in the history of Pan American competition last summer in Santo Domingo.

As she had this past August, when her comeback victory over her Canadian opponent Carolyn Russell from a two-game deficit set the table for Latasha Khan's clinching win over Melanie Jans, Meredeth Quick provided the crucial victory in the gold-medal match. She had lost in three competitive but fairly decisive (9-7, 5 and 5) games to her Mexican counterpart Samantha Teran when this pair met less than a week ago in the Individuals gold-medal match. On the basis of this result Teran, who had appeared to have regained her top form after undergoing arthroscopic knee surgery six months ago, was expected to again defeat Quick in the No. 1 match in the team final.

US Women Defend Gold Medal (photo FPS)

By the time they entered the court, Teran knew that she had to win her match in order to keep Mexico's hopes for a gold medal alive, since in the lead-off match Quick's teammate Michelle Quibell had already easily defeated Diana Huerta at No. 2. The latter's mobility was severely compromised by a pulled calf muscle and was able to give only scant resistance to the reigning Intercollegiate Individual champion, who cruised to a pre-ordained 9-0, 0 and 1 victory.

In spite of this setback, the Mexicans believed that Teran would re-assert the supremacy she had achieved so recently over Quick, which would thereby throw the entire outcome to the No. 3 match, where 18-year-old Lily Lorentzen of the U. S. would be taking on Karina Herrera, who would enjoy the unabashed and exceedingly vocal support of the fans who thronged the area around the portable four-glass-wall court that the Tepic organizing committee had transported from Texas just for this tournament.

U. S. women's team coach Demer Holleran, a veteran of a number of Pan Am competitions as the No. 1 American player throughout the 1990's, had made the decision to put Lorentzen at No. 3 in the gold-medal match line-up due to lingering concerns about the status of Louisa Hall's right ankle, which she had sprained in the Individuals quarter-finals so severely that she had been forced to default her semi-final the next day. Hall, the only American player not to lose a match the entire tournament, had recovered remarkably swiftly from her injury and even defeated her Colombian opponent in the team semis on Friday afternoon, but it would of course have been disastrous if she had re-sprained the still-discolored ankle during the climatic deciding match in the team final, and Holleran decided that was a risk she couldn't afford to take.

QUICK REVERSAL OF FORTUNE AGAINST TERAN

Quick reversed her fortunes against Teran in the team final (photo FPS)

As it turned out, Lorentzen lost the wrap-up match to Herrera, but by then it didn't matter, as Quick used a close first game and a pivotal tiebreaker second as the launch pad for an exhilarating sprint to the tape. Her Individuals match with Teran had been much more competitively than the line score indicates, and might well have had a different outcome had Teran not escaped with that 9-7 opening frame. This time it was Quick who came away with a 9-7 first game, and when the 9-8 second also landed in her column she was home free, running through a 9-1 final third over her increasingly despondent opponent and clinching the team outcome.

Though Lorentzen was thereby spared the pressure of having to play the deciding match in a team gold-medal meet, her contemporary Jose Becemil was placed in exactly that position and answered the challenge with flying colors on behalf of his Mexican teammates. Having already distinguished himself in the Individuals event, where he won three successive matches over Americans (Preston Quick, Julian Illingworth and Chris Gordon) and impressed everyone with what U. S. men's coach Chris Walker termed his "exceptional flair and athleticism,"

Becemil and Santiago Montoya of Colombia first witnessed a four-game opening win at No. 2 by Colombian Miguel Angel Rodriguez over Jorge Baltasar that was evened out when at No. 1 Individuals silver medalist Erick Galvez posted a surprisingly one-sided 9-1, 6 and 5 victory over the 2002 CSA Intercollegiate Individual champion Bernardo Samper.

…AND BY GALVEZ-GUTIERREZ
The latter had been so dominant in the 9-5, 3 and 1 win he had recorded in the Colombia-USA semis against Quick in the battle of Trinity College stars past and present (Quick '00, Samper '05) that no one expected Galvez to out-play him as decisively as he did. But Galvez, whose Individuals gold-medal match loss to Argentina's Jorge Gutierrez hinged largely on the conduct stroke he was assessed at a crucial stage of the tiebreaker opening game, had shown in his team semis 3-0 win over Gutierrez how well he was playing by the late stage of the week, and he carried this form through against Samper as well.

That said, the disparity between the individual and team matches between this talented pair of protagonists may also have its roots in whatever dynamics arose from the two-year ban that the Argentina squash federation has imposed on Gutierrez as a result of his (mis)behavior last summer at the Pan American Games. Highly unusually, the ban suspension does not go into effect until after this 2004 Fed Cup event, presumably leaving Gutierrez far more motivated to succeed in the Individual tourney, which he won, than in the team event, though its difficult to draw conclusive inferences from the foregoing situation.

Mexican Men Enjoy the Gold (photo FPS)

Gutierrez almost also lost to Michael Puertas in the Argentina-USA bronze medal match, in which Puertas, dehydrated both by the extreme heat and intestinal woes, was unable to close out the two-game lead he amassed. But Preston Quick won three straight over Robertino Pezzota and Julian Illingworth survived deficits of two games to one and 8-2 in the fifth in the deciding match against Hernan Darcangelo, who held several match-balls both in regulation and in the ensuing tiebreaker but failed to convert any of them. Serving at 8-all, Illingworth was assessed a conduct stroke after angrily disputing a call, giving Pezzota the first of his two tiebreaker match-ball opportunities. But Illingworth was able to swat both of these aside and eke out a 10-9 tally.

Ironically in view this taut ending to the bronze-medal meet, the deciding match of the gold-medal Mexico vs. Colombia clash was so dominated by Becemil as to become bereft of any late drama, though that fact did little to slacken the "Mexico! Mexico! Mexico!" chants that cascaded down on the contestants from all sides of the open-air (though with a roof) arena as their teenage hero completed his 9-1, 5 and 1 triumph. A new hero may well have come dashing onto the Pan American picture last week, and certainly his exploits, along with those of Galvez, both Quick siblings, Gutierrez and several others left a major handprint on the 2004 edition of this championship.

Complete PanAm Fed Cup results:

Mens Team                            Womens Team
Mens Individual                      Womens Individual

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