Chin upsets Illingworth in US Pro
Semi Finals Set for this Afternoon
Rob Dinerman © 2002 SquashTalk; all rights of reproduction reserved.
June 14, 2003      

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Richard Chin in quarterfinal win over Yale star Illingworth. Photo © Debra Tessier 2003

Richard Chin pulled off an upset victory yesterday afternoon over co-No. 3 seed Julian Illingworth in the quarter-final round of the 2003 U. S. Pro Championships in Los Angeles. Illingworth was runner-up to Preston Quick in the 2002 edition of this event, and just completed a stand-out
freshman season as the No. 1 player at Yale, but on this occasion he fell prey to the veteran Chin's savvy and precision and fell in straight sets.

Chin had given notice of his form even in his first-round match against another Ivy League college No. 1, namely Dartmouth star Ryan Donegan, and he carried this momentum into and through the Illingworth match. Chin will now face his 34-year-old contemporary and longtime nemesis Damian Walker, his conqueror in five games in the 2001 S. L. Green final in Seattle, who advanced via a
pair of 3-0 wins over Utah's Jared Sandler and recently-graduated Harvard all-American and team captain Dylan Patterson, who plans to give the pro tour a shot and was therefore making his professional debut in this tournament.

Although Walker is the top seed, he is for the first time in quite a while in the position of attempting to wrest back the supremacy over American squash that was seized away from him, at least temporarily, by Quick when the latter survived a two games to love deficit and an 8-4 match-ball fifth-game predicament to win the final of the 2003 S. L. Green championship this past March.
His dramatic eleventh-hour reversal of the 2002 S. L. Green final-round outcome enabled Quick to bring to an unexpected end both Walker's two-year hold on the S. L. Green trophy and his 30-match undefeated string (including at one stage 53 straight games) over his American counterparts in U. S. Team Selection events dating back to his loss in the 2000 S. L. Green final to Marty Clark.

For Walker to regain his hard-earned standing, he will have to defeat both Chin later today and a Sunday final against the winner of the bottom-half semi between the second-seeded Quick and co-third seed Jamie Crombie, Quick's semi-final victim in this year's S. L. Green and, more recently, in a Team Selection event at the Merion Cricket Club, a five-man round-robin which Quick
wound up winning and in which Walker did not participate. Quick dropped a game in his quarter-final victory over fifth seed Beau River, while Crombie won in straight sets over Tim Wyant.

This tournament represents the final opportunity for the top U. S. players to face each other before the four-day U. S. Team Trials, which are scheduled in Newport during the last few days of this month and which will determine the three-player composition of the American squash roster for the Pan American Games in August in Santo Domingo. Eight players will be invited to compete
for these positions, which will be determined based on a percentage formula involving season ranking, S. L. Green ranking and Trials performance.

The women will hew to this formula as well, and will also have their Team Trials in
Newport during the same time period.

QUARTER-FINAL RECAP

Damian Walker(1) d Dylan Patterson, 3-0; Richard Chin d. Julian
Illingworth(co-3), 3-0; Jamie Crombie (co-3) d Tim Wyant, 3-0; Preston Quick(2) d Beau
River, 3-1.

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