THE PRINCE - SQUASHTALK.COM US MENS SQUASH RANKINGS

Julian Illingworth is the USA's #1 ranked men's squash player for July 2006, according to the newly launched Prince - SquashTalk USA Men's Squash Rankings. A companion set of USA Women's Squash Rankings will be introduced later this summer.

Illingworth, the two-time US National champion has recently turned full-time professional and is embarking on a pro tour campaign. He capped off a successful college career in March by defending his US National Championship on his home courts at Yale University. The finalist in the 2006 SL Green Men's National Closed at Yale was Damian Walker, who is #2 in the July rankings. These rankings coincide with a serious push by Illingworth to make a mark on the PSA tour. Illingworth's next PSA tour appearances will be at three PSA events in New Zealand in August.

Rounding out the top five are Jamie Crombie, third, Preston Quick, fourth, and Michael Puertas fifth. Christopher Gordon, the US player with the highest PSA international professional ranking at 96, is a close sixth behind Puertas.

The Prince-SquashTalk USA Rankings are a computer-based objective ranking system, calculated from appearances in all US tournaments who report results to SquashTalk over a 14 month period. SquashTalk developed the ranking system after discussions with a number of experts and with the USSRA rankings committee.

The ranking system assigns points to tournament performance, closely following the PSA's point system model, and assigns tournament importance weightings based on strength and depth of field. SquashTalk is experimenting with adding a factor to assign importance to a US player's performance in PSA tournament play, but hasn't perfected that portion of the system in time to include it in this month's rankings. (Adding that factor this month would have moved Gordon up to fourth, leapfrogging Puertas and Quick.) Unlike some other ranking systems, the Prince-Squashtalk computer does NOT drop any results for players who have a bad event, since we believe that is an important aspect of a player's overall record.

The objective of this ranking system is to include all competition appearance on US soil, and for tournament's to be included in the Prince-SquashTalk rankings, the tourament director or promoter need only submit complete results to Squashtalk (results@squashtalk.com) on a timely basis.

PRINCE - SQUASHTALK USA MENS NATIONAL RANKINGS, JULY 1, 2006

Player	Hometown	Current Ranking	Score
Julian Illingworth	Portland, OR	1	88.00
Damian Walker	Greenwich, CT	2	76.00
Jamie Crombie	Cincinatti, OH	3	70.00
Preston Quick	Greenwich, CT	4	65.71
Michael Puertas	St Louis, MO	5	55.00
Chris Gordon	New York, NY	6	54.38
Richard Chin	New York, NY	7	38.75
Ryan Donegan	New Orleans, LA	8	36.67
Gilly Lane	Philadephia, PA	9	26.30
Beau River	Chicago, IL	10	25.92
Dylan Patterson	Greenwich, CT	11	23.33
Francis Odeh	New Jersey	12	22.72
John Fulham	Brookline, MA	13	22.33
Ben Oliner	Poughkeepsie, NY	14	21.42
Eric Christiansen	Greenwich CT	15	20.33
Thad Roberts	New York, NY	16	19.28
Yasser Kamel	New York, NY	17	15.00
Jared Sandler	New York, NY	17	15.00
Jack Wyant	Philadelphia, PA	17	15.00
Tim Wyant	New York, NY	20	12.50
David Hetherington	Richmond, VA	20	12.50

Events included in the July 1 rankings included: Richmond, VA USA selection event, New York, NY USA selection event, Chicago, IL USA selection event, Greenwich CT USA selection event, USA Nationals '06 at Yale, Cleveland, OH USA selection event, Hyder Trophy Tournament, New York, San Diego, CA, USA selection event, Washington DC, USA selection event, and Birmingham, MI USA team trials.

SquashTalk would like to thank Prince Racquet Sports for their support in the initiation and publication of this new and important USA Men's rankings.