USSRA US Pro Championships 2002

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Quick Finish to US Pros
By Rob Dinerman © 2002 SquashTalk

Preston Quick Earns Big Win
Unseeded Preston Quick won the biggest title of his young professional career this past weekend In Los Angeles, where he rose superior to a solid 16-man field and won the $10,000 2002 U. S. Pro Championships, hosted at the Los Angeles Athletic Club.

This USSRA event is open to players currently living in the United States and the draw really opened up when the outstanding British-born pair of Chris Walker and Clive Leach, the finalists in last year's tournament, decided not to enter on this occasion.

For Quick, who reached the final of the S. L. Green event this past March, the wins over Scott Denne, top-seeded Mohammed Hassan, Richard Chin and Julian Illingworth that brought him to the winner's circle were a significant complement to his S. L. Green result 100 days earlier and a potential springboard to the U. S. Men's Team Trials that are scheduled for this weekend in Greenwich.

QUICK CRUISES TO SEMIS
Quick cruised into the semi-finals with a pair of convincing four-game victories over his ISDA colleague Denne (whom he crushed in a 15-5 fourth game after Denne had narrowly eked out the third) and his mid-May Hyder Open victim Hassan, who won the first game of their quarter-final before Quick's superior firepower accounted for the remainder at 3, 8 and 10.

QUICK - CHIN ENDS FAST
His semi with Chin figured to be more of a challenge; the latter is a three-time S. L. Green finalist and had defeated Quick in five long games in the 2001 U. S. Team Trials in Mamaroneck last August and had played ahead of Quick in the American line-up that had placed 19th in the World Team Championships in Melbourne last October.

Quick had won their one match this past season, a third-place play-off in the early-January Trinity Open, and he jumped out to leads early in each of the three games. Chin rallied enough to contest the outcome in the opening game, but when that effort fell short he was unable to respond in the final two games of what devolved into a surprisingly perfunctory 15-10, 3 and 8 tally.

Chin had advanced to that stage via a pair of straight-set wins over Jason Jewell (who along with Quick, Chin and Damian Walker, Dave McNeely and Beau River will be vying for the four available spots on the U. S. Team in the Pan Am Fed event in Ecuador this summer) and Jonathan Perry, a first-round winner over the Manhattan-based Swede Alex Pavulans.

ILLINGWORTH PROVIDES WEST COAST EXCITEMENT
While the eventual champion was thus quietly marching through the draw's top half, much more excitement was brewing down below. Most of it was provided by the 2002 U. S. Junior champion Julian Illingworth, who will be entering Yale this fall. Illingworth did not have enough Open tournament exposure to b eligible to participate in the upcoming Team Trials, which is a shame because in both his excellent Nationals last March and his performance this weekend he displayed a level of play that would make him a genuine contender to earn a place on the roster.

He reached the semis with straight-game wins over Richard Elliott and Mark Lewis and then engaged Egyptian-born NYAC pro Kerim Yehia in what was undoubtedly and by far the match of the weekend. Yehia dominated the first and third games, but Illingworth's rescue of the second by an airtight 15-14 score(on a backhand drop winner at "no-set" after a 14-12 lead slipped away) kept him in the match long enough to force a fourth game.

YEHIA STRUGGLES WITH STOMACH
Though bothered by a stomach muscle pull that has troubled him on and off for more than a month, Yehia moved to a 14-12 lead, only to lose those two match-balls plus another four points later which allowed the irrepressible teenager to salvage that game 17-16 and even the match. Yehia was actually penalized a point at the outset of the decisive fifth game for tarrying too long while tending to his injury, and the game became a mean attritional battle that wound up 15-12 for Illingworth, who thereby won his three games by a combined four points, as compared with the 20-point edge Yehia enjoyed in the two games which he won! Final recap: 7-15 15-14 3-15 17-16 15-12 for Illingworth, who again demonstrated in this match the Mark Talbott-like knack he has clearly developed for really buckling down in the taut closing exchanges of a close game. That Saturday evening match, the only five-gamer of the entire tourney, was long enough and strenuous enough to exact a noticeable price by the time the final rolled around at noon the following day.

ILLINGWORTH FALLS SHORT
Illingworth gets excellent length and height, and his mobility is outstanding, but at this tender stage of his squash career this teenage phenom lacks the biting short game to really pressure a player of Quick's caliber. And the previous day's battle with Yehia had taken an unmistakable toll as well, especially in comparison with the way Quick had moved unimpeded through his own semi-final in relatively swift and stress-free fashion.

All three games were well-played and fairly competitive, but all three wound up in Quick's column. Illingworth's best opportunity came in the second stanza, in which he was able to take an 11-7 lead. But Quick came on strong at the end, picking up the pace and cutting off Illingworth's deep game with stinging volleys that drew enough winners and errors to create an 8-1 game-ending run that pretty much determined the eventual 15-11, 12 and 12 outcome.

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