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Walker, McNeely Clinch Berths
By Rob Dinerman © 2002 SquashTalk

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June 30, 2002 © 2002      

Saturday Matches Complete Team Picture

McNeely makes team, photo © 2002 Debra Tessier

Damian Walker and Dave McNeely, who between them have won the U. S. National championship three of the last four years, both rolled to straight-set victories yesterday afternoon in their respective pool round-robin matches to clinch berths on the 2002 American team that will be coached by Paul Assaiante in late August during the Pan American Federation competition in the altitudinous (9000 feet high) host city of Quito, Ecuador.

They will be joined on the four-man squad by Richard Chin (who will become a Pan Am Fed team member for a record eighth time) and Preston Quick, who clinched their positions with their wins Friday evening.

A fortnight ago, the women's team trials in Seattle devolved into a hectic maelstrom featuring 18 matches, several of which went to a fifth game, in just 51 compressed hours and winding up with a 10-9 fifth-set tiebreaker in the last match and a controversial selection whose equity has been bitterly and vocally debated in articles and on the USSRA Talksquash chat line practically from the moment the final standings were posted.

By contrast, these men's trials, held on the private court of the immaculate Greenwich estate of one of the CEO's of the team's major sponsor, has been straightforward to the point of somnolence, with none of the six matches leisurely played over the last three days requiring even a fourth game, much less a fifth, and the swift and dominant manner in which first McNeely and then Walker dismissed Beau River and Jason Jewell respectively were only the most statistically graphic examples of the pre-ordained atmosphere these trials have acquired ever since Tim Wyant, who would have strongly contended for a spot of the roster, was forced by a lingering groin injury to withdraw from the trials a few weeks ago.

With the "pool" portion now complete, the trials will conclude this morning with Jewell and River playing at 10 a.m. for the 5th/6th positions, followed by McNeely vs. Chin for 3rd/4th and Walker facing off for the top spot against Quick, whom he defeated in a deceptively difficult three games in the final of the S. L. Green tournament at Yale last March, when Walker won this coveted title for the second year in a row.

Quick enters this Sunday summit on a serious roll, having won the U. S. Pro title out in Los Angeles last weekend and followed that with a pair of decisive 3-0 of wins over first McNeely and then River on Thursday and Friday nights. He nearly won the third game of that S. L. Green final 16 weeks ago and his excellent spring performance on the ISDA doubles circuit has boosted his strength and confidence as well. Walker played well within himself throughout his match with Jewell, who always begins each game with a high level of intensity and energy, both of which gradually deflate as the game drags on and the deficit increases.

That was the pattern Friday evening against Chin (especially after a 6-2 first-game lead fell victim to a resolute dash to 9-7 by Chin) and it persisted during his Saturday match with Walker. The latter is still feeling the effect of a balky wrist that has bothered him on and off for several months and that forced him to moderate his pace and rely on his brainy shot selection and excellent ball control to move his younger and leaner opponent around and almost make his speed work against him.

The southpaw Jewell has exceptional talent but always seems to be going against the tide during his matches at this level, a situation that has been exacerbated by his move eight months ago from San Francisco to Santa Barbara, where solid practice partners are much less plentiful. In the latter stages of all three games of his 9-1, 2 and 2 loss to Walker, Jewell ran into either tinning patches or multiple let-points; in the third and final game, during the first portion of which he played his best squash of the match, Jewell saw a 2-5 deficit expand to 2-8 due to three consecutive let-points against him, the first two on backhand rails that veered off the right wall into mid-court and the third on a frustrated forehand blast right back at himself.

A major reason for Walker's unbroken success (five straight tournaments, 18 straight matches and, to this point of the trials, 49 straight games) in this kind of Americans-only competition over the last 15 months is the way he seizes every opportunity of the kind Jewell gave him. On his second go at match-ball, he hit a working boast to the front right corner that so extended the lanky Jewell that he was forced to throw up a backhand crosscourt lob that sailed over the sideline boundary, an anti-climactic ending to a perfunctory match that, like its McNeely-River predecessor, consumed fewer than 40 minutes. McNeely, the '99 S. L. Green winner and Walker's co-finalist at the Westchester Open this past February, can be vulnerable when an opponent pressures him out of his comfort zone, as Quick had emphatically done in their Thursday evening tilt, which Quick won in a surprisingly abrupt 9-2, 4 and 2.

But against the 6' 4" River, McNeely's contemporary (as were Quick and Wyant) in the vaunted college class of 2000, he was able to steer most of the play to his favored sector along the left wall and utilize his depth and touch to generate and exploit openings and to get his opponent stretched out and off balance.

River is similar to Jewell in the outstanding talent he possesses, but also in the scarcity of skilled sparring partners in his Chicago locale and in the inability he has demonstrated, at least to this point, to play at a consistent level. The several injuries---a fractured left kneecap, a badly sprained right ankle and several bouts with back spasms---that he has weathered over the past 18 months have also delayed his ascent. River's recent discovery of yoga has already noticeably benefited his flexibility and physical condition, and a planned three-month sojourn in England this fall under British national team coach Dave Pearson may well get his formidable game back into high gear and clean up the glitches that prevented him from garnering more than a handful of bright moments in the 9-2, 0 and 4 defeat he absorbed at a very focused McNeely's hands on this occasion.

Again like Jewell, River played his best stretch of squash in the first half of the third game, especially in going from 0-3 to 4-3, but an unforced forehand tin stopped his run and McNeely swept through the remainder in just three hands to finish the match off.

Final Saturday Results
Dave McNeely d Beau River 9-2 9-0 9-4
Damian Walker d Jason Jewell 9-1 9-2 9-2

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