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Irish Open Qualifier Day 1
April Fool!
By Martin Bronstein in Dublin © 2003 SquashTalk; all rights of reproduction reserved.
April 1, 2003  [full draw/results]

JUST IN TIME FOR THE AFTERMATH

April the First is never a good day for me, and with an hour's delay on the flight into Dublin and a 10 mile trip that took forty minutes by bus, I arrived at the magnificent Fitzwilliam Lawn Tennis Club to find the first round of qualifying finished and the referees sitting around chatting.

I asked one referee about one match and he started by saying: "Well I referee'd it," in a tone that suggested you can't both referee and watch a match at the same time, but this would have been a bad Irish joke and he proceeded to give me a useful précis.

This club is quite grand (if you can ignore the word 'tennis' in the title. And old. Very old. 1877 to be exact, the very same year that the All England Club started in Wimbledon. Dublin says they were first and Wimbledon doesn't quibble too hard.

The dining room looks as though you should be wearing a tux and your Lady a million bucks worth of diamonds. Just off the plane with a running nose is hardly the way to feel at home in such fine surroundings. But the people make you forget all that, and give you all you need to do your work..

I've told a couple of the players they had better play great squash because on Friday Ireland are hosting Egypt in the Davis Cup, right here in this club. I could be flitting between two indoor courts with very little trouble.

Tomorrow is a new day. I'll watch the second round of qualifying and do a proper report.

IRISH OPEN
FIRST ROUND QUALIFYING
Sharon Wee (Mas) bt Milja Dorenbos (Ned) 9-4, 9-6, 5-9, 9-2
Laura Lengthorn (Eng) bt Aisling Blake (Ire) 9-1, 9-7, 9-0.
Farrah Sterne (RSA) bt Kawte Allison (Eng) w/o
Dominique LLoyd Walter (Eng) bt Ailsing McCardle (Ire) 9-1, 9-4, 9-1.
Tegwen Malik (Wal) bt Frania Gillen-Buchert (Sco) 9-0, 9-1, 9-3.
Carla Khan (Pak) bt Karen Kronemeyer (Ned) 4-9, 9-5, 9-7, 8-10, 9-1.
Alison Waters (Eng) bt Tanya owens (Ire_ 9-0, 9-2, 9-1.
Wendy Maitland (Sco) bt Rebecca Botwright ( Eng) 9-4, 9-1, 9-4.

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