US Nat'l Final Rematch Looms in Hyder Trophy Draw
May 5 2004 By Rob Dinerman, SquashTalk Independent News Service © 2004 
[Qualifying Results Complete]     [Hyder Trophy Main Draw]

Meredeth Quick defeated Nicolette Fernandes in this afternoon's final-round qualifying match in the 2004 Hyder Trophy, whose $ 10,000 purse, double that offered last year, makes it a ranking tournament on the WISPA professional women's tour. Quick has drawn Latasha Khan, who has defeated her in the final round of two U. S. Team Selection events during the past eight weeks, namely the women's Nationals in Seattle in March and the Greenwich event just this past weekend. Khan also out-played Quick in the final of the 2002 Nationals in New Haven, and the pair were teammates on the U. S. team that won the gold medal in the Pan American Games last summer in Santo Domingo, where each contributed a comeback victory in the 2-1 gold medal round match against Canada.

Another capricious turn of the post-qualifying draw to determine the placement of today's four successful qualifiers has matched Katie Patrick, who defeated Tara Mullins this afternoon, against her Canadian compatriot Rena Ruta, her teammate on the 2000 University of Pennsylvania varsity that won the Howe Cup, emblematic of the women's intercollegiate team champion, for the first time in the history of the program. That team was coached by Demer Holleran, who has replaced Sharon Bradey as the coach of the U. S. team that will compete in the Pan American Federation Cup this summer.

The other two qualifiers, Judith Casbolt of New Zealand and Sarah Kippax of England, drew the first and second seeds respectively, Fiona Geaves and Shelley Kitchen. Casbolt's path to the main draw required her to generate consecutive rallying wins over Harvard stars. She trailed current Crimson senior co-captain and four-time first-team all-American Louisa Hall, the winner of team selection events at the Harvard Club of New York and at Chestnut Hill Academy, two games to one and was behind early in the fourth before embarking on an extended run that enabled her to finish off the match 9-2, 9-0.

Then today against Carlin Wing, class of '02, Casbolt dropped the first game before Wing lost a bit of her early aggressiveness and was never able to regain the initiative in the remaining trio of fairly decisive games.

A similar fate befell yet another Harvard alumna, Ivy Pochoda '98, an Intercollegiate Individuals champion her senior year, who played by far her best squash in the first game of her match with the higher-ranked Kippax. Pochoda was really attacking the ball, especially her forehand, which she was using to manhandle her smaller foe and putting her on the defensive.

But even though Pochoda eventually won that opening frame in a 10-9 tiebreaker, the end-stage contained omens of what was to follow. She had three game-balls in regulation, the first of which occurred at 8-4, yet seemed unable to close it out. By the time Pochoda converted her fourth-game ball, on a bad Kippax front-court tin and after saving a game-ball against her, the errors that would plague her thereafter were already starting to come and she was breathing heavily and leaning on her racquet between points, a telltale sign of the toll that the fast pace and a slight head cold were taking.

By early in the second game, in which Kippax raced off to a swift 3-0 lead, Pochoda's energy level were clearly flagging and she was having more and more trouble hanging in during especially the long points. Kippax was doing real damage both with her straight-drop counters, her well-disguised working boasts and her late wrist-flicks, all of which were causing her increasingly fatigued and beleaguered opponent to change direction and pursue the ball along the maximal diagonals of the court.

Pochoda fought valiantly, but by the end of the trio of identical 9-1 tallies that followed her narrow first-game win, she had become exhausted and deflated, and a forehand working-boast tin ushered Kippax into tomorrow's main draw.

The other four round-of-16 matches will feature Engy Kheirullah vs Lauren Briggs, Melissa Martin vs Carla Khan, Line Hansen vs Jenny Tranfield and Rebecca Botwright vs Tamsyn Leevey. The quarters will follow on Friday, the semis on Saturday and the final on Sunday. The Squash Club/LA on East 61st Street will be the site of all of the matches.

Summary Of Final-Round Qualifying [complete qualifying draw]
Sarah Kippax d Ivy Pochoda, 9-10 9-2 9-1 9-1;
Katie Patrick d Tara Mullins, 9-3 9-6 9-5;
Judith Casbolt d Carlin Wing, 3-9, 9-4 9-3 9-2;
Meredeth Quick d Nicolette Fernandes 9-0 9-7 10-9.

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