DAN JENSEN FINDS THE RIGHT PHYSIO

Dan Jensen works on getting back into form photo© 2005, Motor City Open

In St Louis he went to a clinic that practices ACT (Active Release Therapy).

“One man there heard my problem and said it was nothing to do with my hip – it all stemmed with a problem with my right foot. I simply could not plant it properly when going forward for a shot. Anyway in two weeks the pain has gone and I will be going back to St Louis again before I go to Qatar, Hong Kong and Saudi Arabia.”

Let’s hope he finally has seen the last of  physical ailments and gets back to the top ten where he belongs.

HARVARD HOSPITALITY?
Some of the players who showed up early at Harvard’s Murr Squash centre to pracise on one of the 15 courts got a rude shock when they were told vamoose because the Men’s and women’s teams were in training. Well, they were ( also turned up early to catch the qualifiers, the only journalist around) but there were still five or six courts not being used. Dylan Patterson was one of the players told to buzz off – and he played for Harvard! I have never seen this mild-mannered guy so angry. Wow! Stand aside.

One of  empty courts  was the brand new McWil four wall glass court and nobody could play  on that precious new facility unless a coach was present. There was a notice on the door of the court which read:

ALL PLAYERS

DO NOT WALK OR THINK OF PLAYING IN THIS COURT!!

THANKS

SQUASH OFFICE

(Don’t you just love the THANK YOU?)

So Laurens Jan Anjema and his partner were thrown off . Furthermore practice on subsequent days was limited to 12-2pm. If anybody wanted practice courts at other times, promoter John Nimick would be billed $28 an hour.

My feeling is that the posh Harvard alumni built the squash facility for their offspring and really don’t give a damn about all those world class professionals.  The new four wall glass court was to have had its official opening on the first day of the US Open, but the boys upstairs with the cheque book nixed that and said it should be officially opened in February when Harvard  plays Yale. And so it will come to pass.

MacWil also put up portable four wall glass court in the tennis compound. Sorry, my friends, it just doesn’t work. The atmosphere was dead and rarely did the place – even with 600 spectators – get any real buzz.

My betting is that next year’s US Open will be elsewhere.

SWEARING IN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

Swearing in a foreign language? photo© 2005, Debra Tessier

LJ Anjema took my advice about swearing in English to heart and whenever he swears on court, he does it in Dutch, so the referees have no idea what he is saying.

After one qualifying match in Harvard where the air had been Delft blue with his Dutch colloquialism, he came off the court  to be met by a man with his young son. In perfect Dutch he asked LJ for his autograph. The lesson learnt is that wherever you are in the world, someone speaks Dutch. So now Anjema is looking for Swahili lessons… 

POWER MANAGEMENT
As you would have read in the Squashtalk Business news section, Jonathon Power has got together with Segun Maku, the Nigerian businessman and some other big American hitters to form a company that would be the IMG of squash, helping players to maximize their opportunities.

As I have said so many times before, only the Americans know how to market sport properly and so this is good news for the our sport  and those lucky players that get signed up by  SquashPower, which is what the new enterprise is called. I shall be keeping a close eye on them to see just how successful they are.

ANTI SQUASH POWER
By contrast  the PSA under the guidance of Gawain Briars,  is getting a reputation for being an anti-force in squash. One promoter (no names, thank you) told me that there would be a big new tournament in Vancouver next year and it would not affiliate with nor try to get accreditation with the PSA. Why?  Because the promoter, a new man in the sport, found the PSA demands too expensive.

I spoke to another  promoter who told me:  “The PSA does not work with promoters, it works against them. We want cooperation to help the sport expand, they give us nothing but problems.” Another promoter who has gradually enlarged his US tournament said; “I don’t know one promoter in North America who has a good word to say about the PSA.”

One reason is that the PSA will not put an event on their calendar until the promoter has paid the registration fee.  Which is why in the middle of November 2005, the New York  Tournament of Champions which takes in February 2006, is not listed. John Nimick doesn’t see why he should part with $5-10,000 and let the PSA have the use of it for six months.

David Carr of McWil CourtWall says this causes problems when promoters come to him about renting his court. When they look at the PSA Calendar  to find a suitable date there are gaps everywhere but they are ‘ghost’ gaps, where tournaments have been agreed but not listed.

Why not copy the WISPA example and list the tournaments with To Be Confirmed next to the date so that everybody knows what’s happening?

SQUASH – THE THINKING MAN’S GAME
In Barry Faguy’s always entertaining THE SQUASH OFFICIAL,  he reports that  a referee  explained why he assess a stroke by saying to one player : “You were physically in the way of his swing.” Faguy than poses the question as to whether it might been  a let  had the player been metaphysically in the way…?

AND NOW, SQUASH VIDEOS WITH ADDED SOUND EFFECTS
Faguy was reffing the US Open Semi final between Omneya Abdel Kawy and  Vicky Botwright. At one stage there was a big collision between the two players and Faguy vocally winced with the word “Ouff!” He had forgotten that the microphone  was close to his lips and the ouff!  became OOOUUUFF!!! throughout the arena. This was Tom and Jerry  sound effects and very fitting too. We wonder whether Faguy would consider going into business adding sound fx to squash videos, Boiinnng! every time the ball was struck, the crash of  a  huge gong when the ball hit the tin and high pitched gibberish every time the players started talking. And when the referee speaks, a great echo as though God is talking.  The possibilities are endless and it would make a great change from the boring thwack of racket and ball.

FIONA  AT THE CASINO

Fiona Geaves: Now in residence in Brooklyn NY photo© 2005, Debra Tessier

No Miss Geaves is not gambling, she has joined Julian Wellings at the Heights Casino club in New York as an assistant coach. One of  her players is Manuala Manetta from Italy, a gal with enormous potential judging by the way she hits the ball. Six months with Geaves worldly input  of squash strategy should put  Manuella in a very good position to start challenging. Remember you read it here first.

IS SHAHID BEING SHELTERED?
I watched with some puzzlement as Shahid Zaman was ushered out of the of the US Open in the first round by Bradley Ball who is ranked well below him. How come, I wondered, that Zaman is ranked  16 in the world?  A nearby player overheard my remark and replied with some vehemence: “Because he gets all his points in Pakistan with friendly referees.  Outside of Pakistan he can’t do a thing.”  Sour grapes, I thought and looked up Zaman’s record over the last 18 months. He has won four tournaments, three of them in Pakistan. The fourth was the Virginia  tournament in the US  where he beat Joey  Barrington in the final. He also reached the final of two tournaments – both in Pakistan. Apart from those results he has failed to reach even the quarters in other parts of the world.  So maybe the player  had a point, I thought. And then on November 13 in the CAS International in Karachi,  Shahid was knocked out in the first round by Mark Heather.  Well…come to your own conclusion.

GREASY BALL? NAAH…GREASY WALL
In the US Open, Jonathon Power made a surprising accusation against Nick Matthew saying he had ‘greased the ball” by wiping it on his wet shirt before serving. Nick took it very calmly and the next day when he experience a similar weird bounce playing Lee Beachill, he asked Beach if he had  greased the ball.

One explanation given was that the solution used to wash the glass walls had been too oily and had left deposits on the wall. Another explanation is that the ball could have hit a kind of vertical nick where two sheets of glass meet. We would like to make it clear that Matthew’s  reputation is unblemished