BOMBED IN BOSTON: The Afternoon Session (also: evening session)

Do you ever get the feeling that weather effects the events of the day? Yesterday it rained, and rained and rained. It was the monsoon season in Maine. Today it drizzled and  leaked down and made for a grey day, the sort of day that in England is regarded as summer.

Lincou and Boswell played a strange match (photo © Debra Tessier )

So it was sort of miserable and somehow that grey feeling crept into the theatre and affected the four afternoon matches.   There was the wonderful McWil court, all glistening glass, set up on the stage, looking fit for Broadway. The eight hundred seats stretched in a parabolic arc to the back  and all was set for the grand opening. Sorry friends, if this had been a show trying out in the provinces, it would have closed on the first night and people given their money back.

There followed four of the strangest matches I had seen in any one day. Things started off promisingly with Stewart Boswell looking really sharp against  a lackluster Thierry Lincou. Boswell was all hustle and cracking winners while Lincou seemed less than wide awake.  The first game was over in eleven minutes, 11-5 in the lanky Australian’s favour. This was really no surprise because Boswell is back up to 13 in the rankings and picking up some good results.   As well, he had the great Rodney Martin in his corner, so  Lincou was up against a formidable team.

Mind you I didn’t expect the Frenchman to lie down and be used as a mat, but what happened in the second game was totally unexpected.  Boswell seemed to fall apart and  Lincou won the game 11-2 in five minutes. There was no logical explanation for the tin to resound constantly or for Boswell’s below-par performance. Ok, so that was a freak occurrence and we could expect normality to return in the third game. Wrong again – Boswell just could not pull his game together. Simple forehand boasts hit the top of the tin, he was unable to read Lincou at all and well, he was just having an extremely bad day at  the office. I have never seen Boswell so badly off form with the inevitable result that Lincou took the third and fourth games with comparative ease to end the 56-minute enigma.

Boswell was terrific in the first but collapsed after that (photo © Debra Tessier )

WILLSTROP HAMSTRUNG
So we settled back in the front stalls and looked forward to a real battle – James Willstrop, who had played so very well to knock out LJ Anjema yesterday, was facing top Canadian Graham Ryding, who had a much easier time in his first round match.  The first thing to notice was that it was Ryding who was doing most of the attacking and so took the initiative  away from the always entertaining young Englishman. Willstrop never seemed at home and was certainly not playing to his full capability. This is not to take away from Ryding who was playing very well indeed; he fought back  from 5-9 to force a tie-break which he won 12-10

Willstrop looked OK in the first game (photo © Debra Tessier )

Ah! Now we are in for a battle. Willstrop comes back from all sorts of perilous situations to win. Wrong again Bronstein, wrong again. (Can’t I ever learn?) You will not now believe the next sentence.  Ryding won the second game 11-3 in three minutes and 41 seconds.   Exactly. (If you want I could give you the time to hundredths of a second, but I am not a nerd). Obviously something was wrong and  when I looked backstage  Willstrop was feeling his left ankle while Mike Riley, the tournament referee, was asking if the tournament physio was around. He wasn’t and the next thing I saw was Willstrop on his back with Anthony Ricketts acting as physio and pushing on his extended leg in an effort to ease  the problem.  It turned out that Willstrop had injured his hamstring yesterday when stretching after his match with Anjema.

He took his three minute injury break, came back for the third game and after 51 seconds, he shook Ryding’s hand and left the court.  This was very sad for  Willstrop, coming so soon after severe food poisoning in Cairo prevented him playing.  For Ryding it is a welcome entry into the quarter-finals and a chance to improve his ranking from his present 19th position.

GOLLY OLLI – SUCH FOLLY

James Willstrop, in pain, retired. (photo © Debra Tessier )

The Willstrop match had lasted 28 minutes with injury breaks.  The following match, Nick Matthew playing Olli Tuominen, lasted exactly the same. And that was with two fit players.  Again, a disappointment;  Matthew and Tuominen are both tough players and we expected at least 60 minutes of sweat and exhaustion. What we got was another player whose cogs weren’t meshing. I may be sounding like a broken record but  Olli was badly off form and I have never seen him play so badly. Matthew hardly had to sweat, winning the first game 11-2, the second 11-4 and was 9-1 up in the third before Tuominen managed to string some decent rallies together. He scored four more points but there was absolutely no drama left in the match and Matthew duly hit the final point to win  11-5  and move through the quarters.  All in all, the sun is shining on Matthew, the draws are all in his favour and he’s on a streak. If you can find takers, bet on Matthew.

EL HINDI WILL NOT BE SENDING THE REFEREE A CHRISTMAS CARD
And so to the fourth and final match Wael el Hindi and  Gregory Gaultier. El Hindi had been embroiled in a controversial match yesterday and has a habit of rubbing opponents and referees up the wrong way. In the second rally of the match against Gaultier el Hindi said Gaultier’s  ball had hit the tin, Gaultier said it hadn’t. Argument, counterclaim, petulance and el Hindi slamming the ball against the tin so that it sailed out of court.  Oh boy! In the second rally! The game re-started and it was obvious that Gaultier would win, el Hindi hitting seven errors  to lose the first game 5-11.

The referee – who had experienced el Hindi before – was now in no mood to take any flak and jumped on him and constantly ordered him to play on.  Gaultier won the second game by the same  score  and so to the third and final game, with every rally ending in a referee’s decision and the inevitable protest and counter protest. This was unpleasant viewing. Where was Gawain Briars, the PSA chief, to witness the game really being brought into disrepute rather than fining a player $100 dollars for giving an honest opinion on low prize money, thereby pandering to a petulant promoter?

The game came to its miserable end after eight minutes, 11-4 in Gaultier’s favour. In the quarters he will once again face  Thierry Lincou.

 And so ended a less than memorable afternoon.  If I were an alcoholic I’d be dead drunk by now.

US Open 2006, Second Round AFTERNOON RESULTS:
First round played at Harvard University:    [Complete draw]
[1] Amr Shabana (EGY) vs [14] Ong Beng Hee (MAS)
[7] Nick Matthew (ENG) def [15] Olli Tuominen (FIN) 11-2 11-4 11-5
[4] Anthony Ricketts (AUS) vs [11] Ramy Ashour (EGY)
[16] Graham Ryding (CAN) def [5] James Willstrop (ENG) 11-10(2-0) 11-3 3-0 retired.
[6] Gregory Gaultier (FRA) def [12] Wael El Hindi (EGY) 11-5 11-5 11-4
[3] Thierry Lincou (FRA) def [10] Stewart Boswell (AUS) 5-11 11-2 11-6 11-6
[13] Adrian Grant (ENG) vs [8] Lee Beachill (ENG)
[9] John White (SCO) vs [2] David Palmer (AUS)

Afternoon 2nd round matches(photos: © Debra Tessier )