A Few Qualifying Surprises
Oct 27 2005, by Rob Dinerman      [Weymuller Main Draw]
Squashtalk Independent News; © 2005 SquashTalk LLC

Final Round of Weymuller Qualifying

Amelia Pittock of Australia capped off the closest and longest match of the night when she ended her grippingly taut 95-minute struggle with British star Laura Jane Lengthorne by finally pulling away from a 5-all fifth-game deadlock to win 9-5 7-9 9-7 8-9 9-5. Pittock, along with fellow successful qualifiers Latasha Khan, Sharon Wee and Melissa Martin, will now compete Thursday evening in the first round of the main draw of the fabled Carol Weymuller Invitational, one of the most popular and longest running women's tournaments in the United States.

To that 5-5 juncture of the fifth game, the Pittock-Lengthorne clash was marked by a furious and undulating battle for control of the left wall. Both players were getting excellent length and width on their backhand rails, with occasional drop shots and working boasts mixed in. Many of the points were long and intense, especially at the end of the airtight trio of middle games, in which fatigue and the pressures of the moment also necessitated some very challenging decisions for the referee. Pittock scored some important winners on cross-court drop serve returns, while Lengthorne bashed her powerful forehand cross courts to telling effect.

At 5-all in the fifth, the players had battled each other to a standstill, both statistically and territorially. Surprisingly in view of how even the match had been to that very late moment, the last four exchanges (the longest consecutive-points streak of the entire match) slipped swiftly away from Lengthorne, who lost a long point she had mostly controlled to begin the run, caught the top of the tin with a forehand drop and twice got caught for stroke calls, though it seemed a shame after the borderline call on the last point should have caused a match that had been so compellingly contested should have ended in such anticlimactic and marginal fashion.

The remaining matches were somewhat more routine, though Lauren Briggs had to face down a two games to one deficit against Sharon Wee before storming through the final pair of games 9-2 and 9-4. Khan, the six-time and current U. S. national champion, dropped the first game of her 3-1 match with Dominique Lloyd-Walters, but even in that initial stanza she demonstrated the mobility and racquet sharpness, especially on her backhand flank, that would ultimately enable her to prevail by increasing margins throughout the next three games. And Martin, recently returned to her native Australia after she and husband Brett Martin spent several years in Connecticut, dominated her three-game confrontation with an overwhelmed Pamela Nimmo.

Martin will now face second seed Nicol David, the recently crowned British Open champion, in tonight's round of 16, while Pittock goes up against Shelley Kitchen, Khan opposes Jenny Duncalf and Briggs, who got the best draw of any of the successful qualifiers, plays against Isabelle Stoehr.

RESULTS:   Women's Carol Weymuller Squash Open, Heights Casino, New York, USA
[Main Draw]
Qualifying finals:
Amelia Pittock (AUS) bt Laura-Jane Lengthorn (ENG) 9-5, 7-9, 9-7, 6-9, 9-5
Latasha Khan (USA) bt Dominique Lloyd-Walter (ENG) 5-9, 9-6, 9-4, 9-3
Lauren Briggs (ENG) bt Sharon Wee (MAS)                9-5, 7-9, 4-9, 9-2, 9-4
Melissa Martin (AUS) bt Pamela Nimmo (SCO)            9-1, 9-7, 9-4

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