European Club Championships, Paderborn, 2005

TOO MANY 27-to-Zero's
The first pool rounds produce too many 27-0s and 27-1s to produce anything of real interest . After all many matches are pros versus amateurs and while some of those amateurs are very gifted, they have simply not played at the level of the professional who is usually faster and with a much greater control of the ball.

I was watching the top seeded club from Hungary playing the Swiss champs Royal Cham and Gregory Gaultier hardly broke sweating in beating Paul Steel, the perpetual member of the New Zealand national team, for the loss of four points.

Andras Torok - Hungarian Club Team #3
(photo: © 2005 Martin Bronstein)

One player who did catch my attention was Andras Torok playing at three for the Hungarians. I had seen him practise earlier in the day and he was burying the ball in the nick at will. In his match against Dany Okeschger he showed that he doesn’t lose his skill in a match and was comfortably in charge in winning 27-3.

I asked him later how he acquired such an educated arm and he said that he regularly practices with both Gaultier and Joey Barrington. At which point Barrington joined the conversation and told me that Torok had been on the circuit but ran out of money.

“In 2000 I was 73 in the PSA rankings. I lived in Amsterdam for eight months but it was too expensive,” explained Torok, who is now 27 years old. So he gave the game up.

“But he’s got some new sponsorship and he’s making a comeback,” Barrington said. “One of the reasons Greg and I go to Hungarian to train is Andras.” Obviously there is a lot of admiration for Torok and it would nice to see skill added to the world circuit.

It goes without saying the Hungarian club won their match 4/0 and with only three teams in Group A they simply have to demolish Ylivieska of Finland tomorrow to get their semi-final berth.

Paderborner’s first team heads Group B and will have no trouble notching up 4/0 scores over Scotland’s Newlands Lawn Tennis Club, (with a name like that they shouldn’t have been given entry. Lawn tennis indeed!) and Wiener Neudorf of Austria.

In Group C Denmark’s Herlev/Horten club, which is questionably seeded three, could only notch up a 3/1 victory over Paderborner’s second team. Sweden’s Gothenburg and Italy’s Borderline club are still to come.

Colets, the England champions, head up Group D and were rampant in beating Luxemborg’s Ettelbruck 4/0 in 47 minutes flat. They then played Ireland’s Celtic Club in the afternoon needing just a little more exertion. Celtic, from Waterford, shocked Irish squash when they knocked out perennial champions Fitzwilliam from Dublin. Indeed the Fitzwilliam club had already booked their tickets. [Although I had been informed that the Fitzwilliam Club had traveled to Paderborner anyway, this is not so].

This match was a good example of the mismatching. Waterford, home of the wonderful glassworks, has a population of 20,000 and barely two clubs in the entire province. Their players had to face four fully professional players in Alex Gough, Scott Handley, Danny Meddings and Clive Ewins and while a couple of the players gave a very good account of themselves, there was never a suggestion that any of the Colets players needed to engage top gear. Alex Gough faced Paul Freyne, a player with a lovely touch, but whatever he tried at the front, Gough was there to counter-drop or lob it to the back of the court.

First days and first rounds of tournaments tend to feature less than engrossing matches (although the recent St. Louis tournament proved a wonderful exception to the rule featuring some huge upsets). Und zo (as they say in these here parts) we have to wait for something more challenging tomorrow and failing that, the much anticipated semi-finals on Saturday.