August 16, 2000 copyright 2000 Squashtalk.com :

SQUASHTALK NEWS WIRE, London By Martin Brontstein

Men's Junior Individual champs to be held annually?

After a chance remark at a discussion in Milan during the World's Junior Men's Championship, there is a very good chance that Malaysia will host a Junior Men's individual championship in 2001 just one year after the Milan event.

Normally junior individual and team championships are held every two years, but at a WSF meeting last year the board members agreed that they could see no objection to the individual championships being held annually while the team championship would remain bi-annual. At that stage there were no offers and so the matter was dropped.

When this was casually discussed at a meeting in Milan in July, which included WSF president Susie Symcock and Andrew Shelley, A.J.Wong, Executive Director of Persatuan Squash Malaysia, expressed an interest on behalf of Malaysia. He was told that if he got the go ahead from his board, the event was theirs.

"We are already holding the junior women's event in Penang next year, but we would not run them at the same time, because the boys' event would overshadow the girls," he told Squashtalk.

Contrary to rumours at the Milan championships, nothing definite has been arranged, although the tone of the people concerned was very positive. Many managers expressed approval of an annual championship on the grounds that a two year gap denies some players a chance at the title because their birthday falls at the wrong time of the year. They could be just too young to challenge the top players at one championship and too old two years later.

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