SUCH A HARD LIFE

The Sunborn Yacht Hotel. (file photo:© 2007)

There have been dozens and dozens of occasions when I have seen professional squash players leave the court – or even a practice session – streaming sweat and on the edge of exhaustion. I have seen players who can barely stand but carry on playing, their mind ordering their body to do things that under normal circumstance, it would be incapable of doing.  On those occasions I think pro squash players are quite mad.

But then there are occasions when I think,  ‘What a nice, pampered life.”

The most recent  occurrence was at the Canary Wharf Classic in London’s Dockland, The major sponsor is ISS and by chance I learned that they had a boat/yacht/ship which they had turned into a hotel and was moored not far from the East Winter Gardens where the Classic is played.  So a quick call to Tim Garner of Eventis, the promoters, some Bronstein charm, a little bootlicking and Lo! Yes, he could arrange for me to spend a night on the yacht/hotel. There was a downside to this: I had to share a cabin/suite with Colin McQuillan, fellow squash journalist and a man who possess an ear-bashing quadro-phonic snore.  It is a snore of symphonic proportions.  His snoring could wake the dead and then kill them again with the soundwaves.

Inside the Sunborn Yacht Hotel. (file photo:© 2007)

Fortunately I am a sound sleeper, and Colin and I have shared hotel rooms around the world and still remain the best of friends.  So the night before the final, we were driven to the boat, spent a pleasant hour over a sandwich and beer talking to Andy Bunting of Prince and other squash people and then retired to our large, very comfortable cabin/room/suite.( The terminology sometimes flummoxes).

These ISS people do things in style and I learned later that this hotel boat had been around for four years, which is  why the call it London’s Best Kept Secret.  The next morning at breakfast, I was surrounded by the A-list of squash players, all of whom had been staying on the boat for the duration of  the tournament.  Such suffering!  There was young James Willstrop having breakfast with a red-headed lady from the Netherlands, who has been known to play squash. (NO, you will not get her name from me. This is not a gossip column).

So I looked around the breakfast room, flooded with light from the windows overlooking the docks and thought:  Mmmm, not a bad life. Not bad at all. McQuillan and I ate the usual unhealthy fried English breakfast and then retired to the lounge to read the Daily Telegraph, the only paper you could get on board.  It was about the same time as Conrad Black, the former owner of the newspaper, was going on trial on the USA, accused of all manner of financial skullduggery. (He is also a Lord, having been elevated (?) to the peerage by the Conservative Party. I wonder how much that cost him?)

Thanks Eventis, Thanks ISS.  Next year, could we make it two nights ? And could I bring my lady? She doesn’t snore.

FAREWELL SUPERSERIES

The fact is that next year the Canary Wharf Classic will be the only squash tournament in London. During the tournament we heard the sad news that the Super Series Finals has had to be abandoned due to lack of sponsorship. Satinder Bajwa, head coach at  Harvard has been running the Super Series for ten years or so and the event, held in the heart of the London’s financial district, had become a recognized sporting date on the London calendar. This is very discouraging for the London squash fan and despite money pouring into tournaments in the Arab countries, our promoters cannot seem to find even minor sponsorship money in London, one of the world’s great financial capitals. This is the city where even a modest apartment in Kensington would set you back $3million.  An apartment (rather grander) was recently sold for £480million.  This is where a top man at Goldman Sachs earned Christmas bonus of  $100million.    The point I am trying to make is there is an awful lot of money rolling around London and yet somehow, we can’t seem to find $200,000 to sponsor a tournament.

ARE YOU RICH ENOUGH?

But while lolling around on the decks of the Sunborn Hotel, I did come up with a wonderful idea for a tournament: Find a boat with a ballroom big enough to take a four-wall glass court.  Get the top eight players on board competing for prize money of $100,000. Find a couple of hundred rich squash fans willing to shell out  $5,000 for a squash cruise and set sail from Southampton for New York. Each night there would be two squash matches; during the day, the fans would be able to play with the stars and there would also be lectures by Jonah Barrington and Jonathon Powell (or even by journalists!). Player could bring their families along making it more of a holiday than work and everybody would have a good time. Land in New York at the end of February so everybody could go and watch the Tournament of Champions in Grand Central station.(tickets included in the cruise price).

Interested sponsors can contact me via Squashtalk.com.

JAMES WILLSTROP MOVES ON ….

James Willstrop: A new sponsorship deal? . (Debra Tessier photo:© 2007)

James Willstrop is now the hottest commodity in British squash, but has yet to get the sponsorships the position entails. His father Malcolm felt that it was time for a move and so James is now being managed by a Pontefract businessman and Malcolm. (Will Anthony Ricketts follow suit?). Stay tuned from some sponsorship announcements as Willstrop moves on from iSport and eSquash.

James is negotiating to sign a new racket contract with either Prince or Dunlop. If James does sign with Dunlop it will be slightly ironic because Willstrop was with Dunlop before eSquash enticed him away.

…. A JOURNALIST MUST GET HIS FACTS RIGHT

In his guise as a journalist, publicist and promoter, running two magazines, an annual and the British Open, Paul Walters tends to brush over the facts. In his frequent blurbs for the British Open, he is insisting that it is the oldest tournament in the world, having started in 1922. Well, the women’s British Open started in 1922, as a proper Open knock out tournament, but the men’s Open did not start until 1930. Although the SRA annuals list it as “Open”, in the first dozen or so years it was not completely open. The reigning champion would defend his title on a home and away basis against a challenger who had earned the right by knocking off the other contenders.  [This system is still used to decide the Real Tennis world champion.]

The British Open as a knockout tournament did not start until 1948.

Now Paul, if you had done research as a normal journalist does, you would have discovered that the Yanks beat the Brits to the punch: the US National Championships started in 1907 making it the oldest on-going tournament in the world. In fact both the US Intercollegiate, started in 1930, and the USA Professional which started in 1930, can claim to be older ‘Opens’ than the Men’s British Open.

BETTER LATE THAN NEVER

Back in 1998 in Princeton University’s vast  Jadwyn gym, I walked through the courts as the players were preparing for the world junior championships. I saw a player on court hitting the ball into the nick with ridiculous ease. I immediately assumed he was  Egyptian and was told, to my surprise that he was the Irish number one, John Rooney.

This man had a natural talent that was wonderful to watch. I immediately predicted world domination – it’s those emotional Russian genes that take over sometimes. Funnily enough when I got back to England I heard that he had been signed by my own squash club to play in the Surrey  leagues.  Sad to report, in those intervening years Mr Rooney failed to capitalise on his natural talent.  He was fond of the odd glass of the black stout, it was reported, and not so fond of the hard training.  Three years ago he told me that he was under the guidance of Peter Marshall, who was toughening him up. But nowt came of it. Mind you he did get up to 52 in the PSA rankings, but by January  2006 he had slipped to 323, which is  where rank beginners reside.

I am very glad to say that Rooney has made a comeback. His fall, he tells me, was due to  Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.  Now, at the age of 26, he is now very, very focused and in serious training.   Last month he won the Salzburg Open, and last week he won  the Galway Open in his home town. In the semi-finals he beat  Ben Ford (a player who can almost match Rooney for shotmaking),  3/2  in a 70 minute match before demolishing Scottish champion Stewart Crawford in straight games. So, two PSA titles in a month, which is hugely promising. He is now up to  154 in the world and if he keeps his focus, should be in the top 30 by this time next year. 

Although most players are peaking at  26/27  Rooney is doing it in his own time and could well peak at 30. He has simply shifted his time clock back.  Welcome back John. I shall be watching.

IRISH OPEN

The good news for Rooney is that despite his lowly ranking he gets a wild card directly into the main draw of the  Canon Kirk Homes Irish Open which starts in Dublin next week (April 19).

He faces tough old veteran Alex Gough of Wales, the number two seed. It’s a match that Rooney can win if he keeps tough and Gough is not at the top of his form. I shall be in Dublin for the tournament which also features a WISPA tournament – so a lot of squash in four days.