POWER OF GOOD

Jonathon Power: Now passing on his knowhow (Debra Tessier photo:© 2007)

Jonathon Power has started to put the pieces together to achieve his aim of establishing his own club for juniors. I caught him on his way through Union Station in Toronto. (He moved back there last year so his wife Sita could be near her folks when she gave birth to their daughter, Parker, seven months ago.

Jonathon is now working closely with five juniors, four Canadians and one American, Ryan Dowd from Boston. Jonathon got to know Dowd when he stayed with his family when he played in the US Open and now Ryan is delaying his entry into Yale by a year, which he will devote to getting better as a squash player.

“I’m not saying Dowd is a future world champion but he’s a good athlete and  he is getting his head together,” Jonathon told me. 

Power’s operation is presently based at the Toronto Athletic Club  courtesy of Clive Caldwell, who has done so much for Canadian squash since he himself was a major player at both hard and softball.  (If Clive isn’t in the Canadian Squash Hall of Fame yet, he should be.)

“This is the start and I am building up goodwill. Our aim is eventually to build our own high performance centre, not just another squash club.,” he told me as he bustled through the Toronto crowds.  If anyone can achieve that, Jonathon can. Meanwhile, Americans will be watching  Ryan Dowd’s progress.

JAMIE BACK IN MALAYSIA

After  several years toiling at the social coal face that is the Merion Cricket Club, Jamie Hickock, that great Anglo-Canadian squash talent and now coach, is back in Malaysia  as the national coach.

I met up with him at the St George’s Club in England where he was once more escorting a score of young American squash players around England before heading off to the German and Dutch Junior Opens.

Jamie is still as laid back as ever and quite happily disclosed that he had been fired by the MCC and seemingly happy about it.

“Listen Martin. I am now a national coach with responsibility for all junior and senior teams male and female and I can tell you there is not nearly as much stress as I got at the MCC.” They. were heartfelt words. He is now married to a Malaysian lady and they have a baby, so residence in Malaysia is a good deal all round.

I am wondering whether his presence in that country will help to put the career of Ong Beng Hee back on track. It was Jamie who coached and mentored Beng Hee through his early years as a senior on the pro circuit.

SQUASH AHOY

In my Gallery written after the Canary Wharf Classic where we stayed one night on board a boat/hotel, I came up with the brilliant idea of a cruise tournament with a glass court on board a major liner with matches played at night and the passengers playing with the pros during the day. The cruise, I envisaged would terminate in `New York in time for the tournament of Champions at the Grand Central Station.

To my delight and horror, it was not a new idea.  A German company (AIDA) had already put a specially designed ASB  squash court on to one of their latest boats.  I wrote to them telling them of my vision and received this reply:

Dear Martin,

This is indeed amazing that part of your “dream” was already  being fulfilled while you where dreaming it.

The first glass court was  installed on AIDAdiva, a second one is being installed at the Meyers shipyard on the AIDAbella and two more will follow on the next AIDA cruise ships to be built soon.

Maybe one day this dream can be realised – this cruise from England to New York. Really exciting.

Christa Oberhans

So, before you know it there will be four ships at sea with squash players being seasick and exhausted at the same time. None of the schedules call for Brit landings  yet, but I’m working on a freebie even as you read this.

YES, THERE IS A GOD…

A lifelong atheist and now follower of Richard Dawkins (his book, The God Delusion is world-wide best seller),  I have now nevertheless been converted the other way.

As you all know by now I am not a fan of the business practices of  Paul Walters who now runs most major tournament and almost everything else in Brit squash. (I think his business credo is “If you are not for me, I will destroy you”)

His business is based in Manchester which is why so many tournaments are played in Manchester.  My conversion came last week with a headline in The Times newspaper: “The Earth Moves for Manchester as sixth tremor in a month shakes the city awake” 

You see, there is a God.

( Happily, they were tremors rather than major building-smashers.)

ANJEMA STILL RECOVERING

LJ: Still resting on the settee (Debra Tessier photo:© 2007)

I called Laurens Jans Anjema – known as LJ to his friends – a couple of days after  his mammoth 97-minute final in the Forexx Dutch Open when he lost to David Palmer 11-10 (5-3), 1-11, 10-11 (3-5), 11-1, 11-6

He told me he was still lying down on the settee trying to recover.  Despite the loss,  LJ, ranked 26 in the world, is not too downhearted after putting up such a good fight against the world number three. The closeness of the contest is probably due to the fact that LJ takes the 75 minute trip from The Hague to Antwerp to play Palmer twice a week as well as get coaching from Shawn Moxham, the man who took Palmer to the top in world squash.Obviously Palmer and LJ know each other’s games pretty well by now. 

However, LJ has been working with a new fitness coach and told Squashtalk’s Ron Beck that he was fitter than ever.  So I asked LJ if he was that fit, why did he fade in the last two games?  LJ  didn’t put the phone down or call me names. In fact he was his usual honest self:

“I was actually lucky to win that third game tie-break. I won the final point on a  mis-hit which just reached above the tin. But The fatigue was mental, I had to concentrate so hard to play the right tactics against David.  In the fourth I started to play stupid and he was 6-1 up and you don’t fight back from  6-1 down against someone like David. So I let it go and played hard in the fifth but it’s hard to  get up  again,” he said, adding that the result will get him back to the low 20’s and give him a good start to the new season. (He will be in New York for the US Open.)

His new fitness guru is a South African, Alistair McCaw who is also working with top tennis players.  LJ says that McCaw’s range of fitness routines is huge. “I hardly ever do the same thing twice. They range from running in the woods holding logs above my head to Plyometrics and various versions of court sprints.”

So be warned, Anjema is looking for top twenty status before the end of the year.

LATVIA ANYONE?

While squash is shrinking in England (although nobody will admit it) alongside the vision of some of the sports administrators, it seems to be blossoming in Latvia. Lithuania is also getting big into squash. So says  Richard Packham of Pointfore who is enjoying good sales of all things squash to those countries. Packham thinks that England’s administrators are not supporting the clubs and there is solid evidence that the sport is diminishing. In one county the number of teams competing in the county leagues has dropped from 150 a decade ago to 50 this year.

OR PENNSYLVANIA?

John White to become college coach at F&M in Pennsylvania (Debra Tessier photo:© 2007)

The sport is still enjoying a slow growth in the US. One English pro reckons there is at least 30 Limeys and Aussies now ensconced in the US holding down major coaching jobs.  The latest – and this is a biggie – is that a towering world talent, John White the former world #1, has taken up the post of squash coach at Franklin & Marshall University in Pennsylvania. Watch for a major change of fortunes for that University’s teams in the college leagues.

Martin Heath, the former world top tenner from Scotland, moved to the States a few years back and is now taking the University of Rochester to new heights.