TWO BANTAMS ADVANCE           [TOC DRAW]

While the tournament organizers were thrown into a tizzy this Morning, after learning that Trinity College was not permitted by their athletic league to participate in the inaugural "Mayor's Cup" being held here on Sunday, two Trinity grads did their college proud with qualifying wins. Bernardo Samper advanced into the main draw with a strong win over Patrick Chifunda while fellow Trinity alum Reggie Schonborn stopped Canada's David Phillips to also earn a main draw position. And the organizers got great news, when they were able to replace Trinity with a Princeton University Squad who will oppose Yale at Grand Central in the Mayor's Cup Sunday.

ROONEY KEEPS HIS COOL

Despite the heat in the court and the huge difference in ranking between him and his opponent, John Rooney, the Irish number one, kept his cool to take a straight games victory of Scott Arnold, a graduate of the Australian Institute of Sport. Although Arnold had Rodney Martin (who is still employed by the AIS even though he lives in the US) coaching him between games, he was unable to stop himself going for shots  and making unforgivable errors.

At the beginning of the match Arnold looked as though he would get the decision because of his better length and  ablity to kill the ball. Rooney was playing with what I can only call caution, rarely going to the front and playing basic percentage squash. But with a hot court, bouncy ball and 19inch tin, killing the ball was almost impossible.

Arnold built  up a comfortable 6-3 lead in the first game which consisted of unadventurous squash and predictable patterns of play. Rooney kept to his game plan of safe play and pulled his way up to 6-7 with the help of two penalty strokes, two of the very few decisions that went in his favour. This was the beginning of the end for Arnold and Rooney just let his opponent destroy his own chances with two more bad errors to put Rooney at match ball 10-9. The Gods showed whose side they were on when a Rooney drive took a fluke of a bounce at the back to elude Arnold’s racket and Rooney had the game 11-9 after 21 minutes. My notes indicate that Arnold committed six unforced errors; as the match wore on that became a pretty important statistic.

Arnold made more errors and was getting annoyed at the referee with no real justification. True there were some pretty strange decisions, but overall, it was Rooney who got the worst of them. Rooney went on to win the next two games  to earn a place in the main draw in Grand Central Station starting tomorrow. 

The best thing about Rooney’s performance was his persistence and his self-belief, characteristics that have been lacking in his eight year senior career. He said later that he knew that going forward on a hot court was not a good idea which is why he kept hitting to length. He kept solidly to his game plan, but things will be quite different on the glass court in the Vanderbilt Hall.  

SAMPER  HANGS IN; SURVIVES THE CRAMP

It looked as though Bernado Samper, hero of the Trinity squash team three years ago, would have no trouble despatching Patrick Chifunda  in straight games. He took the first two game 11-4 , 11-8  with the help of a string Chifunda errors. These were not your common-or-garden errors that kissed the tin. These were thunderous, earth-moving, crashing drives  and overhead claps of thunder that threatened to push the tin into the plaster.

Luckily Gus Cooke arrived at the latter part of the second game  and spoke to Chifunda during the break. Cooke is the pro at the Country Club of Virgina which is holding the  Davenport Open at the end of February, the final tournament in the Players’ Cup Series before the play-offs in Boston. Chifunda is his assistant, so quite wisely he listened to his boss. The errors stopped  and suddenly it was anybody’s game as they forced each other to  play all over the court. They swapped points all the way to 9-9 and then Samper hit the ball out of court to put his opponent at game ball  and then kindly hit the tin in going for an overhead drop. It must have been a blow to Samper’s confidence; after all he is ranked 62 and Chifunda  is not listed in the top 100. The fourth game was  pure drama as the battle continued where it had left off in the third, both players  still going for shots, both making errors.

But it was Samper who arrived at match ball 10-8, only to lose the point to a Chifunda overhead winner. On his second match ball he went to the front ready to finish it off with a backhand drop and hit the tin. And so to the tie breaker and a Chifunder mis-hit due to a broken string to put Samper at match ball again. Again he went for a glory with a backhand drop and again hit the tin to make the score 11-11. Chifunder again gifted the next point with one of his thunderous drives into the tin.  Unbelievably  Samper AGAIN  tried to finish the match with a backhand drop, and AGAIN hit the tin.  Samper’s face registered extreme frustration and Chifunda  should have used the psychological blow to his advantage but instead hit the ball out of court to put  Samper at match ball – his fifth. And once again Chifunder’s suspect forehand let him down as he thundered the ball into the tin to finish the  24 minute game, 14-12 and give Samper his ticket  through to the  main draw.

“I was cramping up in the third game and I was finding it hard to move,” Samper told me later. “And the racket was sticking to my hand,” he added, the relief obvious in his voice.

“I WUZ ROBBED”.  CLIVE LEACH, JANUARY 2008

There was a full-scale  five act drama when Clive Leach faced 19 year old  Khawaja Maqbool of Pakistan.  Leach must take the credit (or blame?) for most of it  as he constantly  questioned the referees, but questioned them in a less than flattering way. What players should learn is to argue the decision, not deride the officials. Jonathon Power did that well – he never insulted the referees. Leach  -probably unknowingly – really rubbed the referee the wrong way and consequently  reaped what he had sown.

Firstly he got docked a penalty point for getting back on court late; a harsh decision. He argued, wrongly that he should get a warning first, but that rule changed a long time ago. If a referee feels like it he can  give a match misconduct without previous warning. And as the match wore on  he was getting, to put it nicely, some unusual decisions, not in his favour.

GREAT TOUCH, PERFECT WEIGHT

It was a ding-dong fight with  Leach winning the first game showing wonderful touch and weight of shot. He can slow serve the ball so that you could have cup of tea between the ball hitting the front wall and arriving in the service box. This touch completely  unhinged  Maqbool who simply did  not know what to do.

His is young, 19, still studying, and a privateer in that he is completely unconnected to the Pakistan Squash Federation. He is very bright and there have been talks with Dave Talbott at Yale, so we have an interesting young talent possibly moving to the States to add to the burgeoning talent pool.

He has not played a tournament for three months, and living in Dubai has no real competition. But he moved into gear  and took the second game  11-8 in just 8 minutes but then Leach took control again, using his lethal forehand at the right time to hit some wonderfully valuable winners. Things got fraught from the beginning of the fourth when he was penalised a point and there were increasingly rancorous exchanges with the referee.

Meanwhile, Maqbool was quite rightly pointing out that Leach was taking a long time between points. After all Leach is no longer a young man and his breathing could be heard off court. Maqbool won the fourth in 10 minutes suggesting Leach was about to expire. When Maqbool ran to a quick 4-1 lead in the fifth it seemed all over, except Leach was far from finished. He ran a string of seven points to lead 8-4 and then continued his push to lead 9-6 and then 10-7, match ball. On the next rally  Maqbool put a shot down the middle and Leach was waiting to stroke the ball but Maqbool was in the way. A certain Stroke, and the match, we all thought. Wrong. “Let,” said the referee. Leach – and everybody else was astounded. Rodney Martin, Anthony Ricketts and Julian Illingworth were all standing next to me, and all three jaws dropped in perfect synchronisation.

(Note to Clive Leach: Do not anger the referee. You will pay for it).

Maqbool refused to be unsettled by the shenanigans and pulled his way up to 10-10 to force the tiebreak. Leach got the first point with a Stroke but then three tired errors gave the match to Maqbool, closing out 69 minutes of gripping, if sometimes unpleasant, action.

CUSKELLY CONTINUES CONQUERING

Ryan Cuskelly, Australia’s next star,  was never in trouble in his match against  Ahmed Hamza of Egypt. Cuskelly  moves like a dancer and plays mostly the right shots at the right time, making him very efficient and hard to catch out. He has a pretty good temperament; one spectator thought he looked very intense and serious. Well, squash is his life and his futue – you expect him to take it seriously.

He won 3/0 in 44 minutes and it will be interesting to see how he does on the colder glass court tomorrow in the main draw.

GILLY LANE LOSES BUT MAKES BHATTACHARYA WORK

He has only been on the pro circuit for six months so you couldn’t really expect Gilly Lane to beat the experienced Ritwik Bhattacharya of Indian. But then you wouldn’t expect him to push the match to five games.  He lost 11-6 in the fifth, but in speaking later he said he was happy with his performance.

“Sure I’d like to have got through to play on the glass court tomorrow, but in the end Ritwik simply had too much for me.  The pace is hot, I am not used to it and I need a lot more matches played at this pace. I played well in patches, but this is my first half year on the circuit, so I am not disappointed,” he commented.

I asked Ritwik why he needed five games and he said that Lane played some very good squash, especially in the first game.

“He played well, and I had a bye yesterday, so it took me time to warm up,” he said.

It will be interesting to see how Lane develops after a year in Amsterdam and a couple of dozen matches at top ten pace  under his belt.

FINAL QUALIFYING ROUND results
John Rooney (IRE) bt Scott Arnold (AUS)  11-8, 11-9, 11-4 (59mins)
Amr  Mansi (EGY) bt  Joshua  Greenfield (NZL)  11-4, 11-5, 11-9 (47mins)
Bernado Samper (COL) bt Patrick Chifunda (ZAM) 11-4, 11-8,9-11, 11-10(4-2) (69mins)
Khawaja Maqbool (PAK))  bt  Clive Leach (ENG)  5-11, 11-8, 9-11, 11-811-10 (3-1) (69mins)
Ryan Cuskelly (AUS) bt Ahmed Hamza (EGY) 11-7, 11-2, 11-6 (44mins)
Ritwik Bhattacharya (IND) bt Gilly Lane (USA) 5-11, 11-3, 11-7, 8-11, 11-5 (59mins)
Regardt Schonborn (RSA) bt David Phillips (CAN) 5-11 11-9 11-10(3-1) 11-7  
Mohammed Reda (EGY) bt Badr Abdel Aziz (SWE)

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