Martin Bronstein reporting from the New York Athletic Club

Tuesday 8 January 2008-01-08

A RELAXED SUNNY START TO THE BIG ONE IN THE BIG APPLE

In weather that is more like April with 65 degree temperature rather than the usual freezing, snowy Januarys of old, the 2008 Tournament of Champions got under way at the posh New York Athletic Club, which borders Central Park.

I was walking around in a jacket, a change from my usual Arctic outfit that I always wear in New York in January, but did remember to run into Bloomingdales to buy a tie. Go into the New York Athletic Club without a tie?  Are you kidding? Anyway, I’d hate to be thrown out a second time.

ABSENCES
As the date for this year’s tournament has been brought forward seven weeks, many players were caught unawares resulting in four of the top ten players – including world number one Amr Shabana  - being absent. This absence will be overshadowed   as  this tournament marks the much-awaited return of   boy wonder Ramy Ashour, who has missed the last three big tournaments because of recurring leg injuries.

His amazing progress last year got him to within a tenth of a percentage point of Shabana at the top of the rankings. Since then Shabana has  won three major tournaments including the world open title for the third time, thereby opening up the gap again.  Ashour is the number one seed with Gregory Gaultier of France at number two and David Palmer, now based in Boston, as third seed.

Sadly, one of the few players to have beaten Ramy last year, Nick Matthew, withdrew at the last moment, giving the main draw a bit of a shuffle. One beneficiary of this shuffle was  Yasser el Hallaby who was due to play   Stewart  Boswell, the 9th seed.

Now El Hallaby will be playing Rafael Alarcon of Brazil and  this is a match that he could well win, putting him into the second round, giving him valuable ranking points to help him improve on his present ranking of 44. 

Yasser leads a Princeton contingent and was present at the qualifying  stage to watch his 19 –year old younger brother Hesham and  Kimlee Wong who play at two and three for Princeton.

The qualifying got under way with  John Rooney, that elegent, wonderfully talented Irishman  beating Botswana’s Lefika Ragantse in straight games. As the court retained its 19 inch tin, Rooney was very circumspect in going for winners and played intelligently to ensure his passage through to the final qualifying round where he will meet Australia’s Scott Arnold, who received a bye.  Arnold is ranked  54 to Rooney’s 86, but that is no indication of the true gap. Rooney should be in the top 50 and if  he manages to avoid injury and gets some confidence in his own abilities, he still has time to make it.

Ragontse, who is partner in  the Bare Hill club in Baltimore told me later that the only person he didn’t want to draw was  Rooney. That’s sport, sport, as they say in Australia.

Englishman Clive Leach, an assistant pro at the host club, used his home court knowledge well to fight back from 2/1 down to beat Canada’s  Robin Clarke in a hard 55 minutes.

The "Big Three" of the Ivy League did not fare well today: young Hallaby of Princeton went down to Gilly Lane, recently of Penn,  Wong of Princeton lost in three to Maqbook  and Jason Delierre, recently of Harvard, younger brother of  Shawn Delierre also exprienced a 3/0 defeat at the hands of  Amr Mansi of Egypt.

“He played well in parts,” said Yasser of his young brother’s performance.  “His movement and shot selection was patchy but as the college season moves into gear in the next few months, that will improve.”

Gilly Lane played at one for Penn, graduating last year. He is about to move to Amsterdam to train with Tommy Berden, so now we have yet another American  who is taking the bull seriously by the horns.

The very promising Ryan Cuskelly of Australia against demonstrated his fine court movement and  racket skills in downing Arturo  Castillo of Mexico in straight games.  Castillo lacked the smooth movement of his young opponent and  was too often ruined by impetuous shots. He managed to overcome a deficit in the first game  due to some untimely unforced errors from Cuskelly, and force a tie-break but the 20 year old Australian made very quick work of that to win the next two points. He underlined his superiority in the second game by winning 11-1 and then smoothly took the third game 11-5 to end the  30 minutes match.

Cuskelly lives in New York where he is coached by the great Rodney Martin, who was there watching and briefing between games.

“He’s a natural attacker,” Martin replied in response to the my question about Cuskelly’s strong point. “He’s a bit immature at the moment and he is only just starting to do the hard work. As a junior, before he got to the Australian Institute of Sport, he never did the work, and relied on his natural talent to get to number one in Australia’s under 19 ranking.”

Anthony Ricketts agreed: “Great movement, wonderful skills,” he commented. Ricketts is in New York with his lady, Shelley Kitchen who will be playing in a women’s tournament as part of the Tournament of Champions. She will be featured alongside Natalie Grainger, Vicki Botwright and Vanessa Atkinson, which is a pretty strong quartet.

FIRST ROUND QUALIFYING
Scott Arnold (AUS)  bye
John Rooney (IRE) bt Lefika Ragantse (BOT) 11-6, 11-5, 11-6 (30mins)
Amr  Mansi (EGY) bt  Jason Delierre (CAN) 11-6,11-1, 11-9 (20mins)
Joshua  Greenfield (NZL)  bt  Abdul Razzaq (PAK) 11-4, 11-6, 11-7 (31mins)
Bernardo Samper (COL)   bye
Patrick Chifunda (ZAM) bt Mohammad Farooq  (PAK) 11-8, 11-3, 11-9 (20mins)
Clive Leach (ENG) bt Robin Clarke (CAN) 11-8, 3-11, 8-11, 11-9, 11-9 (55mins)
Khawaja Maqbool (PAK)  bt Kimlee Wong (MAS)11-10(3-1), 11-7, 11-7  (40mins)
Ahmed Hamza (EGY) bt  Michael Reid (CAN)11-5, 11-5, 11-5 (27mins)
Ryan Cuskelly (AUS)  bt Arturo Castillo (MEX) 11-10(2-0), 11-1, 11-5 (30mins)
Gilly Lane (USA) bt Hesham El Halaby (EGY) 11-6, 11-6, 11-6 (34 mins)
Ritwik Bhattacharya (IND)  bye
Jacques Swanepoel (RSA)  vs Regardt Schonborn (RSA)
David Phillips (CAN)  bye
Karim Yehia (EGY) vs Badr Abdel Aziz (SWE)
Mohammed Reda (EGY) bye

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