SquashTalk > USA Junior Olympics 2000 > Saturday

JHIE GOUGH downs DYLAN BENNETT in 3 in the round of 32.

SquashTalk News © 2000

New Haven CT. Dec 16 2000, by Ron Beck

Due to one of several glaring seeding mishaps at this event, international-class players Dylan Bennett of the Netherlands and Jhie Gough of Australia faced off in the round of 32. Arguably, this placed two of the top 3 or 4 people in the 80-entrant event against each other in this early round.

With most of the crowd of 600 plus players and parents totally unaware of what was unfolding, Bennett and Gough got out on court in front of about 30 spectators - which included former Australian great Ken Hiscoe.

The quality of their play certainly could have offered a clinic to the many aspiring American juniors, who were blithely unaware of the match going on.

The pressure was on Bennett, because he was the one who had been inexplicably unseeded. Bennett showed the pressure - he started out the match making a string of errors, losing the first game 9-1, and never really recovered.

He did manage to begin to pull it together in the third game, taking a 4-1 lead, and it looked like the match was going to be interesting. But Bennett then lapsed again into an error prone mode, fell three straight to Gough, and could now look forward to the feed-in consolation; with the opportunity to show that at least he belonged in top five of the event.