SquashTalk>Columns>Team Kneipp > World Open 2004 Report Card

A New Ranking Order
December has been one of the craziest, most unexpected and advantageous months for pro squash. The Qatar Classic and World Open have provided many surprise results, and the rankings next month and for the first half of 2004 will be scrambled because of it. The current (December 2003) top 20 order is:

Joe and Jansher at a World Open 03 Function Photo © 2003 Dan Kneipp

1 Peter Nicol
2 John White
3 David Palmer
4 Jonathon Power
5 Thierry Lincou
6 Anthony Ricketts
7 Karim Darwish
8 Ong Beng Hee
9 Lee Beachill
10 Gregory Gaultier
11 Amr Shabana
12 Martin Heath
13 Graham Ryding
14 Joseph Kneipp
15 Paul Price
16 Mansoor Zaman
17 Simon Parke
18 Omar Elborolossy
19 Stewart Boswell
20 Alex Gough

The ranking on January 1st 2004 is going to be extremely different. Something like this (give or take a few shuffles and placings):

Dan Kneipp traveling around Lahore with his guard contingent. Photo © 2003 Team Kneipp

1 - Thierry Lincou (up from 5)
2 - John White
3 – Peter Nicol (down from 1)
4 – Lee Beachill (up from 9)
5 – Amr Shabana (up from 11)
6 – David Palmer (down from 3)
7 – Jonathon Power (down from 4)
8 – Anthony Ricketts (down from 6)
9 – Karim Darwish (down from 7)
10 – Joe Kneipp (up from 14)
11 – Nick Matthew (up from 21)
12 – Gregory Gaultier (down from 10)
13 – Ong Beng Hee (down from 8)
14 – Graham Ryding (down from 13)
15 – Omar Elborolossy (up from 18)
16 – Mohammed Abbas (up from 25)
17 – Paul Price (down from 15)
18 – James Willstrop (up from 28)
19 – Olli Tuominen (up from 24)
20 – Renan Lavigne (up from 30)

Next month every player in the top 20 except for McWhitey moves position, and not just a small shuffling – an average of four places each. The different strength and diversity of players represented in this group is interesting. The top 20 consists of four Australians, four Englishmen, four Egyptians, three French blokes, two Canadian, a Malaysian, a Scot and a Finn.

The World Open was the last Super Series tournament of the year. The first one was New York’s Tournament of Champions in February. At that event the quarterfinals had the top 8 seeds, with no major upsets occurring against the top guns. Things couldn’t have been more starkly different in Lahore. By the quarterfinal stage there was no remaining player that had even previously reached the semi finals of the World Open.

Here is our perspective on the relative successes and failures of the 2003 World Open:
Champagne and Strawberries
Amr Shabana (Egypt) – the new king.
Only a die-hard Egyptian fan would have listed Shabana as a genuine title contender at this event. No one could doubt his talent, or ability, or the fact that when he plays well he can beat anyone. But winning the World Open? Not likely. He not only did it, he did it in style. He beat the current World Champion, he saved five match balls in the quarter finals, he bested his own nation’s highest ranked player ensuring he will take that coveted position, and then he beat the new world #1. What a spectacular ride. Shabana is entertaining to watch, not just because of his fantastic racquet skills, but also because of his relaxed, likeable and comedic nature that comes across on court. A good way of emphasising how substantial of a result this was for Shabana, relative to his previous wins – the amount of tax that Shabana had removed from his winning cheque was a larger figure than any pay cheque he had had to date.

I can’t wait to see how he reacts to this victory. Shabana can only be described as a schizophrenic squash player. He is either awesome on court, or just making up the numbers. There’s not much in between. Let me give you some good examples: In June he unexpectedly won the Spanish Open, then as the top seed at the next tournament lost in the first round. In May he made the final of a medium sized event in Pakistan, then lost in the first round at the next tournament. His results are erratic. You can’t win the World Open without overcoming that.

After the tournament we were going through customs with the Egyptian players (Shabana, Darwish and Abbas). Shabana was carrying the impressive crystal trophy, but as usual was trying to avoid attention. If we had won the event we would be waving the thing around like a flare trying to attract attention and hoping it could be used for a business class upgrade. Shabana had a security officer approach him and congratulate him, and he seemed slightly embarrassed. I told him he had to enjoy it and get used to it, despite it being contrary to his nature. His response was priceless, “I’ll be ready for the next time”.

Thierry Lincou (France)- finalist
Lincou has been the most consistent player this year, by a long way. Every other top player has had upsets, injuries, or both. Because of this he’ll go to #1 in the January rankings, becoming the first Frenchman to do so. I’m hoping that with the first French #1 and the first Egyptian World Champion we’ll have a substantial sized French Open and Egyptian Open in 2004.

Lincou had to overcome substantial pressure to achieve the final in this tournament. When we met in the semi finals he had to win to achieve #1 status. Try playing a match with that sort of pressure lingering in your mind. There was no doubt that it affected him. We shared a van from the hotel to the tournament venue. Because of the extreme security and frantic local traffic, these rides were always annoying and stressful. We got a few hundred metres into the ride and had to turn back because Lincou had forgotten his shoes. He was playing the World Open semi finals and fighting for the #1 ranking position, and he forgot his shoes! Pressure. He overcame it on court and had a great tournament.

Davide Bianchetti (Italy) – quarterfinalist
Aside from Shabana Bianchetti was easily the player who achieved the most, relative to expectations. Lincou’s place in the final was impressive, but far from surprising as he has been achieving well all year. But Davide’s victories over Peter Nicol and Gregory Gaultier for a quarterfinal place was both impressive and unexpected.

Joe Kneipp (Australia) – semi finalist
We started this year out well, but fell into a slump after summer. We had done the work and had faith that things would come good, and the timing couldn’t have been better. The draw we faced could be considered the hardest (Bianchetti’s and Shabana’s being the other obvious contenders).

I had to beat Alex Gough ranked 20 and a former World Open semi finalist, John White ranked 2 and last year’s World Open finalist, then Lee Beachill ranked 9 and the winner of the other Super Series event in December and the current inform player, and finally Thierry Lincou ranked five and the most consistent player of 2003. A very good week at the office, and I should finally crack the elusive top 10 in January’s ranking (I’m bloody tired of 11).

I had a funny interaction with one of the referees at the tournament while I was shopping at one of the local stores attached to the tournament hotel. I was just browsing, but found something I really wanted. I didn’t have any money on me and was going to go back to my room to get some, but the ref was also in the shop and kindly lent me the money. The following day the same ref was adjudicating my match. I saw him as I was warming up and went to repay my debt, but suddenly realised how inappropriate it was to be handing him money prior to him reffing my match. I thought about either getting Daniel to do it, or doing it inconspicuously, but both options would look incredibly dodgy if anyone saw it. I opted for paying him back much later. I explained the situation to him and we both laughed.

Karim Darwish (Egypt) – semi finalist
Darwish had a great tournament, but will rightly walk away from this tournament and the January ranking feeling annoyed and unlucky. He made the last four of the most important tournament of the year, but will lose his position as the top Egyptian, but even more cruel – will suffer a ranking slide in January! He made the semi finals of the World Open but will go from being 7 in December to 9 in January (I think). That is an absolute tragedy and I’d be trying to call someone to complain if it happened to me. The reason for this is that he is a lot of ranking points behind the guy at #6 (Ricketts) and the rest of the top five and despite the great result won’t catch them, and is overtaken by Shabana whose World Open victory has given him a ludicrous number of ranking points, as well as Beachill whose points from his victory in Doha is only slightly less ludicrous.

Ritwik Bhattacharya (India) – 1st round
Ritwik is the Indian qualifier that nearly handed Lee Beachill a first round loss. This was a wonderful game and Beachill could be forgiven for feeling unlucky at what a difficult first round match he had. If Ritwik can reproduce this form in other tournaments his climb up the rankings will be rapid

Arshad Iqbal Burki (Pakistan) – 2nd round
The only local player to make it past the first round. He had to qualify first and then upset Shahier Razik in the first round.

Olli Tuominen, Mohammed abbas, Nick Matthew, Renan Lavigne, Borga Golan, Tommy Berden and Nick Taylor
These players all progressed further in the tournament than was expected, upsetting seeds along the way.

Vinegar and Rotten Tomatoes

The Defending Champions
The tournament was supposed to start with three former World Open champions. It was whittled down to two with Power’s withdrawal. Very early in this tournament (before the quarter finals) it became obvious that a new champion was assured.
Peter Nicol exited the World Open at the surprisingly early stage of 2nd round, defeated by Italian Davide Bianchetti. Nicol’s victor has said that he was playing a sub-par champion and there has been talk of Nicol having food poisoning. Staying healthy is just part of fitness (with a large element of luck thrown in), but if you over-train and push your body extra hard it makes you extra fit physically, but more susceptible to illnesses. Dealing with diet and food poisoning when travelling in a country like Pakistan is very serious.

The hotel we were staying at in Pakistan was five star with incredible food. Even if the hotel has similar food hygiene standards to what we’re used to, it is still easy to get an upset stomach simply because of different bacteria. Some of the Pakistani players struggle to remain healthy playing in Europe because of different bacteria present in the food.

We didn’t want to take any risks during this tournament so we brought packaged food to ensure there would be no problems with any illness caused by food (a mildly upset stomach can be the difference between winning and losing your match). Some players laughed at this preparation and considered it an unnecessary precaution – it obviously wasn’t considering Nicol’s tournament was affected by food poisoning. Once the tournament was over for us we gorged on local food and had no health problems at all, but ensuring good food at a tournament isn’t a minor matter and we’d rather err on the side of cautious.

Regardless of how and why Nicol has exited this tournament, it means that he has had his worst tournament in over five years, has had three bad results in a row (quarters in Doha and first round in Toronto) and will be overtaken in January for the #1 ranking.

David Palmer, the 2002 Champion, lost in the third round to the player that went on to take the title. At the Qatar Classic played two weeks before the World Open Palmer played some impressive squash while nurturing an injury, beating Durbach and then me for a place in the quarterfinals. He then nearly won the next match, almost progressing to the semis playing with an injured leg. It was pretty impressive that he was able to have these victories despite having to play with restrictions, but at the time we were surprised he wasn’t resting the leg for the World Open – a considerably more important tournament. Surely (with hindsight) playing these matches and jeopardising his fitness for the World Open was a mistake.

John White (Scotland)
McWhitey made the final last year, but lost in the 3rd round in Lahore. His ranking will stay at 2, but March will be the month that it’s most likely that he’ll take the top spot. At the Tournament of Champions Nicol won the event, Lincou made the final while McWhitey only reached the quarterfinal stage. This means Lincou and Nicol will have to perform well just to maintain their present ranking, while Whitey will have room to improve.

Local players especially Mansoor Zaman
I expected great things from the Pakistani players at this tournament. Everyone plays better when they have the home crowd behind them. I thought Mansoor, as the top local player would exceed his seeding expectations as he did at last year’s World Open. To do worse than expected here is a blow for the local enthusiasm in squash.

The country’s President and squash federation have dangled some considerable-sized financial carrots in front of the players to entice greater results.

Anthony Ricketts (Australia)
Ricketts made the quarterfinals as was expected of his ranking, which obviously isn’t a bad result. But I’m fairly sure he will walk away from the event disappointed with his performance. He had a 14-10 lead over Shabana in the fifth set of the quarterfinals and wasn’t able to convert the victory, something he will rue.

Ong Beng Hee (Malaysia)
Bengy has had a bad run over the past six months. I saw the end of his match against Nick Matthew. Bengy was leading 2-1, but you never would have guessed it. Bengy’s body language was dejected and he was swiping at the ball like he didn’t want to be there. One of Malaysia’s other top stars - Nicol David - was dealing with this herself recently. She had overdosed on squash and took a reasonably long sabbatical. She came back with renewed energy and determination, which culminated in a semi final berth at the recent women’s World Open. Regardless of any problems Bengy may be dealing with about trying to improve with his game and technique – you have to want to be on court to play well. To me it looks like it has been a while since Bengy enjoyed playing.

Simon Parke, Martin Heath, Adrian Grant, Mark Chaloner, Graham Ryding and Shahier Razik
Players that lost early against the seeding.

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