SquashTalk>Columns>Team Kneipp > Catella Swedish Open Preview

Jonathon Power - faces off against local wildcard Forslund.  SquashTalk  Photo © 2004 Debra Tessier

Catella Swedish Open Preview

By Team Kneipp

The Swedish Open is being held in LinkÖping (pronounced Lin-chirping) a small city of less than 150 000 people a couple of hundred kilometres south of the country’s capital Stockholm. I’m here for a medium-size tournament, but hopefully the strength of the field (four players in the top 10 for a 3 star tournament is ridiculous) will convince the organiser that he should be putting on the 2005 World Open. Freddy Johnson’s tournament is run as well as a Super Series event, something presumably players have heard about, leading to the ridiculously strong turn out. Here’s how the first round looks:

The draw was initially done a couple of weeks ago. Both Mohammed Abbas and Olli Tuominen have pulled out of the main draw at the last minute. I don’t know what has led to that, but it must be something very serious, particularly in Olli’s case as Sweden is so close to his base in Helsinki that it’s virtually a home tournament for him.

[1] Amr Shabana (Egy) versus Renan Lavigne (Fra)
Shabana, the current world champion, is beginning to show a very interesting tournament pattern. In May of last year he made the final of a tournament in Pakistan, then lost in the first round of the next tournament in Qatar. In June he surprised everyone by winning the Spanish Open, then lost first round in the next tournament in Pakistan. In December he blew the squash world away by winning the World Open, then lost in the first round of the next tournament - last month’s Kuwait Open. His first round opponent in LinkÖping would have hoped that Shabana had won the last tournament.

Frenchman Renan Lavigne is currently ranked 20; only the fourth time in his career he has cracked that magical barrier. In the last three tournaments he beat Simon Parke, Dan Jenson and Mark Chaloner – all former top 10 players. Lavigne seems to play better when his opponent plays a more orthodox type of game, so I don’t think he will be too happy with his first round opponent, as Shabana is anything but orthodox. Lavigne can never be discounted or taken lightly and frequently causes upsets.

These two haven’t played in a PSA encounter before.

[8] James Willstrop (Eng) versus Qualifier
This was originally the position taken by Abbas before he pulled out. Willstrop initially had to play me in the first round. Considering the impressive feat that Willstop pulled off in Kuwait – qualifying then beating Bengy, White and Power, I would have gone into that match as the underdog, despite the higher seeding and ranking. If Shabana and Willstrop both win their first round matches it’ll make for a very entertaining quarterfinal showdown.

[4] Joseph Kneipp (Aus) versus Davide Bianchetti
It will be very interesting to see Bianchetti’s form after the World Open. Aside from Shabana’s feats we were probably the two players that exceeded expectations the most at that tournament. Bianchetti was supposed to lose in the 2nd round against Peter Nicol, but beat him and then Gregory Gaultier to earn a quarterfinal spot. Despite this he’s still not ranked in the top 30 (31), mainly because he hasn’t played enough tournaments over the past 12 months. You have to play a minimum of 8, preferably between 10 and 13. Bianchetti has only played 7 and his ranking average is much lower than it should be because of that. (The points he got from the quarterfinal of the World Open are more than all of the points for his other six tournaments.)

I don’t think we’ve played in the main round of a PSA match. We played two years ago in the 2nd round of TOC’s qualifying which I won, and have played a few league matches against each other. He won the last encounter, a dead rubber in Bundesliga, so I’ll have my work cut out for me ensuring I don’t become his next upset seed.

[7] Nick Matthew (Eng) versus Qualifier
Nick Matthew had a very good December, making a semi final and a quarter final of the two biggest tournaments of the year. In his first match back – qualifying at the Kuwait Open he lost against Dan Jenson. It can be easy to have seesaw results like that (ask Shabana). Having a great result at a tournament is very satisfying, but backing it up in later tournaments becomes just as important. Matthew will be hoping to put Kuwait’s result behind him (Jenson’s abilities can’t be discounted in that equation) and using Sweden to begin his assault on the top 10.

[5] Gregory Gaultier (Fra) versus Adrian Grant (Eng)
Finland’s Olli Tuominen was the original opponent for Gaultier. I’m not sure which one he would rather play as both Grant and Tuominen have good intensity, and wouldn’t be intimidated by Gaultier’s type of game.

Gaultier has spent the past six months ranked in the low teens; Grant is about to crack the top 20 for the first time in his career. These two couldn’t be a better example of the intricacies of how the ranking works. Over the past year or two Gaultier has only beaten two players in the top 10. One was me last month (although for the tournament he was seeded higher than me anyway as he was ranked 10 and I was ranked 14 when the tournament draw was done in December) the other was Boswell nearly a year ago, and that was the beginning of Bozza’s injury woes that hasn’t seen him on court since (despite being the current reigning champion of this event). Grant has beaten one top 10 player recently (Bengy in December), but hasn’t had the medium-size tournament victories in Pakistan that Gaultier has had.

Grant has caused numerous upsets over the last 18 months. The last time these two played was in the semi finals of the CNS International in Pakistan last year which the Frenchman won comfortably, nearly restricting his English opponent to single figures in each game.

[3] Karim Darwish (Egy) versus Qualifier
Darwish made the semi finals of last year’s World Open and has since won the first two events of the year in the U.S. He appears to have eradicated his inconsistency and wouldn’t be a good first round player for a qualifier to get.

It will be a travesty if there isn’t a substantial size tournament in Egypt this year. Not only does that country house the current World Champ, but poor Mohammed Abbas is ranked 17 in the world and yet is only the fourth strongest Egyptian at the moment, emphasising the nation’s squash depth at the moment.

The strength and depth across the whole top 20 is wonderful, with the order being made up of four Aussies, four Englishmen, four Egyptians, three Frenchmen, two Canadians, a Pakistani, a Scot and a Malaysian (with a Fin, a South African, a Welshman and a Dutchman all closing in).

[6] Ong Beng Hee (Mal) versus Qualifier
Again Bengy has a qualifier. It’s quite ludicrous the number of draws that he ends up with a qualifier. But considering the strength of this tournament, including the qualifiers, Bengy will need to work hard to avoid an upset in the first round, something that happened to him too many times recently, including at last year’s Swedish Open. That loss was at the hands of South Africa’s Rodney Durbach, a player that he’ll be hoping not to get again this year.

[2] Jonathon Power (Can) versus Daniel Forslund (Swe)
Power is playing his second tournament after his finger-breaking injury in December that forced him to withdraw from the World Open, an injury that had to affect his ability to train. He’ll be happy with his draw, having the wildcard entrant in the first round.

Forsland is currently ranked 132, but has been in the top 40 before. He is actually only the 2nd strongest Swedish player, ranked over 40 places behind Christian Drakenberg, the country’s top player. But last year tournament director Freddy Johnson offered the wildcard entry to whichever player won the national title, something I presume Forsland has done again this year.

Forsland has only played 5 tournaments over the past 5 years, and 2 have been the Swedish open. He has never played Power in PSA. If he manages to win his first round match it will probably be bigger news than Shabana winning the World Open.

Squashtalk.com All materials © 1999-2003. Communicate with us at info@squashtalk.com.
Published by Squashtalk LLC, 95 Martha's Point Rd. Concord MA 01742 USA, Editor and Publisher Ron Beck,
Graphics editor Debra Tessier Send comments, ideas, contributions and feedback to the webmaster.
Global Gallery Articles Copyright © 1999-2003 by Martin Bronstein and SquashTalk, all rights reserved, may not be reproduced in any form except for one-time personal use.