SquashTalk>Columns>Team Kneipp > Saudi Open 2005 > Report Card

The last major tournament of 2005 has finished and here’s our perspective on who did well and who didn’t.

The Saudi International introduced a whole new audience to the world of professional squash. (photo © 2006 Fritz Borchert.)

Champagne and Strawberries

Jonathon Power
The last time that Jonathon Power was on top of the world squash ranking the World Trade Centre twin towers were both standing intact, Lance Amstrong had only won the Tour de France twice, Thierry Lincou was ranked 20, Amr Shabana wasn’t even in the top 20 and James Willstrop had only just broken into the top 100 for the first time. The top 20 looked like this:

Everything went well for Jonathon Power in Saudi Arabia (photo © 2005 Fritz Borchert.

1 [1] Jonathon Power CAN
2 [2] Peter Nicol ENG
3 [3] David Palmer AUS
4 [4] David Evans WAL
5 [5] Paul Price AUS
6 [7] John White SCO
7 [6] Simon Parke ENG
8 [9] Ong Beng Hee MAS
9 [8] Martin Heath SCO
10 [10] Paul Johnson ENG
11 [16] Lee Beachill ENG
12 [11] Mark Chaloner ENG
13 [13] Alex Gough WAL
14 [12] Ahmed Barada EGY
15 [33] Chris Walker ENG
16 [17] Del Harris ENG
17 [16] Stewart Boswell AUS
18 [18] Graham Ryding CAN
19 [14] Omar Elborolossy EGY
20 [19] Thierry Lincou FRA

That was July 2001. Since then eight of these players have retired. Players who were off the radar include Ricketts who was ranked 25, Shabana was 27, Matthew was 49, Willstrop was 83 and Gaultier was 109.

Power’s victory in Saudi Arabia wins him the coveted #1 position back along with the record of longest time between holding the top spot for any squash player, male or female (four and a half years). He was nearly out of the top 10 this time last year. He had a spectacular tournament to cap off a brilliant year.

Anthony Ricketts
There were six players that could have finished #1 for the January rankings if they had won this tournament. Lincou, Power, Palmer, Willstrop, Ricketts and Shabana. It came down to Ricketts and Power battling it out. Power won that, but it was a spectacular tournament and year for Ricketts and I don’t think anyone doubts that although Power prevented him from reaching the top spot for January, he’ll get it sometime soon.

Karim Darwish & Nick Matthew
Darwish and Matthew took out two of the prospective January #1s with victories over Palmer and Shabana respectively in the second round.

Vinegar and Rotten Tomatoes

Rodney Durbach and Peter Barker
Durbach and Barker didn’t get to serve a single ball. The South African
struggled with visa problems and didn’t get into the country while an ankle
injury prevented Barker from making White break a sweat on his way to the
second round.

Shabana & Palmer

Matthew (r) played well in Saudi Arabia (photo © 2005 Fritz Borchert.

The new World Champ lost to Matthew with a tiring body. Palmer has been the most consistent player in the two major tournaments previously but couldn’t
get past Darwish.

Thierry Lincou
He has managed to maintain the #1 ranking for all of 2005 – a spectacular feat. But this month he lost that ranking and also his title of World Champion. He has had solid results in the tournaments and made the semi finals here, but he’ll still regard the month as a disappointment.

Peter Nicol
Nicol lost to Ricketts in the quarter finals. They usually have very close, tough matches, but a 26 minutes loss is something different. Lincou lost to Ricketts in the following round and commented on the 43 minute difference between the quarterfinal battle he had against Willstrop and the virtual walkover Ricketts had. Comments like directed towards Peter Nicol NEVER happen.

Players ranked 17+
There’s always some upsets in the first round of a tournament, particularly against the players seeded 9 to 16. There were none in Saudi. Poor effort from the players ranked 17+ (including me).

Squashtalk.com All materials © 1999-2005. Communicate with us at info@squashtalk.com.
Published by Squashtalk LLC, 6 Franklin Place, PO Box 2918, Acton MA 01720 USA, Editor and Publisher Ron Beck,
Graphics editor Debra Tessier Send comments, ideas, contributions and feedback to the webmaster.
Global Gallery Articles Copyright © 1999-2005 by Martin Bronstein and SquashTalk, all rights reserved, may not be reproduced in any form except for one-time personal use.