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USA Drops exciting,close contest to New Zealand
by Rob Dinerman Oct 24, 2001 © 2001 Squashtalk
[last update was 24-oct-01 ]

2001 SquashTalk coverage will feature regular US Team updates from squash journalist Rob Dinerman.

USA DROPS TOUGH BATTLE WITH NEW ZEALAND, HOPES TO REGROUP THIS WEEKEND

Displaying admirable resilience after a pair of 3-0 batterings at the hands of stronger opponents in the opening days of the World Team Championships in Melbourne Australia, the U. S. team put forward its best effort to date against New Zealand yesterday before falling, two matches to one.

Though their chances of making the top 16 cut-off effectively foundered after only winning one game in the six total matches against imposing teams from Egypt and France(ranked sixth and seventh respectively), the Americans were primed for their confrontation with New Zealand, which had similarly been whitewashed by these two powerhouses and which were comprised of players at a similar stage of their careers to the American contingent.

In addition to constituting the first realistic and winnable competition of the event, this match was important for seeding positioning in the 17-24 bracket that awaited both teams, so there was definitely something to play for on that front as well. Top player, reigning S. L. Green titlist and team leader Damian Walker began his match at No. 1 against veteran professional Paul Steele still showing the effects of the sore throat and congestion that has plagued him ever since his flight to Australia nearly a week ago.

He looked slow and disoriented in a sub-par first game which he dropped 9-2, but, as sometimes happens when one has had a chance to "sweat out" the effects of this kind of upper respiratory malady, both Walker and his potent game were revived thereafter, and the superior strategy and deception that characterize his game saw him through a pair of tight and telling middle games, 9-7 and 10-8. This latter overtime result was especially crucial, both tangibly and psychologically, for a U. S. team that had heretofore been constantly on the short end of a number of close games.

Buoyed by his breakthrough, Walker emphatically pressed his hard-earned advantage, bursting out of the fourth-game starting blocks and sprinting to 9-0 and the first American match win of the entire team championships. Walker's achievement seemed to augur well for the Americans, who now needed only a split in the remaining two matches to defeat New Zealand and make a definitive statement to the overall field. nd their prospects looked even greater after No. 2 Richard Chin rode a hot short game to an easy first-game win over his New Zealand counterpart, Richard Sharplin, a U. S. resident who ironically is based as a teaching pro at the same Westchester Squash Club that is owned and managed by U.S. Team manager Richard Millman, who was therefore trying his utmost to coach Chin to victory over one of his top employees!

But the same aggressive shotmaking that had given Chin such an important early-match advantage ultimately proved his undoing, as the same brilliant sliced drop shots that had been so effective in the first game started catching the tin in the second, which the reprieved Sharplin won, 9-5. Once back in control,the increasingly confident and unconstrained Sharplin dominated the remainder against the demoralized Chin, who was never able either to relocate his touch or to garner a single official point in either of the remaining two games.

As a result of this split of the top two matches, the team outcome hinged on the No. 3 match between New Zealand's George Crosby and the young American star Preston Quick, who found himself for the consecutive match in a clutch competitive situation. As the match with France evolved two days earlier, it became clear that America's realistic hopes of landing in the coveted top-16 bracket hinged on their ability to capture at least two games to earn the team a favorable tiebreaker position against the other third-place teams in the various pools.

When Quick eked out his first game with the talented but volatile French World Junior Champion Gregory Gaultier and then served at game-ball in the third, he stood right on the brink of making that hope a reality. But Preston agonizingly wound up losing that game in a tiebreaker and never threatened in the final fourth. Now, just two days later, Quick was once again on the firing line. Once again he played well and grittily(even after an early-match collision during which he was hit hard on his playing hand and spent several distracted points recovering from this painful mishap), but once again his efforts were in vain.

After losing the first game 9-2, Quick settled on a strategy of moving his fleet opponent side to side by aggressively volleying and employing his wrenching crosscourt drives, especially on his powerful forehand side. Though under duress, Crosby was able to respond by keeping the ball tight on the left wall and going to his favorite shot, a drop into the nick, on the right wall. This latter tactic and the accuracy he displayed on this fairly risky maneuver enabled Crosby to finish out the second game 9-6 and to carry this momentum through a 9-3 third and victory for himself and his country.

A triumph over New Zealand, especially after Walker's opening victory, would have been a major psychological boost for an American team that to this point has expended a level of effort and output that, dishearteningly, has not been reflected in the statistical results, which have consigned the U.S. Team to the lower 17-24 bracket and caused the seeding panel to rate them no higher than 19th or 20th, depending on the outcomes of a few other late evening matches in other pools.

While the main attention will quite deservedly focus on scintillating top-bracket first-round match-ups between a third-seeded English team that won the world titles in 1995 and 1997 and its second-seeded opponents from Wales, or on other top-10 battles like France-Pakistan and Scotland-Finland, the U. S. team now faces the unglamorous but important prospect of grinding its way through comparably skilled line-ups placed in the high teens and low twenties.

While some officials in the American squash hierarchy are taking some comfort in the strong effort and spirit presented in the three Pool F matches against Egypt, France and New Zealand, the real measure of this team's performance will ultimately be determined by how well it meets the testing but eminently winnable challenges that lie directly ahead and how close the team comes to matching its 17th place finish the last time this world event was held two years ago.