MEREDITH QUICK OUSTS 2001 CHAMPION SHABANA
History was made yesterday afternoon at the Brady Squash Center at Yale University in New Haven, CT, where both Preston Quick and his younger sister Meredeth achieved upset wins in the semi-final rounds of the Men's and Women's Opens respectively of the 2002 U. S. National Championships.

#1 Seed Damian Walker downs Tim Wyant

Third seeded Preston earned his third consecutive win this season over the second seed and 1999 Champion Dave McNeely, while Meredeth toppled top seed and defending women's champion Shabana Khan, who collapsed in the third and final game after dropping the second in a tiebreaker.

The Quick siblings have thereby become the first brother-sister team ever to reach the finals of a USSRA-Open event, whether in hardball, softball or doubles, in the same year, a family "double" whose impact is accentuated by the fact that both flights of this year's event are being hosted at the same location.

Meredith will lead off today's final-round action at noon today against Shabana's second-seeded younger sister Latasha, a two-time (1998 and 2000) winner and five-time finalist herself, following the completion of which Preston will take on defending champion and men's top seed Damian Walker, who was runner-up two years ago to Marty Clark and therefore will be playing in the finals of the Men's event, known as the S. L. Green, for the third year in a row.

Walker hasn't dropped a game in any of the "Americans-only" events in which he has competed since his five-game final-round win in the 2001 S. L. Green in Seattle against Richard Chin, whom he would have played yesterday in the semis had Chin not lost to fourth seed Tim Wyant Friday night. The reigning S. L. Green champion swept through his four matches in the Team Trials last August and the trio of matches apiece that were required for him to win the Trinity Open in January and the Westchester Classic one month later. He has now reached the final of this event as well with straight-set wins over Ryan Donegan, John Musto and Wyant, who came into yesterday afternoon's semi riding the momentum of his 3-0 quarter with Chin and convinced that he might have a shot at pulling off an upset if he played at his best. Though Wyant had dropped one-sided decisions to Walker in their Trinity Open final and Westchester Classic semi, both of those matches had come late in a day in which he had already garnered a physically and mentally draining victory.

This time there would be no earlier match and the 24-year-old believed he would be fresh and strong for this match and hence better able to sustain the movement that the precision of Walker's execution inevitably necessitates. He did in fact contest his eight-years-older British-born opponent far better than the 9-1, 2 and 2 final tally reflects, but the conservative and error-free manner in which Wyant plays is not sufficient for him to defeat a player of Walker's polish and accuracy.

Like his counterparts in the vaunted college class of 2000, which filled all of this year's semi-final slots save that occupied by the defending champion, Wyant's game, though much improved during the considerable post-graduate months he has spent training with top players in England, is a little too basic to rile a player of Walker's experience and savvy or, more importantly, to tire him out. To accomplish the latter goal, Wyant would have had to leave his comfort zone and force the action more than he was able to in any of the three matches they have now played this season.

And when Wyant did bring Walker up front, usually with a straight drop off the volley, Walker's responding crosscourt was so severe and well placed that it either won the point outright or forced an extremely defensive return, which left Walker in control of the play and able to impose his outstanding shot selection and ball control on the match. Wyant's aspirations for an upset thus died a slow and painful death at the hands of American squash's leading executioner.

#3 Preston Quick (foreground) comes backs over #2 David McNeely

The balancing semi between contemporaries McNeely and Quick was more entertaining than its top-half precursor. McNeely had let a sizable 2-0, 5-0 advantage slip away the last time this pair had met in early January in the Trinity Open quarters, and was eager to justify his one-spot-higher seeding and consolidate his recent advance to the Westchester final.

He has really made his rail a much more dangerous weapon in the last few months, and throughout the first game, which he won 9-5 from 5-all, his accuracy with this shot in response to his opponent's crosscourts enabled him to prosper. Quick was going behind McNeely to track these rails down and thus was surrendering the positional advantage. But at the outset of the second game, Quick began anticipating McNeely's tactic and stepping in front of him and sending him up front, generally with a straight drop shot, and this adjustment completely reversed the momentum.

The Yale courts play fast, especially on such an unseasonably warm (65 degrees) mid-March afternoon, and the more nimble Quick is better suited than his opponent and recent (Philadelphia Elite two months ago) doubles partner to the scramble that this factor precipitated. The result was a 9-1, 0 and 4 sweep of the last three games, as well as a sweep of all three 2001-2002 matches in their decade-long rivalry, which McNeely had dominated throughout their many years in the junior ranks but which has seemingly swung in Quick's direction, at least for the time being. It was an enormously different S. L. Green experience for the jubilant victor from last year's edition, when a severely bruised cartilege had forced him to limp sadly and painfully off the Seattle courts and sidelined him for several convalescent months thereafter.

Meredith Quick (foreground)

While her older brother was thus rallying to victory in his semi-final, Meredeth Quick was enjoying an unexpectedly dominant afternoon with the top-seeded defending champion, whom she defeated 9-6, 10-8 and 9-0. Shabana appeared less mobile than usual throughout the weekend, and she has a tendency to give up when a match is really going badly for her, as it was by early in the third game.

Quick had labored throughout her recently-concluded intercollegiate career at Princeton in the shadow of her more famous teammate Julia Beaver, who won the WISA Individual title all three years from 1999-2001. But Beaver has been prevented from playing this entire season due to medical reasons, and Quick strenuous training and competitive salvos on the WISPA professional tour paid off in this breakthrough performance, throughout which she appeared stronger, faster and increasingly more confident than her sub-par and subdued opponent.

As noted, the unseeded Quick will now have to complete a family sweep to win the crown, since Latasha Khan scored a 9-4, 7 and 1 victory over the fourth-seeded Ivy Pochoda. The latter has a flamboyant playing style, but Khan has better balance and a more solid all-around game, which she was able to impose in fairly uninterrupted fashion, especially after weathering a competitive second game. Interestingly, although none of the women's quarter-finals were resolved in the three-game minimum, both of the semi-final matches were, so both contestants should be at full strength by therou time their High Noon summit gets underway.