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The
2003 US Open
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Attacking Squash and Refereeing
Confusion
By Ron Beck
©
2004 Squashtalk, all rights of reproduction reserved.
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CURRENT
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John
White and Amr Shabana Fall Hard — while Joe Kneipp and Nick Matthew
Advance.
Sept 17 2004, Murr Center, Allston
MA USA
Extremes marked the match play on the first night of the 2004 US Open Squash Tournament.
The high points of the evening saw some wonderful attacking squash in the hands of John White and Dan Jenson on one court and Joe Kneipp and Omar El Bolorossy concurrently on an adjoining courts. (the low point, I'll save for later in this story.) Mind you, these two matches, which happened at the same time, were not at all similar. Whitey and Jenson, in the best traditions of attacking Aussie squash, played the whole match at an explosively rapid pace, with the ball flying into all corners of the court and changing speeds with dizzying frequency.
JENSON
GOES FOR BROKE
Dan Jenson, the quiet. solid Aussie who came to Boston in September of
1999 in the top ten, but since then has contended with a virtual laundry
list of injuries - from acute back pain to knee cartilege - is back in
top form, at least for the time being.
For Jenson, there was nothing to lose in going on an all-out attack. And the new scoring system favored that approach. Furthermore, knowing something about John White's game, Jenson probably knew what would happen when he went on the attack - John White would too, with unpredictable results.
The result was squash at incredible pace. Angles, more angles, pinpoint drops, and fantastic retrieving by both players.
The thing was that Jenson tempted White time after time on the backhand, and he coaxed just enough tin out of White to give him the first game.
The question was, with the furious pace and all-corners-of-the-court attacks, how long could Jenson keep it up? It turned out, just long enough.
Jenson was really on, he got almost everything White could throw at him, and applied a counter-punch approach. Namely, he fed White on the angles up front, tempted White into the drops, and then counter attacked.
In the second game White buckled down and took a 9-6 lead after a constant flurry of attacking by both players. Jenson seemed to be losing a tiny bit of steam. But down 6-9, in the midst of an acrobatic rally, Jenson dropped White up front to the forehand, White drove it high with Jenson standing a mere five feet from the front wall, and Jenson produced a point blank instinctive volley. He followed that up on the next point with a backhand volley nick, and after Jenson had run the game from 6-9 to 10-9, White ended the game with a hard boast that just clipped the top of the tin.
And that was the match. White seemed to lose his resolve and meekly went down 11-1 in the third.
KNEIPP
USES EL BOLOROSSY AS HIS FOIL
Joe Kneipp came to Boston, for his first appearance in two years, with
a built in cheering gallery. Who were these partisans who cheered his
every move? It included some of the locals he met at Dartmouth two summers
ago, and an Amsterdam contingent in town as well.
Kneipp fully deserved all the applause. Joe said that he spent the summer doing technical work at the Australian Institute of Sport, and it can't have hurt - he played almost flawlessly.
Kneipp and Omar El Bolorossy both like the offensive game, but one with more subtlety and fluidity than the explosive power squash taking place on the adjoining court. Both Kneipp and El Bolorossy exhibited breathtaking accuracy, drops up front, angles and lobs. El Bolorossy's tendancy to take some speed off the ball played to Joe Kneipp's advantage and let his raw talent, athleticism and sharpness feed off of the wide open play that El Bolorossy allowed to develop.
The thing was that Joe Kneipp was so on, so focused, and so fast that there was probably nothing Omar could do to stop the outcome as it developed. El Bolorossy could only smile as Joe Kneipp seemed almost to be gliding to retrieve and answer even the best and tightest of El Bolorossy's drops and feather lobs.
A
MESSAGE OF FAIRNESS
But Joe Kneipp had another lesson to give to the crowd tonight. It was
about sportsmanship. In the second game, sporting a slight lead, Kneipp
was awarded a stroke following his let request. Kneipp politely, but firmly
turned down the stroke. "No, no," he instructed the referee,
"That's wrong. We'll play let only please." And the referee
concurred. It was a quick but classy moment.
AND
NOW THE LOW POINT
The most definite low point of the evening was the wild-and-wooly match
between reigning World Champion, Egypt's Amr Shabana and Canada's Graham
Ryding.
I can't actually say who could have or would have won, since the match was virtually completely destroyed by a refereeing job gone dreadfully wrong. The referee, Maj Madden, completely lost control of the match in the first five points. There were three calls made at the beginning of the match, and two of them were wrong.
Now Amr Shabana is a free spirit and marches to his own drummer, but certainly there's something amiss when a player is in heavy argument with the referee on the first point of the match. And then by the fifth point, he announced to the chair and the audience in general, "You've now gotten two out of three wrong - that's 33% - and the player was right"
It got much worse from there. And in contrast to the conduct of Joe Kneipp, in the situation described above, Graham Ryding, on seeing the referee losing control, proceeded to take full and complete advantage of the situation asking for lets in all possible situations. And Amr Shabana couldn't help himself pointing out the referee and the world the injustice of the whole situation.
All the same, Amr Shabana is a World Champion and experienced competitor, and he failed to take stock of the situation and keep himself focused on the task at hand.
There's no really good answer for how he could have lost the second game 11-1 after being at ease and in control throughout the first game. Shabana can only look at himself and ask why he lost his patience, focus, and concentration. He let Graham Ryding into the match, and Ryding is too experienced to let an opportunity like that pass by.
By the fourth game, at 7-7, Shabana had given away too much to impatient play, verbal play with the referee, and lost focus, and he had left it all to a four point sudden death.
Which left the gallery wondering which inexplicable refereeing call might decide the match. But luckily that didn't happen. Graham Ryding seized control at the end with his usual clear focus and some good shots. And the creative but impatient Shabana was out. "You ought to be a tennis umpire." Shabana offered near the end (doubtless in reference to the infamous Serena Williams - Jennifer Capriati contest at the US Open Tennis earlier this month).
The last contest was hardly a contest, with Nick Matthew clinically taking apart the game but outmatched Renan Lavigne.
US Open
Squash 2004
First Round,First
Half of Play Friday: [complete draw]
Nick Matthew (ENG)(7) bt Renan Lavigne (FR)(Q) 11-3; 11-9; 11-8
Dan Jenson (AUS)(Q) bt John White (SCO)(6) 11-7; 11-9; 11-1
Joseph Kneipp (AUS)(8) bt Omar Elborolossy (EGY) 11-7; 11-4; 11-5
Graham Ryding (CAN) defeated Amr Shabana (EGY)(6) 6-11; 11-1; 11-8; 11-8
