Womens US Open 02

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World's Top Women in Brooklyn
By Rob Dinerman © 2002 SquashTalk; all rights of reproduction reserved.
Nov 10, 2002    

Squashtalk Pro Squash Headlines

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The final tournament of the 2002 women's professional tour will take place in Brooklyn Heights this coming week when 15 of the top 17 ranked players compete in the $30,000 Weymuller U. S. Open. From its inception more than three decades ago as the Carol Weymuller Invitational---so named to honor its longtime head pro, then a top-ranked American player, who with her husband Fred developed the Heights Casino
junior squash program to elite status---the event has always been held at this venerable three-story red-brick structure located just off the Brooklyn Promenade at 75 Montague Street, though last year the main-draw matches took place, beginning with the quarter-finals, on the four-glass-wall tour court at Grand Central Station as part of the Tournament Of Champions extravaganza.

This year's tourney is returning to its original home base, having in the interim been accorded U. S. Open status by the USSRA, the national governing body of American squash, which has caused this championship to be re-named the Weymuller U. S. Open.

One other substantial change from last year's edition is that a different face will be smiling from the winner's circle at the conclusion of Sunday afternoon's 2 o'clock final. Last season's champion Sarah Fitz-Gerald, who rampaged through the draw without coming close to losing a single game en route to an extraordinary undefeated year-long performance, has declared herself mentally spent from the hectic schedule she has been maintaining, including the World Championship title she won for a record-breaking fifth time in Qatar just a week ago, and is taking a break from competitive play.

As noted, however, Fitz-Gerald will be virtually the only top-echelon absentee from a talent-packed draw led by current world No. 1-ranked Carol Owens, runner-up to Fitz-Gerald at Grand Central Station, Worlds finalist Natalie Pohrer, who upset Owens in the semis in Qatar and almost toppled Fitz-Gerald in their subsequent tiebreaker-in-the-fourth final, British Open finalist Tania Bailey, the Grinham sisters, Rachael and Natalie, who teamed with Fitz-Gerald last month to win the World Team Championship for Australia in Denmark, and British rivals Stephanie Brind and Rebecca Macree, who waged a titanic late-night quarter-final at the last Weymuller before Brind finally
triumphed.

The current U. S. National champion Latasha Khan, who played at No. 1 for the American team entries that placed second at the Pan American Federation Cup in Ecuador and 15th at the World Team Championships in Denmark in recent months, has been granted a wild-card berth in the main draw, where she will face fourth seed Vanessa Atkinson of Holland, a 2002 British Open semi-finalist, Thursday evening in the opening round.

Two of Khan's American squad teammates, Princeton 2001 alumnae Julia Beaver and 2002 Nationals runner-up Meredeth Quick, will participate in the qualifying rounds (which take place on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings), as will 14 other hopefuls vying for the four available main-draw positions, among whom will be Americans Dana Betts and Carlin Wing, both of whom moved to Amsterdam after their recent college graduations to train at Liz Irving's Academy there. The four players who emerge from these two grueling rounds of preliminary play will join the dozen contestants already in the main draw, though each has a top-six seed as her opening-round assignment on Thursday. The quarter-finals and semi-finals are set for Friday and Saturday evenings respectively, with play on each of the Tuesday-Saturday sessions scheduled to begin at 5:00 p.m.

Sponsored by the Corcoran Group, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle and Ashaway Racquet Strings, the Weymuller U. S. Open has a much different feel from its immediately prior version, as even at that relatively recent time both Bailey and Pohrer, who have reached major-tournament finals in the intervening nine months, were just returning to action after long absences due to serious knee injuries and hence considered unknown quantities. Pamela Nimmo was still on the road back from a serious deep-vein thrombosis in her lung that hospitalized her for weeks, Beaver was in the midst of her own illness-caused season-long hiatus and talented young players like Egypt's Omneya Abdel-Kawy, South African Annelize Naude and Mexico's Samantha Teran were still seeking their first senior-level breakthrough wins.

By contrast, Pohrer, the second seed, and Bailey come into this event with big results and justifiably big hopes, Nimmo, the first seed in the qualifier and the best player on Scotland's formidable team, and Beaver are fully healthy and at the top of their games, Naude and Teran both won important tournaments and Kawy has wowed everyone with her talent and moxie. A top finish in this WISPA 2002 curtain call will go a long way to insuring one of the eight available places in the 2003 Grand Prix Finals next April, and this allure combined with the prestige of this championship and substantial purse should make for a very dynamic week's worth of play on the host club's pair of glass-wall exhibition courts.

Squashtalk will cover the entire Weymuller U. S. Open Championships. Anyone seeking information regarding ticket availability is urged to call Heights Casino directly at (718) 624-0810.

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