Womens US Open 02

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Qualifier Final Round
By Rob Dinerman © 2002 SquashTalk; all rights of reproduction reserved.
Nov 13, 2002 

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No Upsets Or Suspense In Final Round of Weymuller Qualifying

This evening's final round of qualifying for the $37,000 Weymuller U. S. Open championship was even more of a demonstration of the invasion-proof nature of the established pecking order by this, the last major WISPA event of calendar 2002, than was true last night, when the top eight seeds required just 25 games, one above the theoretical minimum, to subdue their respective lower-ranked opponents. Tonight the top four seeded players-Pamela Nimmo, Vicky Botwright, Omneya Abdel Kawy and Jenny Tranfield---all won in straight sets, thereby springboarding themselves into tomorrow evening's opening main-draw round with great familiarity with the Heights Casino courts and plenty of momentum.

The precocious Egyptian teenager Kawy, who followed a successful qualifying effort with a come-from-behind first-round win over Tania Bailey in last season's Weymuller, was in complete control of her tilt with Melissa Martin, formerly Vacca prior to her marriage this past summer to former PSA No. 2 Brett Martin, who at no time in their 30-minute encounter was able to cope with Kawy's delightful touch and creativity-9-2, 1 and 3 for Kawy, though in fairness Martin has only recently resumed serious training after an extended tournament lay-off. She should become more competitive by the time a quartet of closely-bunched events at Greenwich, Rye, Grand Central Station and Southport occur a few months from now in mid-winter.

By the time this match concluded, the battle between Tranfield and Madeline Perry on the other exhibition court was only early in its second game, as the two engaged in the most competitive match of the night, trading harsh ground strokes and many hands-out for an entire hour before late-game tins by a frustrated Perry in the closing stages of each game enabled Tranfield to come away with a 9-3, 6 and 6 victory that was actually far closer than the score. Perry is smoother in her court coverage than Tranfield and several times appeared possibly on the verge of controlling the play, but
Tranfield seemed to catch a break every time she needed one, the most noteworthy example occurring at 6-6 in the third, when she lost her racquet while making a diving get into the back wall off a powerful Perry forehand crosscourt. The ball floated gently to the front wall while Tranfield scrambled vainly to re-possess her racquet, only to get bailed out when Perry, perhaps distracted by Tranfield's travails behind her, tapped a drop shot into the tin.

Thus reprieved, Tranfield was able to close out that game and with it the match. The West Court she and Perry vacated, which has a glass left-side wall and will host no matches after tomorrow's round-of-16, was inherited by Annelize Naude and Botwright, who it was thought would have the closest match of thr night, given both their mere one-slot difference in the seeding and the quality Naude presented in her first-round 3-0 win over Mexican No. 1 and 2002 Pan Am Federation Cup Individual champion Samantha Teran. The latter's tenacity, which forced Naude to the brink in two of their
three games, especially the third, when Teran earned an 8-7 game-ball, may have played a role in the ease with which Botwright coasted to her unexpectedly dominant 9-3, 5 and 5 win, as from the start it was clear that Naude's game was very out of synch. Hers is the most expressive face on the WISPA tour, a presentation that is accentuated by her ever-changing hair and sneaker color (bright red and blue respectively for this event), and on this occasion she evinced a kaleidoscope of concern, worry and disgust that accurately portrayed the problems she was experiencing.

The final confrontation of the evening was between Nimmo, the slender and
long-armed Scot, and Jenny Duncalf, whose nimble footwork and springy stride
mark the young Briton as a player to watch in coming years. The deciding
sequence in their match came in the latter portion of the second game, during
which Duncalf turned matters around after a tinny 1-9, 0-4 start and reversed
the whole flow of the match in a display of athleticism and touch that
brought her to a 7-4 lead and a putative lock on the game. But Nimmo now has
the conditioning base she lacked a year ago, when she was still regaining her
form after being hospitalized with a life-threatening siege of deep-vein
thrombosis in her lungs from an excess of transatlantic travel.

Now more than a year and a half removed from this frightening episode, she
was able to assert herself in relentlessly grinding her way to a 9-7 rescue
of that game, then raced off to 4-0 in the third. Duncalf tenaciously climbed
to 3-4, but a series of hard-fought all-court rallies that mostly landed in
Nimmo's column keyed her match-closing run in four hands to 9-3 and a spot in
the main draw. The round-of-16, quarters and semis all begin at 5 o'clock on
Thursday through Saturday, with the final set for 2 o'clock Sunday afternoon.

RECAP
Pamela Nimmo d Jenny Duncalf, 9-1, 7 and 3
Vicky Botwright d Annelize Naude, 9-3, 5 and 5
Omneya Abdel Kawy d Melissa Martin, 9-2, 1 and 3
Jenny Tranfield d Madeline Perry, 9-3, 6 and 6

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