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Owens Captures her first Weymuller U. S. Open
By Rob Dinerman © 2002 SquashTalk; all rights of reproduction reserved.
Nov 17, 2002

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Playing with strength and verve, as well as the steadiness that characterizes her current game, top seed and expected finalist Carol Owens defeated surprise finalist Tania Bailey 9-7 9-1 10-8 in the final round of the 27th annual Carol Weymuller Invitational, which was renamed the Weymuller US Open after being accorded US Open status by vote of the Board of Directors of the United States Squash Racquets Association. In so doing, the 31-year-old Owens consolidated the No. 1 WISPA ranking she recently attained for the first time in her career, avenged a straight-set British Open loss she had sustained at Bailey's hands last spring, redeemed herself for her loss from two games up in the semis of the World Open in Qatar to Natalie Pohrer just two weeks ago in her inaugural appearance at No. 1, and added the impressive winner's cup to an already swollen trophy cabinet that includes the 2000 World Open crown.

The key to the final lay in its opening game, which saw Bailey leads of 4-0 and 7-2 dissolve in the face of a determined Owens rally that the seventh-seeded Englishwoman was unable to repulse. Early on, she was hammering her powerful forehand drives for winners, a tactic whose effectiveness was abetted by the fact that Owens seemed a bit tight and was not moving with her usual confidence or alacrity. As the game wore on, though, the Kiwi star was able to find her stroking rhythm, particularly along the left wall, where she started to out-duel Bailey and force open balls which she then attacked with a combination of blasts and delicate drop shots. She won a hard rally to get to 5-7, then picked up a free point on a tinned Bailey cross-court nick-seeking drop off Owens's serve that instead found the tin, making it 6-7.

By this time Owens was fully focused, her bout of early nerves behind her, and Bailey was acting like a long-distance runner nervously looking over her shoulder and fearing her opponent's vaunted finishing kick. Gone was the confidence of those first few points, and gone would be all of the fairly substantial early advantage they created. Especially at the top echelon of the WISPA tour, or of the PSA men's tour as well, for that matter, when a
player is well ahead of his or her higher-ranked opponent in the first game, winning that game often proves absolutely crucial to any upset aspirations, and having led 4-0 and 7-2, Bailey definitely needed that game more that did Owens, who tied Bailey at 7-all and wound up winning the game 9-7 on a well-placed forehand length winner.

Both women had blazed difficult and enervating trails to their Sunday showdown, and, as often happens in final rounds, by which time the stress, both mental and physical, of getting there has taken a toll, neither therefore had much in reserve to combat a disappointing end-game. Bailey had upended the second seed Natalie Pohrer in a wrenching quarter-final before being forced to dig herself out of a steep two-game hole yesterday afternoon against third seed Linda Charman, who had to default midway through the fourth game when a calf injury tightened up too much for her to continue. By
Sunday, her legs had lost some of their early-tournament vitality and her feet had developed painful blisters.

Carol Owens and Tania Bailey entertained the capacity crowd at Height Casino with their skill and athleticism.
( photo ©2002 Debra Tessier)

Her trio of 3-0 pre-final victories notwithstanding, Owens had been well extended first by the gifted Egyptian teenager Omneya Abdel Kawy in the round-of-16 and in yesterday's semi-final with fifth seed Rachael Grinham, the smallish but feisty warrior who had characteristically been as tenacious as a terrier before dropping a third-game tiebreaker in which Owens several times seemed almost out on her feet. Neither Kawy nor Grinham let their opponents get into any sustainable rhythm, and coping with Kawy's brilliance and Grinham's wiles had been a true test of Owens's famous toughness and athleticism.

Buoyed by her successful rescue of that first game, Owens sailed into the second and swiftly moved to 6-0 against Bailey, who clearly had not fully recovered from the demoralizing experience of letting that opening salvo slip away. The remainder of that game moved quietly along to 9-1, as there way no way that Bailey was going to make up such a deficit, especially in the face of the length and precision that by this time was defining the New Zealander's game. The third game was an entirely different matter, as Bailey, who as noted had won from 2-0 down less than 24 hours earlier, courageously
mounted a last charge that was aided by a sudden loss on Owens's part of the patience that she had been displaying with such success throughout her 18-1 run from 2-7 down in the first game to 2-0 up early in the third.

Perhaps Owens was also dealing with memories of the recent two games to love lead that she had let slip against Pohrer in Qatar, or, for that matter, of the 2-0, 6-3 edge she had held just last night against Grinham, who eventually led that game 8-6 before Owens closed it out 10-8. Maybe simply getting used to being No. 1 for the first time and the pressure that such a status entails was also a contributing factor, but, whatever its genesis, her impatience in going for shots a little too early resulted in a mixture of
winners and tins that caused the two competitors to be knotted at 5-all, then 6-all, then 7-all, and then 8-all when Owens tinned a crosscourt at match-ball and then got called for a stroke when a forehand rail went awry.

There were a few tension-building hands-out, but Owens finally moved to 9-8 when Bailey cut a backhand drop shot too fine and then 10-8 when Bailey whiffed a well-placed Owens chip serve that landed in a perfect spot on the right wall. In her gracious victory speech after seven-time Weymuller champion Alicia McConnell presented both players with their plates Owens, the runner-up to Sarah Fitz-Gerald in the prior Weymuller event, noted how relieved she is to finally win this tournament in this her ninth try and thanked the Rifkin family for hosting her for most of her nine visits to Brooklyn and for including her in their son's bar mitzvah ceremony last weekend. Throughout the nearly three decades of the Weymuller tourney's history, first as a hardball event and for the past decade as a softball competition, the Heights Casino community has always been extremely generous in supporting the Weymuller event and housing the players, as tournament chairman Edward Cerullo noted in his remarks during the awards presentation, and the relationship between the host club and the WISPA players has been extremely beneficial to all parties involved.

FINAL RECAP

Carol Owens (1) d Tania Bailey (7), 9-7 9-1 10-8

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