USA Makes Encouraging Progress
Sept 29, 2004, Rob Dinerman; SquashTalk Independent News Service © 2004;

     [pools draw]    [pools detailed results]

They Hope to Extend Momentum   [Wednesday Bronstein report]

Still riding the momentum of three straight strong performances (two of which resulted in 3-0 victories) early this week, the U. S. women's team will play Hong Kong later today in a meet to determine which team will make it to the eight-team championship draw. Latasha Khan, Meredeth Quick and Louisa Hall, the same trio that brought home the Pan American Games gold medal in Santo Domingo just over a year ago, posted consecutive decisive victories over Japan and higher seeded Scotland after an initial defeat at the hands of No. 2 seed England to put themselves in a position to advance with a win today.

Even in losing to the fearsome British squad, the Americans performed exceptionally well. Hall's 9-1, 5 and 0 stat line against Jenny Duncalf, with whom she had a number of close matches when both were juniors, fails to tell how even and hard fought the points were, with Duncalf's edge in ending the points accounting for most of the difference between the pair. Khan's three-game loss to 2003 U. S. Open champion and world No. 2 Cassie Jackman largely lay in the latter's ability to keep the tee with her volleying and aggressiveness.

Khan's ground strokes are the strength of her game, and a major reason for the three consecutive U. S. National championships she has won, but her tendency to go to the back wall cost her court position in this match against one of the world's best. Quick kept Linda Elriani off balance and twisting throughout much of their match, but Elriani is an expert at scrambling and extemporizing her way through a point, and she gradually consolidated control in moving to a 9-4, 2 and 2 win.

With that solid though unsuccessful effort behind them, the Americans then proceeded to win their six combined matches against Japan and Scotland without the loss of a single game. The seventh-seeded Scots were forced to make do without the services of their best player when world No. 20 Pamela Nimmo was forced to withdraw with a cyst on her tonsil and the team lacked the depth to absorb this considerable blow. Both Khan and Quick weathered close first games (against Wendy Maitland and Susan Dalrymple respectively) and won the second and third going away, with consecutive 9-0 scores in Quick's case. Hall's depth and focus were much too much for Frana Gillen-Buchert to handle in the first two 9-1, 9-2 games, but she did fall behind 7-4 in the third before closing that game and the match out 9-7.

Previously the U. S. had dominated the Japanese without yielding more than four points in any game. The squad, coached by Demer Holleran, has a real opportunity to match or exceed the No. 6 best-ever finish of a few years ago, but first of course it needs to win the match against Hong Kong, which defeated the Americans at this exact stage of the most recent edition of this event two years ago in Denmark.

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