Owen Gets Stirring Comeback Win in NYC
By Rob Dinerman, Squashtalk WISPA reporter on the scene at Grand Central Terminal

Live at Grand Central Terminal, New York, 27 Feb 2003
All content © 2003 Squashtalk, photos: © 2003 Debra Tessier

[view the men's draw/results]    [women's draw/results]

Carol Owens turns the match around ©2003 Debra Tessier

But if there is a single defining characteristic of the 31-year-old Kiwi's stellar career, it is that she will never go down without fighting all the way to the bitter end, whether she is engaged in valorous combat with her career-long rival and nemesis Sarah Fitz-Gerald (who routed Owens in last
year's Arader & O'Rourke final en route to an undefeated 2002), pounding her way through the multitude of hard-fought matches that have comprised so many of the 22 career WISPA titles she has now won, or determinedly rallying from daunting deficits, most notably the 2-0, 7-0 (and 8-2) hole she climbed out of in Edinburgh 27 months ago against Leilani Joyce in the final of the 2000 World Open.

And rarely if ever was this quality more in evidence, or more necessary, than in the 3-9 5-9 9-5 9-3 9-3 victory she attained last night against second seed Natalie Pohrer, her conqueror in each of their previous two meetings, who appeared to be in complete command at 2-0, 4-2 before yielding under the unrelenting pressure of an Owens rally that precisely divided
this 60-minute match into two completely different halves, The first of which these amounted to a celebration of how far Pohrer has come as an emerging and charismatic WISPA superstar, while the second devolved into a gritty tribute to the blue-collar work ethic that has earned Owens the No. 1 world standing that will be hers when the next WISPA rankings are published in early March.

Natalie Pohrer's drop shot ©2003 Debra Tessier

Owens excels at this type of basic fundamental game, but she was being clearly out-done right from the outset by Pohrer, whose depth and width were forcing Owens to excavate the ball from tight quarters off the back wall and who at her best complements her much-improved ground strokes with a degree or innovation and inspiration that Owens does not possess.

This was clearly one of those occasions, and after racing off to a quick 4-0 first-game advantage initiated by that opening-point drop shot that rolled out of the nick, Pohrer alternated solid execution with a few wrinkles (a late wrist-flick for shallow cross-court winners, a couple of working-boast volleys hit even while back-pedaling that completely
wrong-footed Owens, even some audacious drop shots from off the back wall) that disconcerted Owens, who seemed tight, out of synch and unfocused, especially in tinning an open backhand volley to end the first game.

Her state of mind during this stretch was markedly different from that of Pohrer, who seemed perfectly positioned in that tranquil zone of total concentration all players seek to attain. One year ago, in one of her first WISPA tournaments after missing six months due to a knee injury, Pohrer had seemed fragile and overwhelmed in receiving a thrashing from Fitz-Gerald in the semis. In the interim the recently declared American (beneficiary of
much of the crowd support by virtue of this new status) has metamorphosed into a powerful, intimidating and confident athlete capable of generating power on both sides yet blessed as well with excellent touch and a level of mobility and agility rare in a woman of her muscular dimensions and a tribute to the many hours of conditioning and practice that she and her coach Michael Puertas (who flew in from St. Louis for the semis and final) have devoted
to the development of her game.

It looked like all that hard work was going to find full fruition in this championship when a quick spurt of untouchable front-court winners gave Pohrer an imposing 7-1 cushion in the second game. She was flowing to the ball, moving effortlessly, suddenly MATERIALIZING right at the proper spot, while Owens seemed to be expending so much more energy and effort both with her movement and with her swing, and to so much less avail. She was being
out-positioned, out-thought and badly out-played, exactly as Fitz-Gerald had done to her on this same location in 2002, and as she flailed around (and began to heatedly argue referee's calls that were properly going in Pohrer's direction) she seemed to be sinking deeper into the quicksand of defeat.

Carol Owens took off in the third game ©2003 Debra Tessier

Maybe it was the sighting of the finish line that by 2-0, 4-2 had come into clear view, a factor that both Pohrer and Puertas ruefully alluded to in post-match interviews. Or maybe it was the unhappy tendency that causes a player to plummet below his or her usual level once their stretch of playing over their head (which Pohrer surely had been doing to that point) expires, a well-known squash phenomenon even at the top professional level. Owens herself cited the sense she got of Pohrer's growing fatigue as a factor that fueled her rally from the abyss into which she had fallen, while the memory of the two-game final-round lead Pohrer had failed to cash in against Linda Charman during her most recent WISPA event last month in Greenwich may have played a role as well.

Whatever its genesis, Owens's match-closing 25-7 run began somewhat innocuously on a backhand rail length winner, progressed on a pair of Pohrer backhand drop shot tins (exactly the shot she had heretofore been executing so flawlessly) that drew Owens even at 4-4 and took off from there.

Finally firmly into the match, and as importantly now equipped with an element of
hope that had infiltrated a cause that had previously seemed hopeless, she dug deep, started getting to balls that had earlier been eluding her and got back her length at the same time that Pohrer began losing hers. The latter was breathing hard between the wearing exchanges, her previously self-assured demeanor replaced by doubt and concern as a suddenly energized Owens finished off that game by hitting a perfect drop shot on her first game-ball at 8-5 and punctuating that successful salvo with a defiant fist pump and
self-exhortatory war whoop.

Pohrer's best remaining chance came early in the fourth game when some floor-hugging Pohrer drives combined with a few Owens tins (including on the game's first two points) brought Pohrer to advantages of 2-0 and 3-1. But Owens got the serve back at 2-3 on the type of backhand straight drop shot which she was now hitting with verve and precision, and a bad Pohrer tin on the ensuing serve return ignited an Owens spurt that closed out that game in a single hand---Owens hit winners on a forehand rail and a backhand volleyed
working boast to get to 5-3, a pair of consecutive early-point Pohrer backhand tins made it 7-3, following which a stroke call against Pohrer on a sprayed rail and a delicate Owens backhand cross court drop gave her both the fourth game and all of the momentum heading into the fifth.

Pohrer opened the last game with a backhand rail that was clung too tightly to the left wall for Owens to scrape back into play, but shortly thereafter the top seed embarked on another extensive single-hand charge that made it 6-0 before being stemmed by a Pohrer forehand cross court winner.

By this time Owens was in full flight, laying down her rails (and occasionally finding nicks with them), hitting her drop shots even from deep in the court and taking full advantage of the deterioration in Pohrer's ground strokes, which had been so well hit early on but by this stage were catching the side walls and giving Owens open balls to attack. An Owens forehand cross court was followed by a Pohrer backhand tin and suddenly it was 8-0, Owens. Pohrer had one last stand remaining, however, which saw her save several match-balls and nail a flurry of drop-shot winners to get to 3-8 and elicit one last bit of hopeful support from the crowd. But she then hit a forehand rail back to herself for a stroke call and sealed her fate on a backhand volley drop shot that caught the tin, one of all too many that plagued her during the last three games after being all but absent during the first two.

Even in defeat Pohrer (who gave a remarkably gracious speech at the trophy presentation, not easy to do after such a disappointing loss) demonstrated last night, as she had all week, that she is right on the cusp of greatness, while in forging her amazingly hard-earned comeback victory Owens displayed, and then some, the tenacity and guts that have been such an important part of the champion she has become.

FINAL RECAP

Carol Owens (1) d Natalie Pohrer (2), 3-9 5-9 9-5 9-3 9-3

First women's final on the WISPA new glass ASB court in Grand Central Terminal. ©2003 Debra Tessier