Tournament of Champions: Sunday Evening Shahier Razik scares Evans

Martin Bronstein, Squashtalk reporter on the scene in New York City.

by Martin Bronstein, Grand Central Terminal, New York, 27 Jan 2002
All content © 2002 Squashtalk, photos: © 2002 Debra Tessier

[view the draw]

WHITE HOT SQUASH

John White is very tall - at least 6’5” - strange then that he only recognises the lower two feet of the front wall, a narrow stretch just above the tin. With seemingly no effort he hammers the ball on his forehand into that strip of front wall and keeps his opponents jumping from the word go. Today his opponent was the very tough south African Rodney Durbach and while he lost in three, he was far from overwhelmed. Indeed between the two of them they gave the Sunday evening audience a great exhibition of squash that could be more correctly described as a firework display.

WICKED FOREHANDS BRING FORTH WONDERFUL GETS

White hits his wicked forehand without bending his knees, it resembles a flick, but the power! It made Durbach run and stretch mercilessly, but Durbach is tough and knows exactly what to do when he gets to the ball. On several occasion in this brilliant match Durbach won rallies that White seemed to have in the bag three times with his searching, screeching drives. You had to remind yourself that this was the world number three playing the world number 24 and yes, while there was a gap between the two players - it wasn’t 21 places wide.

Although Durbach had his share of winners - he led the first game 10-4 - he did most of the running and fetching. White can dictate a game because he can not only hit the ball very, very hard, he does it with accuracy, producing a relentless pressure. White recovered from the deficit in the first game and they fought to 16-all which is when Durbach tried a forehand smash to win the game only to hear the clang of tin. He held his head in anguish knowing that he had given the winning point to White rather than making him earn it. That’s how close the first game was. White took the second 15-8 and pulled ahead in the third after the two had battled to 10-all to take the game 15-12. The record books will show White won 3/0 which is grossly unfair to Durbach who was on equal footing for much of the match.

ANOTHER SCOT, ANOTHER VICTORY

While White plays under the Scottish flag, he is Aussie through and through, but his team-mate on the Scottish team is pure Scots. Martin Heath has everything to become a champion but he works alone, without a manager or a coach and I think that is where he went adrift.

His form of late has not been terrific; in fact the last big win was when he beat Peter Nicol in this tournament two years ago - and what a great performance that was. Today he could have easily lost against the fast and furious Finn Olli Tuominen who has rapidly risen up the rankings to his present 17 slot, just three places behind Heath. But Heath played as well as ever I’ve seen him.

Controlled, intelligent ball placement and fast as he needed to be to keep control of the match. Tuominen spoiled some good rallies by wrong shot selection, but never gave Heath an easy time. A good thing; Heath had to keep applying himself and showed that he could well make it to another semi-final meeting with Peter Nicol. First he will have to beat David Evans of Wales, who had a fairly easy victory over Canada’s Shahier Razik, the Canadian who lost in the qualifying rounds, but got the lucky loser slot. Razik won’t mind losing that much. Getting into the main draw will give him some very valuable ranking points to lift him from his present 41 ranking.

Results:

John White (Sco) bt Rodney Durbach (RSA) 17-16, 15-8, 15-12 (50 mins)
Del Harris (Eng) vs Stephen Meads (Eng) 15-13, 15-3, 15-5 (45 min)
David Evans (Wal) bt Shahier Razik (Can) 15-10, 15-5,12-15, 15-13 (60 min)
Martin Heath (Sco) bt Olli Tuominen (Fin) 15-9, 15-8, 15-9 (41 mins)