Natalie Pohrer scores upset over Linda Charman-Smith.

Rob Dinerman, Squashtalk reporter on the scene in New York City.

by Rob Dinerman, Grand Central Terminal, New York, 29 Jan 2002
All content © 2002 Squashtalk, photos: © 2002 Debra Tessier

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HORNER DEFAULTS

Natalie Pohrer (foreground) seizes the offense versus Linda Charman Smith (photo © 2002 Debra Tessier)

In her first major tournament competition in seven months, Natalie Pohrer upset a seeded player for the second straight match to reach the semi-final stage of the Arader & Bourke WISPA portion of the 2002 Tournament of Champions, which is being held for the first time in conjunction with the Men's competition in New York City's Grand Central Station.

Last year there was a four-player exhibition tourney, but this year there is a full-scale 16-player women's draw, with the top 12 straight in and joined by the four survivors of two rounds of qualifying. Both the qualifying and the first round were held in Brooklyn at Heights Casino, but from the quarters onward all women's play will be on the four-glass-wall portable court in the heart of Manhattan.

Both the women's and men's draws are having their quarters played over Tuesday and Wednesday evenings, with all four semis scheduled for Thursday and both finals on Friday. The two top-half women's quarter-final matches were therefore planned for Tuesday night, but only one actually made it to the gate, as the meeting between top seed Sarah Fitz-Gerald (who won last year's exhibition tourney) and fifth-seeded 38-year-old veteran Suzanne Horner was derailed by a right knee injury Horner incurred on the very last point of her comeback win over qualifier Jenny Tranfield on Sunday afternoon.

The knee flared up in a Tuesday morning practice session, and a subsequent examination by a doctor led to his recommendation that she withdraw. That unhappy last-point occurrence spoiled a gallant Horner comeback from a two-game deficit against her much younger English opponent, while Fitz-Gerald, who missed several seasons in the late-1990's with serious knee injuries of her own, was in complete control throughout her 9-3, 3 and 0 dispatch of the young and talented New Zealander Shelley Kitchen.

Both Charman-Smith and Pohrer had advanced to the quarters with dominant performances over Danish qualifier Ellen Petersen and seventh seed Natalie Grinham respectively, with each straight-set match emulating Fitz-Gerald's opener in finishing with a third-game shut-out. Both quarter-finalists had also been married in the past year and both were still feeling the effects of recent injuries as well, Charman-Smith to her right calf (which she reinjured several months after the initial wound and which she has been taping heavily for each match) and Pohrer to her knee, which made this event only her third one back after a four-month lay-off.

Notwithstanding the foregoing, their match was for the most part fast-paced, all-court and characterized by high-quality exchanges of backhand rails along the left wall, as well as a number of sequences of "hand-outs" with no change on the scoreboard---WISPA events differ from the men's PSA tournaments in their retention of both the higher 19-inch tin and the nine-point "hand-in" scoring system, while the men in an attempt to enliven their points and shorten their matches have adopted 15-point American scoring and lowered their tin two inches to American hardball specifications.

After recovering from a near-disastrous first point of the match, at the end of which she slipped and seemed to have possibly pulled a calf muscle, which she gingerly stretched out while leaning against the nearest side wall, Pohrer moved out to a 5-0 lead.

Charman-Smith, the top and back of whose head on this night (as in her opening match two days earlier in Brooklyn) was enveloped in an American-flag bandanna,.then rallied to 3-5, but Pohrer's control of the midcourt enabled her to then run that game out 9-3. The second game crawled tensely along, as this was the stage during which there were by far the longest periods during which the score remained unchanged.

Some great serve-returns, most notably a few crosscourt nick serve returns, contributed to this situation, but mostly the players exchanged errors and winners, many of the latter occurring on misdirection crosscourt drop shots when the opponent was anticipating a straight drop. The tally was knotted at 2, 3, 4 and 6. Charman-Smith buried a forehand drop shot to take a 7-6 lead, but a quick Pohrer burst got her to 8-7 and then 9-7 on a superb and daring backhand drop volley winner, following which she demarcated her two games to none advantage with a vigorous right fist pump.

It was to be her last celebratory moment for some time, and for awhile it looked like it would prove to be her last such moment for the entire night.

Linda Charman Smith took the third game and the momentum but Pohrer held on to win. (photo © 2002 Debra Tessier)

It must be said of Charman-Smith, who possesses neither the fluidity of movement nor the stroking technique of many of her top-echelon counterparts, including Pohrer, that she is a wonderfully gritty and resourceful competitor whose willpower often enables her to forge her way to victory even on nights, like this one, where she isn't at the peak of her game.

Appearing if anything galvanized rather than deflated by the magnitude of the comeback task now confronting her, she seized the initiative right away in the third game, gaining the serve on the first exchange and then running off eight points in a row. There were several unretrievable drop shots, a few consecutive mid-game let points when Pohrer hit loose backhand rails and failed to clear, and a couple of smashed rails.

Charman-Smith seemed determined to quicken the pace from where it had been during the first two games, volleying more and hitting harder, and the results of this tactic were unmistakable.One hand-out later, the 9-0 whitewash was complete and so was the switch in momentum

As the clearly critical fourth game moved along, Pohrer appeared to be slowly but surely buckling under the continuing intensity of her opponent's surge. She rallied from 3-6 to 5-6, possibly just a short streak away from the match, but a tin on an open-court drop shot she cut a little too fine ended this little run and when the charging Charman-Smith won several grueling exchanges to move to 8-5 over her now noticeably winded foe, she seemed ready to finish off the fourth and dominate the fifth.

Pohrer's lack of recent match play appeared to have done her in and Charman-Smith was poised to notch yet another hard-fought comeback victory. But Pohrer managed to fight through her fatigue and regain her accuracy on a series of short shots and one well-concealed roll-corner winner that brought her to 8-all. She then got the one real break she needed when a desperate attempt to scrape back a strong Charman-Smith backhand drive that was hugging both the floor and the back-wall miraculously made it to the front-wall for a fluke winner, a turn of events that was so fortuitous and so crucial that she let out a yelp of triumph while a furious Charman-Smith hurled her racquet to the front wall in frustration.

Now serving at 9-8, match-ball, Pohrer lined up on a midcourt ball that was hanging close to the right wall and successfully went for broke on a dropshot winner that just cleared the tin and immediately died on the nick. Final recap: 9-3, 9-7, 0-9 and 10-8. In rallying from 6-7 to 9-7 in the second game and from 5-8 to 10-8 in the fourth, Pohrer had come through in all the defining points against a redoubtable opponent known for closing close games out and had thereby belied her current No. 17 ranking and announced her return into the game's top echelon.

Tonight's women's quarter-finals will pit Rebecca McRee against Stephanie Brind while the young Egyptian Omneya Abdul Kawy, who followed a successful qualifying effort by saving five fifth-game match balls in her first-round victory over the favored Tania Bailey, will take on the formidable second seed Carol Owens.