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08/10/2003
A KICK IN THE TEETH FOR PLUCKY GEAVES
On-the-mend Geaves gets second smack ... week one round-up from Howard Harding ...
After playing down a serious injury which dislodged three of her front teeth some five weeks earlier, England’s world No12 Fiona Geaves competed in the women’s event in last week’s British Open Squash Championships in Nottingham, and also won the Women’s Over-35 title.
However, in Tuesday’s first round of the new season of the National Squash League, the 35-year-old from Gloucester suffered a further setback when she was again hit in the mouth by her opponent Sue Wright’s racket.
Representing UniSport Guildford, Geaves was leading 2/0 when Wright began a fight-back and struck the third game winner at 9-4. It was on the follow-through of this winning shot that Wright’s racket struck Geaves. The brave, yet hesitant, Geaves continued the match and had four match-balls in the fourth game. Unable to convert these, however, Geaves fell away as Wright ultimately claimed her 4-9 8-10 9-4 10-8 9-2 victory for League newcomers SWSA Bicester.
The Surrey University team went on to claim a 4-1 win over the Sue Wright Squash Academy team. Founded by the former world No3 and four-times National champion Sue Wright, the recently-formed Oxfordshire academy is using its league debut to provide greater competitive opportunities for its young players.
Elsewhere in Group B, former champions TVS Broxbourne made the perfect start to the new season with a 5-0 home win over Lee-on-Solent. The Hertfordshire club’s world No2 Natalie Grainger made up for her disappointing British Open performance by crushing one of the event’s stars, surprise quarter-finalist Vicky Botwright, 9-1 9-3 9-3. Broxbourne veteran Danny Meddings overcame the Hampshire club’s rising Indian star Ritwik Bhattacharya 8-10 9-3 9-3 2-9 9-3, while Frenchman Gregory Gaultier, who has just celebrated a career-high world No11 ranking, sealed maximum points for the hosts with a 9-6 9-3 9-6 victory over the Lee No1 Bradley Ball.
Australia’s newly-crowned British Open champion David Palmer led the interest in Group A in a replay of last season’s final between champions Edgbaston Priory and FPD Savills Nottingham – which ended in the same 4-1 result. In his debut for the Birmingham club, Palmer provided a fitting finale for the evening when he overcame a single game deficit to beat his close friend John White, the world No2, 4-9 9-5 9-7 9-6 in a match described by Priory manager Matt Suckling as “awesome, electric and played at unbelievable speed”. Palmer’s Australian compatriot Sarah Fitz-Gerald, the now retired yet reigning world champion, extended her unbeaten record for the club into a fourth year with a 9-5 9-2 9-3 win over Nottingham’s Jenny Duncalf, a former European Junior Champion from Yorkshire.
Elsewhere in the group, two young England team members chalked up impressive wins over higher-ranked foreign opposition ahead of this month’s World Team Championship in Austria. Twice British National champion Lee Beachill pulled off a career-first win over Australia’s newly-promoted world No6 Anthony Ricketts to clinch a 3-2 home win for Manchester-Pontefract over Wolverhampton. The 25-year-old from Yorkshire saved match-balls against him in the first and third games in his construction of a memorable 10-8 6-9 11-9 1-9 9-4 victory. Earlier, his Pontefract club-mate James Willstrop, the 20-year-old world junior champion who came of age in the Nottingham British Open to reach the quarter-finals as a qualifier, was made to work hard by Wolverhampton’s new British Open Over-35 champion Mark Cairns before securing a 6-9 9-7 7-9 9-5 9-6 win.
Fellow Yorkshireman Nick Matthew also secured a tie-winning home victory for Benz Bavarian Duffield over event newcomers Manchester Northern. Earlier, England’s British Open runner-up Cassie Jackman had to save four game-balls before beating the visitors’ Laura-Jane Lengthorn 10-9 9-2 9-5, and the Derbyshire club’s Dan Jenson went down 9-5 9-5 11-9 to Scotland’s world No14 Martin Heath who was making his debut not only for the Northern club, but in the League itself.
In the decider, Nick Matthew seemed determined to impress his new club Duffield, after appearing several times at the club for his former team Hallamshire, the Yorkshire club which has temporarily withdrawn from the League. The 23-year-old from Sheffield, who was forced to withdraw from the British Open with a back injury on the day he made his debut in the world top twenty, faced Malaysian star Ong Beng Hee. Matthew delighted his new Duffield supporters (and, doubtless, the England selectors) by repeating last month’s shock US Open victory over the world No7, coming back from a game down to triumph 7-9 10-8 9-3 9-6 to hand Duffield a 3-2 opening night win.
Full results from week one
Contributor: Howard Harding
Club: NO CLUB
Link:
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