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USA Men Fail First Test
Singles Gold Medal Round
By Rob Dinerman © 2003; all rights of reproduction reserved.
August 14, 2003 

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USA Men's Team Falls In Tough Battle With Brazil

Placed in by far the tougher of the two preliminary pools by virtue of their controversial fifth-place finish in the 2002 Pan American Federation Cup, and forced therefore to defeat a formidable Brazilian squad in a do-or-die match for a berth in the semi-final round and the medalist status such an inclusion would confer, the U. S. men's team bowed three matches to zero yesterday evening and thus can place no higher than fifth overall in the squash teams portion of the 2003 Pan American Games, which conclude with the gold-medal match tomorrow afternoon.

Led by their powerful No. 1 Rafael Alarcon, who just last month won a PSA tour satellite event in Brazil, the buoyant Brazilians clinched a second-place finish (behind defending champion Canada, which also shut out the U. S. earlier yesterday) in the powerful Pool A and will play their semi-final against the winner of Pool B, probably the Argentinians, though they were upset by Mexico who then lost to Colombia in what has become a very hectic series of round-robin pool matches.

Alarcon's opening game against American No. 1 Damian Walker was a seesaw
affair in which he Walker led 5-3 before sagging to 5-8 and then rallying to force a tiebreaker, a crucial early turning point given how hard-fought the rallies throughout that game had been and how much energy Walker had been forced to expend in catching up to his much-younger foe. The tiebreaker session went to the Brazilian, though, who then raced through a swift second game and to a 6-2 lead in the third. The doughty Walker had one more run in him, though, which brought him to 5-6, but Alarcon regained the serve and closed it out from there, a brave match for Walker for a 1-0 lead for Brazil.

Preston Quick was next at No. 2, and his mobility was especially remarkable in light of the ankle sprain he had incurred on Monday in his impressive quarter-final individuals victory over 2002 Federation Cup winner and '99 Pan Am games silver medalist Jorge Gutierrez, following which Quick had been forced to default his scheduled same-day semi with eventual champion Shahier Razik.

He battled Ronivaldo Santos, a semi-finalist himself in the individuals, to a standstill through two evenly divided games before the latter barely prevailed on a close stroke call in the tiebreaker of the final fourth game, in which Quick himself had held two game-balls.

At No. 3, American Tim Wyant lost a tight though straight-game rematch against Luciano Barbosa, with whom he had had a similar result in the Plate competition earlier in the week. The fact that the Americans finished (just) out of the top four in last year's Federation Cup, due largely to a disputed match with Argentina that came close to deteriorating into a brawl, prevented them from being seeded in these Pan Am Games, and it is widely felt that had they instead landed in the other five-team pool they almost certainly would have emerged into the semi-finals; indeed, Canada, Brazil and the U. S. may well be the three strongest teams in the ten-team field, and it is unfortunate that all three wound up landing in the same pool.

The U. S. women DID win their three-team bracket and as a result will face Mexico in the semis this afternoon while defending champ Canada faces Brazil. In the final preliminary match against Brazil, just-crowned individual gold medalist Latasha Khan on the U. S. let a two-game lead vanish against Karen Redfern, an opponent to whom she has never lost, before finally winning in a
tiring fifth-set tiebreaker.

By contrast, Khan's upcoming Mexican opponent, WISPA No. 43 Samantha Teran, sat out her final pool match against Canada's Melanie Jans (her conqueror in a close individuals semi-final three days ago), so Teran figures to be much fresher than Khan when the two meet in the No. 1 match this afternoon. Khan may therefore need her teammates, Louisa Hall and Meredeth Quick, to come through when they play Mexicans Diana Huerta and Teresa Osorio in the Nos. 2 and 3 positions respectively.

The players are adjusting remarkably well to the main glass court in the host Body Shop club, where it is easy to lose the ball, especially on lobs, in the reflection of the bright lights on the walls. This situation has been mitigated somewhat in recent days when a cloth cover was placed on top of the glass dome overlooking the court. It is a much better shooter's court than was the case last year at the Federation Cup in Ecuador, where the considerably altitude caused the ball to hang enough to blunt the effectiveness of shot-making.

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