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USA Women Earn PanAm Gold
Singles Gold Medal Round
By Rob Dinerman © 2003; all rights of reproduction reserved.
August 16, 2003 

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The dynamics of extended head-to-head rivalries are such that few challenges are more formidable than that of going undefeated against an opponent over a span of many years, finally losing to him/her for the first time and then recouping quickly enough to win a rematch just a few days later.

Being on the receiving end of a breakthrough outcome like the foregoing is usually a such demoralizing and dislocating experience that its victims almost always need a few weeks at a minimum to regain enough of their equilibrium and confidence to confront their conquerors with a reasonable chance of reasserting their prior dominance. Indeed, there are many instances of the first-time winner not only duplicating this result in the next meeting but embarking on an extended undefeated run of his/her own against the former tormentor and nemesis, Martina Navratilova's emphatic reversal of the frustrating early years of her rivalry with Chris Evert being one of many examples of this phenomenon.

Canadian star and defending Pan American Games champion Melanie Jans was forced to deal head-on with exactly this daunting prospect late yesterday afternoon when she tangled with American No. 1 Latasha Khan in the second of the three team matches for the 2003 team gold medal. The two WISPA tour veterans had
met a dozen times over the past 14 years in a series that dated back to their
junior days, and until their match this past Tuesday for the individual gold medal, Jans had been on the winning end of the handshake on each occasion.

Included in this undefeated run were not only their match in last year's Federation Cup final in Ecuador, where a Jans victory keyed a team gold medal for Canada, but several matches in which Khan had led two games to love, and when a two-game Khan lead metamorphosed into a 4-0 Jans advantage in the fourth, it appeared that history might well be poised to repeat itself.

But Khan's 9-2 match-closing burst resulted in her first-ever career win over Jans (and gave the U. S. its first-ever gold medal in Pan American games competition), and yesterday she made this climactic reversal stick with a dramatic five-game repeat triumph over Jans that clinched the team gold for the American women. After dropping the first game in a tiebreaker and the third by a one-sided 9-1 margin, Khan completely reversed the momentum of the match and pressed the attack throughout a 9-0 fourth game to force a decisive fifth.

This game seesawed tensely to 4-4, at which point Khan came up with some
of the best squash of her career, burying Jans under a string of un-gettable
winners that finished off a 9-10 9-3 1-9 9-0 9-4 victory that (preceded as it was
by Meredeth Quick's comeback 3-9 3-9 9-3 9-6 9-4 opening-match win at No. 3
over Canadian Carolyn Russell) clinched the team gold medal for the U. S. women
and rendered irrelevant Canadian Marnie Baizley's subsequent best-of-three
dead rubber win over Louisa Hall at the No. 2 position.

Khan's vindicatory performance was all the more praiseworthy for the several psychological hurdles she successfully surmounted as the extremely time-compressed week unfolded. The first, of course, cropped up in the individual gold-medal match when, temporarily affected by her winless previous history against Jans and the momentous nature of the occasion, she became extremely tentative in mid-match and let most of her early two-game advantage slip away before resolutely staging that 9-2 closing burst. Then she seemed to be either suffering a letdown and/or feeling the pressure of being the individual gold medalist in several pre-final team matches, struggling mightily before barely prevailing over Brazil's Karen Redfern (who actually served twice in the fifth game at match-ball) and Mexico's Samantha Teran, neither of whom had previously taken even a game from her.

And finally, as noted, she dropped the potentially pivotal first game to Jans in a tiebreaker after letting a game-ball of her own get away, and lost the third badly to go down two games to one. But the shut-out Khan pitched in the fourth game and her incandescent 5-0 run to the tape in the fifth fully reflected the control Khan had captured of the competitive environment by match's end, as well as the dominance she, at least for the moment, has wrested away from her long-time rival after more than a decade of defeat-filled frustration. Ultimately it should be said that, after finding a way to lose to Jans for more than a decade, she found ways to win against her Canadian rival twice in a span of 72 hours, both times in crucial situations that became defining moments both in her own career and in the history of U. S. squash.

MENS GOLD TO CANADA AS USUAL
The men's team gold medal went to defending champion Canada, whose stalwart torch-bearers Graham Ryding, Shahier Razik and Viktor Berg conquered Brazil
last night after first defeating Mexico in their semi-final yesterday morning
while Brazil was out-playing Argentina. Though clearly blessed with the most
talent, the Canadian squad was fully aware of how psyched up their South
American opponents get for the Pan American competitions, and were
therefore just chastened enough to avoid over-confidence and play their very best. No. 3Berg, a star of the ISDA pro doubles tour and recent semi-finalist in the Hyder,avenged a Plate loss a few days earlier to his Brazilian opponent Luciano
Barbosa and his teammates Ryding and Razik, the two finalists in the
individuals on Tuesday, triumphed handily as well.

The U. S. men rebounded from their highly disappointing Wednesday pool
loss to Brazil (which ousted them from medal consideration) by winning
over Paraguay and Colombia yesterday to finish in fifth place overall, the
exact position they earned in the Federation Cup competition last year.

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