I TRY HARD, BUT, I DUNNO,  IT COMES OUT WRONG
You  may remember that over the past ten years, I spent a lot of time relating the mis-doings of Gawain Briars, the PSA executive screwer-upper. In my own way I kept saying, inferring, fuming that he was not the man for the job. He didn’t tick any of the right boxes.  After nine years,  the PSA finally got rid of him – er- sorry,  he “retired”.

A new man, Richard Graham, was appointed after many interviews by the PSA appointed panel.  I interviewed  Graham within weeks of him taking over and was very impressed. He ticked all the right boxes, had the best possible business background and did not back away from difficult questions.  This is your man!  I inferred when the interview appeared on Squashtalk.  So what do I know?  Eight months later  Richard Graham was gone. Not of his own accord I understand.  Why did he go?  No answers from anybody at the PSA.  And this gets me mad. Why?

The press is fine when governing bodies need press releases to be disseminated but they get terribly uppity when the press writes something they think is negative. It is very difficult to explain to them that the media is not part of their advertising and press campaigns.  The press is there to report all aspects of the world, the good, the bad and the ugly and to see through the smoke screen of public relations talk and rip apart fabrications.

Jansher wins an early edition of the TOC. Photo: ©2009 Debra Tessier

So why did Richard Graham leave after only eight months? One story is that one of the deals that he got the PSA involved in was so shaky that if the PSA had gone ahead with it they would have been bankrupt. Another source said that he was a bad communicator – phone calls were never returned, emails were ignored. Another source told me that at the Hong Kong final, Graham and his wife, left after five minutes to go out on the town, leaving a very bad impression on the promoters who have made the Cathay Pacific tournament one of the longest running on the circuit. Is any of this true? I have no idea. I can’t get it confirmed  because nobody is saying nuthin’.

Mind you, I did have a courtside chat with Ziad al Turki, the PSA chairman at the final in New  York. He thinks they have a terrific board with some very able businessmen on it and with Alex Gough as Operating Officer, all is running well. And yes, they will be appointing a new CEO in the future, but it is not top of their priorities.

TERRIFIC COURT – SHAME ABOUT THE FLOOR
You have to hand it to John Nimick and his staff, the Tournament of Champions takes some beating. It runs like a train, and always has a terrific buzz. This year, he sold out almost every night.  And it has only taken him 14 years – the first Grand Central Terminal tournament was in 1995.  It has now become a great part of the New York sporting year and tickets start selling months before the event. It proves what Nimick has been saying for years, the venue  is the tournament. (As I said about Canary Wharf last year).

The McWil  court looks fantastic.  Dave Carr and his company have finally refined the court so there are no loose ends, no bad lighting, no jerry-built ceiling. It looks just perfect.  Except….. the floor.  It is not even. It ain’t straight. It his undulatory. Himalayas is going a bit too far in describing its horizontal profile, but almost every player I spoke to  complained about it. Even the well-mannered world number one Karim Darwish said it was “terrible”.

Now a glass squash court has a  mountain of technical  problems to overcome but surely the easiest part would be the flat wooden floor.  You build a base and nail/screw the panels into place. But the one in New York was uneven, causing some bad bounces and  outright misses by some of the best players in the world.
No, the answer is not a glass floor. They tried it.

THE VOICE OF EVENT ENGINE
Don Goodwin is the voice of  the Tournament of Champions.  A former head of sport for  the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Don has made a reputation as a tournament communicator, either by microphone or by the programs and newsletters he puts out.  He is also very generous. He always lets me buy him coffee. Never argues, never makes a scene or a show of reaching for his wallet. No, not that gentleman Don Goodwin.  Lets me pay for the coffee every year.  And he  even lets me buy him  a Danish to go with the coffee. He has already promised that I can have the honor of buying him coffee next year in New York.  What a guy!

THE IMPOSSIBLE DREAM….

Martin Check's out the motorbikes. Photo: ©2009 Debra Tessier

I have this dream; I am sitting astride a Harley Davidson (hog, I think is the correct term), roaring westward on Route 66, or any other highway in the US. There’s groovy shades covering my eyes and huge earphones strapped to my head. Coming through  the diaphragms  is  Thelonious Monk’s Well, You Needn’t.  The band is led by me on soprano tax with  Phil Woods on alto sax and Sonny Rollins on tenor.  Wynton Marsalis is on trumpet and Billy Hart is on drums, with Ray Brown on bass and Monk himself on the keys.

Sadly, however, this dream will never be realized, because the woman I love more than my soprano sax and squash racket combined has forbidden me to get a motorbike on the grounds that  bikes and death go together.

What brought all this on? When I walked into the Vanderbilt Hall at Grand Central Terminal, I was greeted with the a shimmering vision of two Harley’s that had been lovingly put together by a very young man called Lock Baker who runs Eastern Fabrications in Branford, Connecticut.  He makes each bit by hand and  the engine starts out as a Harley Davidson, but he takes it apart and puts it back together again with each piece lovingly crafted, tested and weighted. He says when he’s finished, the engine produces almost 50 percent more power.

I wish I had the technical vocabulary to describe these artistic creations. If you are interested and have got $75,000 to spare, you can see for yourself on   www.easternfabrications.com  or call him on 203 315 9908.

THERE’S GOLD IN THEM THERE SQUASH CAMPS….
Forget the gold rush, forget oil fields, forget another clever website. The money these days is in squash camps.  Everybody’s doing it.  Bob Callahan at Princeton and  Mark Talbott were two of the early  campers.  Now  Peter Nicol and John Nimick have joined together to create their own Champion Squash Camps this year.  World number one  Karim Darwish started doing his camps in Cairo and Alexandra last year, together with his wife Engy Kheirallah and coach  Amir Wagih.

And this year you can be coached by the wizard himself, Amr Shabana who is creating his own Cairo camps in conjunction with Shahier Razik. Razik is also involved in Prosquash with Mike Way and they are running a camp in Brazil with Rafael Anarcon.   And let us not forget the Power Academy, with  Jonathon Power, his dad John Power and his brother Ian Power who run their camps at Dartmouth College where John is chief coach. Are there more? Oh yes…follow this link to find out just how big the list is: www.squashtalk.com/camps.

IT’S THAT MAN AGAIN…
Guess who turned up at   Grand Central. Why the “retired” Gawain Briars.  My first guess was that he’d heard that Richard Graham had gone and was pressing the flesh in the hope of getting his old job back. And then I remembered, he was “retired”. How silly of me.

PLEASE, COULD WE LOWER THE PROFILE?
Debbie Tessier, our favourite photographer, tried to get a  TOC JP Morgan t-shirt for her husband, who works in the financial sector. Strangely none of the t-shirts bore that hallowed name.  It seems  they really wanted to keep a low profile during these recessionary times.  But that didn’t help them.  Fox News carried this story:

“Despite receiving $28.4 billion in federal taxpayer bailout funds, JPMorgan Chase and American Express sponsored a weeklong professional squash tournament in New York last month at the same time lawmakers were denouncing wasteful Wall Street spending.

The weeklong event — the Tournament of Champions — was held Jan. 23-29 at Grand Central Terminal and sold roughly 4,500 tickets….

Representatives at JPMorgan Chase declined to specify exactly how much it spent on the sponsorship, but a source close to the matter said it was roughly $100,000….

Some critics said the sponsorship for the elite event was a waste of money — especially for corporations that are getting federal bailout money.”

This is not the sort of story John Nimick wants to read…he is due to meet with JP Morgan to see if they want to do the same thing next year.  Good luck John.

RECESSION? WHAT RECESSION IS THAT?
One man who is not feeling the pinch is my old friend from Toronto  Gordon Anderson, former co-owner of the famed Squash Academy on Queen Street. Gordon, one of the great Canadian players along with Sharif Khan and Clive Caldwell who could play both hard and soft ball equally well, moved to  Buffalo in New York state and started his own court business.  He has always done well, initially converting racquetball courts to squash courts, but last year, he tells me, was his best ever. In total he erected 65 courts and only three of those  were conversions.  Five of the courts were doubles, which is an expensive proposition. A doubles court cost anywhere between $150 - $200,000 whereas a single court costs around $70,000.

Gordon is excited about a  new facility down in the island of Barbuda.  The Beach and Racquet club is building a singles court, a doubles courts and a Court tennis court (which we call Real Tennis in England). Gord is in the running  for the squash courts and thinks there is a 90 percent chance that facility will be up and running before October  of this year.   Now just hand me my atlas so I can find Barbuda. [One of the Leeward Islands, north of Antigua]

MATTHEW ALMOST MAKES IT
Nobody but nobody put Nick Matthew in the frame for the final in New York.  But he made it. True he had a bit of luck  en route.   His first round opponent, Stu Boswell, pulled out before the first round with an injury.  In the second round Matthew met Amr Shabana, who retired  in the second game with a knee problem.  So  Matthew  was  into the quarters after less than 20 minutes of squash.  He faced  James Willstrop  his team-mate on the England team and won in four to put him into the semis against Ramy Ashour, a player he has beaten twice before. And he beat him again, in four, to reach the final. He could not pull Gaultier off his left wall game plan, but I’m sure Nick went home very pleased with himself. The win put him back into the top ten  which is not bad after  nine months out last year. (His mum and dad - as well as his aunt- must have felt their trip from Sheffield to New York was more than worth their while.)

AMERICAN GIRLS FOR GLORY IN  2011?
I sat next to Lefika Ragontse, that delightful young man who is coaching at a club in Baltimore. He tells me that he has a group of great juniors at the club and  thinks that the US Girls team will win the world title in 2011. He listed some of the kids at his club and these are the names  we should remember:

Caroline East    Under13  ranked 1 in the US
Katie Tutrone   Under 15 ranked 1 in the US
Mike East           Under15 ranked 2  in the US
Charlie East (8 years old )  Under 11 ranked  in the US
Taylor Tutron   Under 17 ranked 6 in the US.

Whether Lefika has the right year doesn’t really matter, with the number of ex top players now coaching in the US, it won’t be very long before the victory happens.

 

 

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