Massaro Steamrolls El Weleily To Capture $50K Weymuller Open Title
October 1, 2012 - England's Laura Massaro needed just 35 minutes to sweep past an error-prone Raneem El Weleily of Egypt yesterday, in capturing the 2012 WSA Carol Weymuller Open title in Brooklyn, New York.
Linda Elriani files this report:
Today was the final day of our 2012 Carol Weymuller Open. It’s been a tremendous week of squash and the WSA players have definitely left everyone inspired and motivated. We sometimes have the honor of Carol Weymuller herself coming to watch the final, but Carol has sent us a lovely e-mail apologizing that she was very busy and could not unfortunately find the time to come. Carol started the junior squash program here at The Heights Casino many years back and it has obviously grown and grown over the years. We always like to thank Carol for all her work and dedication at the start as we wouldn’t be where we are today with our program if she had not been forward thinking enough to develop squash in this area.
Our final today was between defending Champion and world # 2 Raneem El Weiley and world # 3 Laura Massaro from England. The match started at 2pm with packed out bleachers full of excited members. In the WSA head to head statistics Laura is ahead 7-3, but Raneem won the last time they played, which was here at the Weymuller last year and it was 13/11 in the fifth! Both players semi-final matches yesterday were not too long, so they should have arrived today in the final not too fatigued.
In the first game Laura got off to an amazing start taking an early lead of 4-1 and then 8-3 up. Laura found her rhythm and was hitting tight accurate deep lengths and putting Raneem under a lot of pressure. Raneem started to settle into the game a little and managed to get into the rallies more and play a few winners especially with her backhand drops this gave Raneem a little come back to 7-9 but Laura's amazing court coverage and perfectly formed rallies gave her nothing to play with and Laura won the first 11/8 with a great hold at the front.
In the second Laura got a 3-1 lead and Raneem was still not quite finding a deep length to put Laura under major pressure. On Raneem's first really deep length she won the point, but she didn't seem to be intent on following this type of game plan. Laura continued her perfect plan, pinning Raneem deep and then taking the ball well into the front and volleying everything she could to keep the T. Raneem made many unforced errors and Laura soon took the second 11/4 to go 2/0 up.
We were all left wondering if Raneem could come out in the third and be more patient and start to put Laura under more pressure before going in short at the front. The third started much the same as the first and second games with Laura getting a 6-2 lead and and still controlling the rhythm of the match and T area. Raneem was still going for lots of short shots and not managing to get Laura behind her, though a couple of the short shots were winners but many were errors. Laura made her first unforced error at 6/4 but Raneem couldn't capitalize on this and even hit a tin off the return of serve to take Laura to 9/5. Laura didn't even finch when she was match ball up and very quickly went through to the win the 2012 Carol Weymuller Open in a glorious style.
A very happy Laura said " I'm really pleased to win the title. I was really happy with the way I played and I managed to stick to my game plan as well as I could. Raneem had such a good week and I knew it would be tough today so it makes it even more special to win!"
When I asked Raneem how she felt, she said..." I feel Off!!!! Laura obviously deserved to win today. It has been a great tournament."
Congratulations to both players for reaching the final, especially to Laura for winning this gold tournament, it was a pleasure to watch them both play.
I’d like to say a HUGE thank you to some key people who have put a lot of time, effort and generosity into making this tournament what it is. Firstly our corporate sponsors Corcoran, who generously support us year after year and to all our amazing members who bought tickets for the quarters, semi's and finals which contributed to the prize fund. We wouldn’t have a tournament if we didn’t have this incredible support. This year we had the best entry to date and the matches were so strong and of such high caliber all the way through from the qualification to the final.
To all the WSA players for choosing to come and play our event and for playing such beautiful squash and inspiring all of us, especially our juniors.
To Jim Wellington and his family who drove all the way from Cleveland to stream our event live on the internet for us. They did a fantastic job as always and we really appreciate their hard work. The streaming is not only great for the squash enthusiasts around the world but it’s so lovely for the family and friends of the players to be able to watch the matches live if they chose. We hope that they will come back again next year.
To all our members who opened up their homes to house the players and to Judy Scofield-Miller who excellently organized all housing of the players.
To Steve Cubbins and Framboise Gommendy who put up my reports and photos so quickly and brilliantly on www.squashsite.co.uk every day.
To Emily Lungstrum, our adult squash chair for all her support throughout the Weymuller and the squash year.
To Becky McDevitt the chair of the Weymuller this year, She did a tremendous job and has worked very hard towards the new ticketing system we had this year and even travelled back from Texas to help out this week.
Then last but certainly not least, Cristian, Burak, Jayson, T, Bonnie, Norman and ALL our Heights Casino staff. We have an amazing team of dedicated people here at The Heights Casino, who all pull together and make every event we run here a success. Thanks SO much.
Tomorrow (Monday) at 5.30pm on the promenade at the end of Montague Street, Nicol and all the WSA players are doing a Flash Mob to try and get some great publicity for the Back The Bid to try and get Squash into the 2020 Olympics. We hope that everyone will join them and make the whole event really successful. Please wear either red or white t-shirts when attending. Good luck to WSF with this Olympic push.
Thanks again and we hope you all enjoyed the 2012 Carol Weymuller Open as much as we did and we look forward to running it again next year.
Congratulations again to Laura and good luck to all the WSA players for the rest of the season. Cheers!
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