An Examination Of The Performance Of The U. S. Men’s And Women’s Teams In The Pan American Games
by Rob Dinerman of DailySquashReport.com
Dateline October 26th --- In what has become an all too familiar scenario for American squads competing in international team tournaments in recent years, a series of pre- and mid-tournament injuries and/or illnesses exerted a significant negative influence on the performance of both the men’s and women’s U. S. entries this past week in the quadrennial Pan American Games in Guadalajara, Mexico. Even though the American men on paper were the overwhelming favorite to win the gold medal, based on their seventh-place finish in the World Team Championships in Germany this summer (eight spots higher than any other country participating in Mexico), they were disappointingly eliminated in the semifinal round by eventual champion, host country Mexico (which finished 16th in the Worlds and which defeated No. 15 Canada in the gold-medal match), while the U. S. women’s team, which for various reasons was making do without their best three players, also lost in the semifinal round, to Colombia, which then dropped the final to Canada.
The U. S. vs. Canada men’s semifinal was especially highly anticipated in light of the airtight victory by the Americans at the round-of-16 stage of the Worlds tourney in late August. Back then the clinching match had been at No. 1 between Canadian star Shahier Razik and seven-time reigning U. S. champion Julian Illingworth, who after dropping the first two games had stormed through the next three against his cramping opponent. This time they were the first pairing of the afternoon, but their time on court was brief --- Illingworth had been dealing for several weeks with a troublesome hamstring muscle (he passed on the early-week Individuals to save himself for the Team event), though he had seemed fine in his five-game win earlier in the day in the team match against Argentina. Fearing a possible physical setback that would imperil his upcoming autumn PSA schedule (which includes the World Open in Holland, now less than a week away, followed by tour stops in Hong Kong and Macau), Illingworth stuck around for only a few brief rallies before shaking Razik’s hand and conceding the team point to Canada.
His decision left teammates Chris Gordon and Graham Bassett both needing to win for a team advance to the gold-medal round. Gordon faced Shawn Delierre, who has played some of the best squash of his career in recent weeks --- he blanked Illingworth a few weeks ago in a U. S. Open qualifying match in Philadelphia --- and would have been Gordon’s opponent in the deciding third match nearly two months ago in Germany had the US not already clinched that Worlds outcome by winning the first two matches. This time, of course, they DID meet and to his credit Gordon gave it his best shot, rallying from two games to one down to take the fourth game 11-6 and forging a 7-4 lead in the fifth. Here, however, he hit a fatigue wall and was overtaken in the closing stretch by a match-winning 7-1Delierre run to 11-8 that advanced Canada to the final. There they were edged out, two matches to one, by the Mexican trio of Arturo Salazar (who lost in four to Razik), his brother Cesar (who won in a fourth-set tiebreaker over Delierre) and Eric Galvez (who won in a convincing three over Calgary teenager Andrew Schnell), to the roaring-crescendo approval of a raucous crowd whose number overflowed the gallery capacity and whose full-voiced support and passion were in enormous and chastening contrast to the sparse turnout earlier this month at the recent U. S. Open at Drexel, where even in the semifinals the gallery was less than one-third full and where those spectators who were in attendance were quiet and seemingly disengaged.
The American women, as noted, also were stopped in the semis, though it must be said that, even without their potential top guns Natalie Grainger (who tore her medial-collateral ligament playing tennis in August), Amanda Sobhy (who wisely declined to miss a week of classes at Harvard, where she is a freshman) and Latasha Khan, they gave a praiseworthy effort all week, especially on Wednesday, when they triumphed over both Argentina and Mexico. The latter 2-1 win was especially noteworthy, coming against the host team, whose No. 1, Samantha Teran, a WISPA top-20, won over Olivia Blatchford in straight sets in the middle match. Former Stanford star Lily Lorentzen courageously rallied from two-one down to out-last Nayelly Hernandez to make it one match apiece, whereupon high-school junior Maria Elena Ubina came through with a clutch 11-6 13-11 11-9 victory over Imelda Salazar.
However, the two-matches-in-one-day effort, especially the marathon win against Hernandaz, took a substantial toll on Lorentzen, who by day’s end was plagued by both nausea and dehydration (she vomited later that evening), leaving her ill-equipped for the following day’s early-morning semifinal against the Colombians, who split the first two matches (with Blatchford winning in three but Ubina losing in a close four), leaving a sub-par Lorentzen to take on Anna Porras for the right to play in the final. Lorentzen gave all she had for the first two games, but could only muster two and four points respectively before accepting the inevitable and retiring.
Notwithstanding the efforts by U. S. Squash (which was in full swing touting how “successful” the Games had been for its teams and declaring that a “celebration” was in order) and others to spin the Guadalajara results as a banner performance, and even conceding what an exacting task it is to play one’s best in Mexico, with the challenges posed by the thin air and volatile crowd and on-court environment, the fact is that the Americans need to become better at avoiding injury and attaining the requisite conditioning level if they want to win international tournaments of this level. Even Coach Chris Walker, a former British Open finalist and one of only two players over the past dozen years (Paul Price is the other) to have attained a top-four ranking on both the PSA pro singles tour and the ISDA pro doubles circuit, acknowledged the degree to which an enhanced conditioning base would result in a vast improvement going forward.
Walker himself has experienced huge success at the very top of the sport --- seven times he served as captain of English national teams, two of which won the World Team Championships (he defeated Gary Waite in the deciding match of the ’97 gold-medal meet in Malaysia) and three of which won the European Team Championships. He is extremely loyal to his players, refusing to criticize any of their decisions either about whether they were going to Mexico or once they were there. Yet even he admitted to finding it “frustrating” that there isn’t more pre-tournament team preparation for this kind of event (the two three-day team training sessions, one in Hartford and one in Manhattan, were in his view quite helpful, but it would have been better if there’d been more of them) and that injuries, like the back problem that sidelined Gilly Lane or the hamstring issue that affected Illingworth, continue to occur. There has been a little too much TALKING about attaining a truly elevated conditioning base among the elite player group, unaccompanied, to this point, by a commensurate commitment to DOING what needs to be done to make that happen.
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