Walker Captures Thrilling Hyder Final
By Rob Dinerman for DailySquashReport.com
Dateline May 16th --- In what well may deserve to be remembered as the greatest final in the 43-year history of the tournament when one factors in both the quality of the players and the riveting closeness of the final game, top seed Alister Walker, the current PSA No. 19, out-lasted defending champion and PSA No. 28 Shahier Razik by a score of 11-5 4-11 10-12 11-3 16-14 Sunday afternoon to capture the Quentin Hyder Invitational, held at the Sports Club/LA on Manhattan’s upper east side. Though both the 2007 and 2008 editions of this event were similarly decided by two-point fifth-game final rounds (with Wael El-Hindi defeating Razik 11-9 four years ago and Julian Illingworth doing the same to Yasser El-Halaby 12 months later), neither of those matches remotely possessed the pace, explosive shot-making and frenzied retrieving that characterized the Walker-Razik battle before an enthralled and packed gallery.
By the time the match ended, slightly more than 100 extremely high-quality minutes after it began (with the fifth game alone lasting well over a half-hour, the majority of which was consumed by the overtime session), wild swings of momentum had occurred, both players had incurred injuries, the three-man officiating crew had been stretched to its absolute limit by a series of excruciating difficult stroke/let/no-let calls, and no fewer than five championship-point opportunities (two for Razik interspersed among three for Walker) had been courageously denied. Almost all of the points throughout the match, and especially during the extended end-game portion of the fifth, were long, grueling all-court exchanges, with considerable strings of rallies along the left wall punctuated by cross-drop thrusts and cat-quick duels at the front. Walker’s game has a little more flash, firepower and fierceness to it than Razik (whose effortless-appearing gliding style belies his own more subtle but nevertheless highly effective forays) but he is also the more tin-prone of the pair and the one more prone to mini-lapses in concentration, cases in point being the seven errors he contributed to Razik’s point total in the second game and a raggedness in his output that cost him the airtight third.
To Walker’s credit, he rebounded at the outset of the fourth, asserting himself in racing out to a 7-3 lead, at which juncture Razik, who appeared to be experiencing cramps in the quadriceps muscle of his left leg, conceded the last few points of that game, causing some between-games speculation in the gallery as to whether he would be able to play at the necessary representative level in the fifth. Any concern that may have existed along those lines was swiftly dispelled when Razik demonstrated his pre-injury mobility in the opening points of that game, which seesawed along to 8-all, with most of the points decided one way or another (i.e. with either winning shots or tins) by Walker’s backhand racquet-work, which got him to 9-8 on a delicate drop, and then (after a stroke call in Razik’s favor) 10-9 on a cross-drop nick.
But Razik nursed a forehand drop-shot just above the tin to force a tiebreaker session, which became a whole mini-epic drama in its own right and during the course of which there were several tension-building play stoppages of various sorts. Both players had to change racquets when the strings broke; Razik, who served for the match at 12-11 and again at 14-13, suffered first a bruised side after a mid-court collision, then a bleeding thumb on his playing hand, which needed to be bandaged up; Walker several times limped to a near wall to stretch a possibly cramping lower leg; and the incredibly tight jostling for position on the front part of the left wall led to increasing traffic problems, numerous let calls and several instances of vociferous arguing with the referees, who several times reached “split” decisions and did an admirable job of ruling on borderline situations.
Ultimately, of course, one of the players had to emerge victorious, though it would be difficult to imagine two athletes playing each other to as complete a statistical and territorial standstill as these two did in what was truly a pulsating display of skill, ardor and athleticism. Walker, who would have been on the losing end of the handshake had his go-for-broke winning forehand drop volley at 13-14 not barely cleared the tin, then proceeded to wrong-foot Razik on a disguised misdirection forehand drop shot and memorably ended the match with a leaping forehand volley that he nailed laser-like into the front-left nick, then triumphantly brandished his fist and embraced his equally worthy rival.
A great finish to the 2010-11 MSRA (which recently decided to rename itself New York Squash) season, all the more noteworthy for the presence of the great man himself, now 81, who showed the grace and enthusiasm as he presented the large gold permanent trophy that he has always been known for, as well as the vision that caused him to start this hugely popular event way back in 1969. He ran the tournament himself throughout the first two decades of its existence, but for many years now New York Squash and its dedicated Board members has been the organizing and administrative body for what has become a massive squash “happening,” with large amateur draws enthusiastically competing in the various categories and watching the pro tourney. This 2011 edition had 160 amateur entrants who traveled from places like California, Florida, Canada, Australia, France and England to participate in the event because of the size of the draws and depth of play. The Hyder was the last event before the summer months and hence served in many ways as the culmination of the season in the metropolitan New York area.
Copyright © 2011 Rob Dinerman for www.DailySquashReport.com
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