Kippax, Chan Prevail In Mid-Afternoon ToC Women’s First-Round Action
by Rob Dinerman, for DailySquashReport.com
Dateline January 21st --- The mid-afternoon schedule of Monday’s Tournament Of Champions witnessed a pair of sequential highly entertaining and competitive though straight-game round-of-16 matches in the $27,500 women’s draws, the tone of both of which was largely defined by the closing stretch of their respective opening games, with the higher-ranked player asserting herself in each instance. First Sarah Kippax, trailing qualifier Samantha Cornett 9-8, ran off the next five straight points (and eight of nine) en route to an eventual 11-9, 5 and 8 victory which she would close out with a similar 5-0 match-ending run. Then Joey Chan extricated herself from a 7-10 predicament against Lauren Briggs by reeling off seven consecutive points and made that reversal stick by earning a 12-10 11-8 11-6 triumph. Chan will now face WSA No. 9 Madeleine Perry, the top seed, who defeated multiple-times U. S. National champion Latasha Khan in the last match of the night, while Kippax will take on defending champion Natalie Grinham, a five-game winner earlier in the day over the talented 2011 World Junior champion Nour El Tayeb.
Kippax, as noted, came up with her best squash exactly when it was most needed in overcoming late-game deficits in the first and third games. She seemed to be fighting the ball in the early going, possibly in reaction to her four-month-old five-game loss to Cornett when this pair met at the Carol Weymuller event in Brooklyn Heights in late September, while her lithe young Canadian opponent, who one day earlier had survived a five-game last-round qualifying match against Misaki Kobayashi after letting three third-game match-balls get away, was showing no signs of fatigue from that testing encounter and to some extent was carrying the play. At that 8-9 juncture, however, Kippax nailed a backhand length winner, collected a stroke call when Cornett hit a ball back at herself up front, and blasted a forehand cross-court to perfect depth to rescue that game.
Throughout the remaining two games, Cornett similarly stayed with Kippax through much of the game before yielding the last several points. After falling behind early in the second, she climbed back to 5-6, only to fall victim to another indomitable Kippax surge. Cornett has noticeably improved her game over the past year, utilizing her impressive wing-span to cut balls off before they reach the back wall and creating front-court angles that open up the court for her follow-up volley. But she can be pressed into coughing up loose balls when an opponent picks up the pace, and her backhand cross-court from the deep-left, often lacking the needed width to be effective, was right where Kippax could volley it into the front-right corner for a winner. In the end, the more experienced Kippax fully deserved her victory and the quarterfinal berth it thereby earned her.
The Chan-Briggs match-up was an intriguing contrast in styles, with Briggs playing a solid, fairly conservative positional game while the light-footed, left-handed Chan glides seemingly effortlessly around the court and relies on wrist-flicking action to sting rather than muscle the ball. She plays with a lot of verve, displaying a willingness to try a risky, innovative shot, producing both a higher tin count (especially early in the first game) but also more winners than Briggs, who never seemed to get her game back in sync after that triple-game-ball opportunity in the first slipped rather swiftly away.
Both in that latter game-ending run and in the two stanzas that followed (in each of which the graceful WSA top-20 Malaysian led by mid-game and was never caught), Chan was particularly effective when she had an open forehand off the back wall, from which vantage point she scored repeatedly on late-swing treacherously-angled working boasts on which Briggs didn’t appear to pick up the ball until it had snaked too far away from her to be retrieved. Chan’s ability to alternate this play with the forehand drive down the left wall evoked memories of Charlie Khan, also a southpaw, who was a master of this exact combination during his days as a top-10 player in the 1980’s on the WPSA pro hardball tour.
Though increasingly beleaguered, Briggs battled gamely, showing the determination that has enabled her to forge a highly creditable WSA career and occasionally commandeering the tee and controlling the point from there. But every time she appeared on the verge of engineering a comeback, something happened to waylay her rally before it had a chance to really take root. The last and most irrecoverable occurred at 6-9, when, serving from the right box after pocketing the prior two points, she muscled the ball a little too severely and it barely ticked the boundary line on the left wall, thereby handing Chan a match-ball, which she promptly converted to seal her triumph. Understandably disappointed by how she played this afternoon, Briggs will have a chance to redeem herself in a few days in a WSA event this weekend in Greenwich.
by Rob Dinerman, for DailySquashReport.com
Dateline January 21st --- The mid-afternoon schedule of Monday’s Tournament Of Champions witnessed a pair of sequential highly entertaining and competitive though straight-game round-of-16 matches in the $27,500 women’s draws, the tone of both of which was largely defined by the closing stretch of their respective opening games, with the higher-ranked player asserting herself in each instance. First Sarah Kippax, trailing qualifier Samantha Cornett 9-8, ran off the next five straight points (and eight of nine) en route to an eventual 11-9, 5 and 8 victory which she would close out with a similar 5-0 match-ending run. Then Joey Chan extricated herself from a 7-10 predicament against Lauren Briggs by reeling off seven consecutive points and made that reversal stick by earning a 12-10 11-8 11-6 triumph. Chan will now face WSA No. 9 Madeleine Perry, the top seed, who defeated multiple-times U. S. National champion Latasha Khan in the last match of the night, while Kippax will take on defending champion Natalie Grinham, a five-game winner earlier in the day over the talented 2011 World Junior champion Nour El Tayeb.
Kippax, as noted, came up with her best squash exactly when it was most needed in overcoming late-game deficits in the first and third games. She seemed to be fighting the ball in the early going, possibly in reaction to her four-month-old five-game loss to Cornett when this pair met at the Carol Weymuller event in Brooklyn Heights in late September, while her lithe young Canadian opponent, who one day earlier had survived a five-game last-round qualifying match against Misaki Kobayashi after letting three third-game match-balls get away, was showing no signs of fatigue from that testing encounter and to some extent was carrying the play. At that 8-9 juncture, however, Kippax nailed a backhand length winner, collected a stroke call when Cornett hit a ball back at herself up front, and blasted a forehand cross-court to perfect depth to rescue that game.
Throughout the remaining two games, Cornett similarly stayed with Kippax through much of the game before yielding the last several points. After falling behind early in the second, she climbed back to 5-6, only to fall victim to another indomitable Kippax surge. Cornett has noticeably improved her game over the past year, utilizing her impressive wing-span to cut balls off before they reach the back wall and creating front-court angles that open up the court for her follow-up volley. But she can be pressed into coughing up loose balls when an opponent picks up the pace, and her backhand cross-court from the deep-left, often lacking the needed width to be effective, was right where Kippax could volley it into the front-right corner for a winner. In the end, the more experienced Kippax fully deserved her victory and the quarterfinal berth it thereby earned her.
The Chan-Briggs match-up was an intriguing contrast in styles, with Briggs playing a solid, fairly conservative positional game while the light-footed, left-handed Chan glides seemingly effortlessly around the court and relies on wrist-flicking action to sting rather than muscle the ball. She plays with a lot of verve, displaying a willingness to try a risky, innovative shot, producing both a higher tin count (especially early in the first game) but also more winners than Briggs, who never seemed to get her game back in sync after that triple-game-ball opportunity in the first slipped rather swiftly away.
Both in that latter game-ending run and in the two stanzas that followed (in each of which the graceful WSA top-20 Malaysian led by mid-game and was never caught), Chan was particularly effective when she had an open forehand off the back wall, from which vantage point she scored repeatedly on late-swing treacherously-angled working boasts on which Briggs didn’t appear to pick up the ball until it had snaked too far away from her to be retrieved. Chan’s ability to alternate this play with the forehand drive down the left wall evoked memories of Charlie Khan, also a southpaw, who was a master of this exact combination during his days as a top-10 player in the 1980’s on the WPSA pro hardball tour.
Though increasingly beleaguered, Briggs battled gamely, showing the determination that has enabled her to forge a highly creditable WSA career and occasionally commandeering the tee and controlling the point from there. But every time she appeared on the verge of engineering a comeback, something happened to waylay her rally before it had a chance to really take root. The last and most irrecoverable occurred at 6-9, when, serving from the right box after pocketing the prior two points, she muscled the ball a little too severely and it barely ticked the boundary line on the left wall, thereby handing Chan a match-ball, which she promptly converted to seal her triumph. Understandably disappointed by how she played this afternoon, Briggs will have a chance to redeem herself in a few days in a WSA event this weekend in Greenwich.
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