What’s Wrong With This Picture? Everything . . .
by Ted Gross

July 21, 2017



photos WSF World Juniors


1)

This is the Third Round (Round of 32) of the Women’s World Juniors.

Every match was 3-Zip except for one. Which is 15 out of 16 matches.

The unfortunate conclusion is there is no depth to the field at all, meaning there are only 16 elite women’s junior squash players in the world (and that may be generous).

2)

Look at those match times.

All the way to New Zealand, and the warm-up duration rivals the match clock.

Enough said - except . . . We really expect to get into the Olympics?

3)

The scoring system needs to be overhauled.

Clearly the 2-out-of-3 format that has been spun lately (mostly apparently by aging pros) is not viable at any level.

But the current PAR-11 3-out-of-5 system doesn’t work either.

Note the apparent lack of fight from the losers in the 15 3-Zip World Juniors matches.

Once a player gets behind, in the PAR-11 format, she loses motivation very quickly, and that’s normally the end of it.

What squash needs at all levels--and to wake up the IOC by injecting substantially more critical points into the action--is:


DSR Scoring:

A game is to 4 points. Point-per-rally. No tiebreaker.

The player who wins 2 out of 3 games wins the set.

The player who wins 3 out of 5 sets wins the match.