Day One Summary and Day Two Preview
Posted by Tom Quinn on 26-Nov-2007Categories: News Add Trackback
(photo courtesy Steve Line of squashpics.com)
Day One of the Endurance World Open 2007 saw the fruition of three years of hard work, and the audience were treated to a spectacular opening ceremony, provided fantastic support for a local Bermudian, and saw a the second major upset of the day.
The first day of the tournament had actually started at midday at the BSRA club in Devonshire. First up was Frenchman Thierry Lincou, who defeated qualifier Julian Illingworth despite a minor hiccup in the third game. The next match saw the first upset of the day – qualifier Jonathan Kemp defeated 15th seeded Malaysian Ong Beng Hee 3-1. Englishman Peter Barker then dispatched his compatriot Bradley Ball 3-1. The final match at the Devonshire club was a marathon affair – Egyptian Wael El Hindi pipped Mexican Eric Galvez 3-2 in 99 minutes.
Then the matches moved to the main venue at the Fairmont Southampton. World number one Amr Shabana was on court first, playing Frenchman Renan Lavigne. Lavigne, originally slated to be a qualifier, kept the pressure on throughout but went down 3-1 despite a gritty performance. Then it was the big one – Bermudian James Stout playing number 12 seed Stewart Boswell. Stout acquitted himself well but just wasn’t up to the task of defeating his Australian opponent, despite fanstastic support from the locals in the arena. Then defending World Champion David Palmer then stepped on court and made short work of qualifier Shawn Delierre. The final match of the night saw an out of form Lee Beachill lose to Welshman Alex Gough in five games. Beachill, with the higher ranking, would have expected to win this, and he came out strong in the first game, but his older opponent played the waiting game – waiting for Beachill to make mistakes, which he began to do more often as the match wore on. The final match score was 4-11, 11-8, 5-11, 11-4, 11-5.
Today we see another 8 matches – 4 at the BSRA and 4 at the Fairmont Southampton venue. There are several ties which promise to be very close. We will also see Frenchman and number two seed Gregory Gaultier make his debut in the event tonight at 9pm on the glass court. For more details see Today at the Open. For Royal Gazette coverage see Defeated Stout has plenty to shout about.
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