By Kirsten Carlson
The WISPA women made their way through the US in May. One individual dominated one tournament, where in the final she thrashed the woman who would end up winning her own tournament one week later.
New US citizen, Natalie Grainger, has firmly established herself as US No. 1, by dethroning seven-time US Champ Latasha Khan to claim that title, and then heading to the Lonestar State to claim another at the Texas Open Squash Championship in Dallas. After nearly two years plagued by injuries, Grainger is back to the form that once saw her dominate so many players. She has risen in the WISPA world rankings from World No. 14 in October of 2006 to World No. 5 in June. The climb has been steady and consistent for the woman who held the World No. 1 ranking for a month in June 2003.
Her closest competitor, by rank– ing, in Texas was Hong Kong’s World No. 15 Rebecca Chiu. Though Grainger met Chiu, as expected, in the final, it was England’s World No. 53, Kirsty McPhee, who gave the top seed her only challenge, as the 22-year-old took one game off her in the first round. After that though, it was smooth sailing with three of Grainger’s remaining nine games resulting in donuts, as Becky Botwright, Jaclyn Hawkes and Chiu scored a combined total of 16 points against the woman who became the first domestic champion to win the event in its six-year history.
Chiu, who played a long five game match against New Zealand’s Louise Crome in the quarters, managed to score a mere five points in the final. Perhaps that was the lesson, or motivation, she needed as she headed straight from Texas up to Indiana to play as the No. 1 seed in the Subway Goshen Open.
Just six days after the final in Dallas, she again had the opportunity to take home a title. What had been an easy tournament for Chiu, with a total of 69 minutes on court during the course of three matches and zero dropped games, ended in a 72-minute final against Mexico’s Samantha Teran, who hit hard and played aggressively.
The match started out slowly for Chiu, as she dropped the first game. But the former Asian Games champion regrouped and won the next three, to claim her 10th WISPA title, and her first outside of Asia.
