By Dave Johnson
Wael El Hindi capped a great run through the 2011 True North Berkshire Open by defeating Tom Richards in the finals in three tight games before a packed house seated behind the PSA glass tour court set in the middle of a sponsor’s village of shops in the Chandler Athletic Center at Williams College.
Despite the lopsided game score, the match might have turned at 9-9 in the third game as Richards fought back from a 9-4 deficit to knot the score with a pressuring attack of volleying and taking the ball early that had the taller Egyptian stretching and lunging to keep up with the pace and the sudden and severe changes of direction.
At that very moment, with his reservoir of energy depleted—at least temporarily—El Hindi resorted to the softest, riskiest, front-wall-dripping misdirect off a loose ball in the middle of the front court that sent Richards scurrying one way while the ball went another. As the ball left El Hindi’s racquet with the lightest, sleight-of-hand, underhand twist of his racquet, it hung in the air for what seemed like seconds before kissing the front wall on the way down no more than an inch over the tin. And, all at once, you could see the tension in El Hindi’s frame suddenly evaporate: a magical shot risked and rewarded at just the right moment.
At the start of the match, it was very much the wily, experienced veteran against the more easily flustered, up-and-coming youngster looking for his first win over a former top tenner. El Hindi knew exactly what he was all about, controlling the T with precision volleying and nestling the ball softly and short up front along either side wall, trying to draw a loose enough return from Richards so he could then volley the ball deeply behind him. The fact that this pattern also forced Richards to run around (through?) El Hindi was not an accident, which point was “discussed” more than once with Referee Brad Burke—by both players.
As might be expected, the veteran Egyptian got the better of the less experienced Englishman in these exchanges—some heated—clearly throwing his concentration and rhythm off just enough to make a difference in the outcome. At this level, where a good shot separates a bad shot by the tiniest of margins—inches at most—the smallest disruption to a player’s movement and ball-striking readiness can easily be the difference between a three game affair and a five gamer. In this case, one player accepted it as merely a part of the pattern of play while the other saw it as a stretching of the rules.
The truth of the matter is that Richards is on the way up, and he is ready for a breakthrough win, as Williams College President, Adam Falk, so aptly remarked in presenting the runners-up check to him. He is supremely fit, strikes the ball cleanly, can leave it short as well as drive for length, can move on the court with anyone in the top ten and is obviously competitively more than capable. Squash fans would be wise to see where he stands by the time the 2012 Berkshire Open rolls around.
And, Richards’ trip to the finals was not an easy one. After the first two games of his quarterfinal match, he was so totally in control against Shahier Razik that it was hard to imagine it would take another hour for a winner to be determined. But, an imperceptible tightening of his defensive length and width, coupled with reducing his unforced errors, put fourth seed Razik back into the match, eventually forcing a fifth game. Still even at 7-7 in the final game, Razik just tired ever so slightly to yield four of the next five points of this eighty-five minute match.
In the semi’s, Richards faced off against his countryman, several years his senior and a few ranking spots better (No. 21 vs. No. 24)—number two seed Jonathan Kemp. Mirror image styles made for hard hitting, a high-tempo pace, and absolutely clean-as-a-whistle clearing and calls. Richards, head-banded and short hair, nipped the first two games in extra points, as Kemp, head-banded and moppy hair, let a 9-6 lead in the first slip away and tinned out on several key points in the second, before running away with the third game and rescuing the fourth from match ball down. Unfortunately for Kemp, the fifth got totally away from him as a spate of errors undid him early on.
But this weekend belonged to El Hindi: four matches without losing a game. Along the way, he dispatched two other up-and-comers. He met Arturo Salazar in the quarters and he demonstrated why he is very much a player-to-watch on the PSA tour, although his fluid movement and compact, decisive stroking and his sheer athleticism were not enough in the face of El Hindi’s suffocating control of the T.
And then, in the semi’s, El Hindi had to be his very sharpest to deal with the mercurial speed of Columbian, Miguel Rodriguez, whose energy, reflexes and agility allowed him to escape one predicament after the next, forcing El Hindi to hit at least three winners for every point he won. Rodriguez had earned his shot at El Hindi by surviving a four game tussle with Englishman Joey Barrington in the first round and then upset former top-tenner, Borja Golan, in a 94 minute quarter.
So, the final story line to a great weekend of squash: Wael El Hindi over Tom Richards, 11-9, 11-7, 11-9 in 38 minutes. An elegant spokesman in victory, El Hindi humbly accepted the winner’s check from True North President, Rob Able, by complimenting his opponent and the sponsors, and he spoke warmly to the horde of kids who had spilled over to the venue from the US Silver Nationals being held concurrently across Chandler Quad at the Simon Squash Center. The week on the glass court drew the strongest field and recorded the best attendance in Berkshire Open history, which marked its seventh anniversary overall and third on the tour court.
