SquashZAG

Story by Alan Thatcher
Photography by Rob White

As Andy Murray prepared to face Roger Federer in the final of the Australian Open, a fellow British athlete was making his way back to Heathrow after going one better than Murray and actually winning a Grand Slam title.

Squash star James Willstrop produced a series of phenomenal performances to win the Tournament of Champions in New York.

Unlike the Murray-mania media frenzy that preceded the Melbourne tennis final, Willstrop’s victory on American soil and his flight home to Heathrow went unannounced and un-noticed, and was totally ignored by the British media.

His victory in the Big Apple took place at an iconic sporting location, with the glass court set up at Grand Central Station for the 13th year in a row and attracting sell-out crowds every night to the Vanderbilt Waiting Hall off 42nd Street.

To win the event, he had to beat three top Egyptians, who have all held the world No.1 ranking in the past few months, in consecutive rounds.

He demolished world champion Amr Shabana in the quarter-finals, and rose to spectacular heights to remove Karim Darwish in the semi-finals. He then contained the astonishing racket skills of Ramy Ashour in the final while at the same time imposing his own brand of stylish squash on the young Egyptian to clinch the biggest win of his career.

I caught up with Willstrop this week as he prepared to compete in the Swedish Open and his delight at winning in New York was tempered by what he terms as a lack of respect by the British media for “so-called minority sports like squash”.

Willstrop said: “It was very special to beat all three of the Egyptians. When you win a tournament you often need a lucky break if somebody has an injury or someone else takes out one of the seeds for you in an earlier round. But this time there was none of that. They were three top players and I had to beat them all in four nights.

“I had a different game plan for each player. With Shabana, he is a four-time world champion and we all know how good he is with the racket. Added to that he has a great experience of playing the big tournaments, but this time I sensed right from the start that he wasn’t moving too well and I was determined to take advantage of that.

“He was still working and trying hard but I was able to impose my game on him. I said at the time that it wasn’t a truly great match, but he still had to be beaten.

“With the semi-final against Darwish, it was my most dominant and composed performance. I was very accurate and he couldn’t do anything about it.

“In the final against Ramy I knew I would be facing a very different player. My game plan was to stay accurate and contain him, because he is such a dangerous, attacking player, but I also wanted to play my shots as well. I think I balanced the two really well.

“I nicked the first but dominated the second. I knew I was playing well enough to win but I didn’t think of the final result, and concentrated all the time on winning the next point. Suddenly I was 2-0 up and had the confidence to know that if I kept playing like that then the title would be mine. I knew I had to stick with it but Ramy came back and won the third very well.

“In the fourth game I had a magic start and it was only at 9-2 up that I realised I was on the brink of becoming the ToC champion for the first time. Then suddenly it was all over and a week of brilliant squash had come to an end. Hopefully there will be more to follow.

“I had written down a long list of names to read out if I won the final and my speech gave me the opportunity to thank a lot of people who helped me. It’s not just me getting up in the morning to go training. A large number of people have helped me throughout my career and especially so in the past five or ten years.”

The knowledgeable and enthusiastic New York squash crowds who pack Grand Central every evening still talk about Willstrop’s amazing quarter-final match with Ashour in the ToC three years ago when the young Egyptian was bursting into the upper echelons of the game.

I asked Willstrop what made the difference between the guy who lost that hugely entertaining contest three years ago and the man who won the final last week.

He said: “It’s so strange because people still talk about that match three years ago rather than the final we played in 2008. The big difference for me this year was that I was more clinical and more aware. More mature. More grown-up. You are learning every minute in this game and absorbing all your experiences on and off court.

“One big point to emphasise is that I wasn’t there to entertain, I was there to win matches. That may sound negative, and of course you want to entertain the audiences, especially those in New York, who make so much noise in a fabulous setting, but I had a job to do.”

With that job done, and mission accomplished with his first ToC title, Willstrop flew home a conquering hero to a country where his achievements are treated with indifference by the mainstream media.

Squash players have to work harder than most athletes, both in training and in competition, and are bitter at being overlooked for what they feel is a rightful place in the Olympic Games.

Willstrop weighed up his words carefully and offered the following opinion: “It’s just not for me, but it’s painful to see the way our sport is ignored by the high-end media. It’s totally unjust and I’m not afraid to say that. The British media simply do not give enough respect to so-called minority sports. It’s quite depressing, really.

“Andy Murray gets to the final in Melbourne and gets enormous exposure, I win in New York and get absolutely nothing.

“You look at the TV screens and there’s not a mention on Sky Sports or the BBC. We need to do something about it.”

Willstrop famously fell out with fellow Yorkshireman Nick Matthew during the last British Open final, but he was quick to add: “When Nick and Jenny Duncalf won the finals in the recent Qatar Classic it was a terrific achievement by two English players, but again it was completely ignored by the media.

“We know what kind of attention that would have attracted had the sport been tennis. Again it highlights the way squash is being treated. I’ve said this so many times, but if squash was in the Olympic Games it would be the absolute pinnacle for our sport and it would be the highlight of our careers to win an Olympic gold medal. I don’t honestly think you can say the same about tennis. We have six English players in the world top 15 of the rankings. Just think of the response if that were to happen in tennis.”

As for that spat with Matthew, Willstrop added: “We are both very different people and things can be very difficult on court at times. Things happen in professional squash and what happened in the British Open was not pretty, but you have to get on with that. Not every player will see eye to eye with the others all the time and we are all competing to win.”

It wasn’t quite the kind of kiss and make up many in squash had hoped for, but it illustrated a deep respect for a fellow opponent in one of the most brutal of all sports. The kind of respect that squash is missing out on from a media that ignores so many home-grown achievements.

This article originally appeared on Squash Player