Last weekend, I played an insane amount of squash in a very short space of time at one of my favourite tournaments of the year, the Danny Gamble Squash Open in Canterbury.
Ran by Joe Magor, the tournament is always great fun and it attracts players from all over the country of all levels of play, from players ranked in the top 150 in the world, to leisurely beginners looking to experience some new players.
It's very much a social event as well with lots of drinks, food, and fun, which is why I love the tournament so much.
I wanted to write about my experience in a blog post in the hopes that it encourages some of you guys to enter tournaments for yourselves (if you don't already), and also to just talk a bit about how I dealt with playing a pretty ridiculous amount of squash in just a few days without collapsing!
Let's dive in...
The Danny Gamble Squash Open features an open singles event (PSA Satellite), an open doubles event, and a ladies PSA Challenger event. I played in the open singles and the open doubles event.
The singles event draw was done in a very interesting way, with every player who entered going into one massive draw. The
Most players (myself included) had to play a qualifying match before getting into the main draw and the higher-standard PSA players got straight in.
If you lost your qualifier you went into a plate qualifier, and, if you won your qualifier but lost your first round you went into the plate first round, so essentially nearly everyone was guaranteed three games.
My first round was on Friday evening around 7pm and, unfortunately, it was my hardest match.
I've mentioned Squash Levels before, it's a platform that uses an algorithm to rank players based on their previous results down to every point. It can then be used to accurately predict future games between players and it's a great tool for tournament organisers to create draws too.
Essentially, you gain points for good results against better players and you go down for bad results against worse players.
Anyway, I'm currently in the 7000s (and the higher you are, the better you are). Although I believe my ranking is a little lower than it should be, my first opponent was ranked in the 10,000s, so I was expected to lose either 3-0 or 3-1 according to Squash Levels.
Although this was the first time I'd played him, I'd watched this player before and I knew he had a great touch from anywhere on the court that I had to watch out for, he was also very good at the slower-paced game and taking the ball early if I hit anything loose.
Unfortunately, off the top of my head, I can't remember the exact scores, but I believe I took the first game 12-10 so I was off to a good start.
My friends who were also coaching me were advising me to try to control the pace using powerful drives and volleying as much as I can, which isn't a style I'm used to at all.
Usually, I'm the type of player that chips medium to soft pace drives down the line and then goes for tricky or sneaky shots to the front, but I knew that wouldn't work against this guy.
The approach my friends advised worked well enough to get me the first game, however, it was very physically demanding for me, so, when my opponent pulled ahead in the second game, I found it difficult not to just go for silly shots to save energy.
I actually nearly cramped up at one point in that game and was worried that I wouldn't be able to continue but luckily it just seemed like a one-off.
He pulled it back to 1-1 (something like 11-4) and then the third game was a big battle in which he also came out victorious, I believe this one was something like 11-9. I was pretty exhausted but I knew I still had enough in the tank to go for it.
My friends pointed out that he was very tired too and that I needed to just grind this out, so I did exactly that in the fourth. I believe I took it 12-10 again, but all I remember was that every point was absolutely brutal.
Going into the fifth, I didn't know what to expect, but, by the looks of it, the approach of grinding it out really did the trick. I ground out a few hard rallies to get an early lead, and then my opponent seemed too physically tired to put the work in and I think I won the fifth something like 11-4.
I think this was my favourite match of the season because, I wouldn't describe myself as a particularly gritty player, but, thanks to my friends coaching me and telling me to just keep pushing even though I was so tired, I came out with a big 3-2 win.
I pushed myself to a level I didn't know I had in me and it's really got me fired up for future matches. Below is a photo my friend took of me straight after the last game in the car park, although it doesn't look like it, that t-shirt is absolutely drenched.
However, my next round was in just two hours' time at around 10:20pm, and, if that doesn't sound brutal enough, it was against World No.137 (and a friend of mine) Stuart Macgregor...
I didn't really have any prep time for that next match and my body was in pieces, I knew I wasn't exactly going to be able to perform as well as I wanted anyway, but I also knew it was going to be a great experience and I wanted to try to get the most out of it that I could.
It's not often you get to play a top 150 in the world player so I was pretty excited for it.
Warming up I could feel my whole body aching and stiff, I was struggling to react to my own shots. Of course, this was Stu's first match of the tournament so he was very fresh, not that it would matter too much either way!
The first game, I was actually shocked at how poor my movement and reactions were. Stu wasn't even putting holds on his drives and I was still somehow being sent the wrong way.
I clawed a couple of points, but he was far too dominant and I lost the first 11-2. However, I felt a bit more warmed up by the end of that one, so I went on with an open mind in the second and played a lot better.
Stu was absolutely dominating the T and keeping me pinned in the back, but, since I had absolutely no pressure on me, I felt really confident going for shots to the front. A lot of my shots were coming off and I was thrilled to get 8 points in that second game.
The third wasn't as great as I think I'd used up everything I had left in the tank for the day, I believe it was either 11-5 or 11-6.
On reflection, Stu was absolutely incredible at dictating the rallies, every length was so accurate and hit with a good bit of pace, it felt like I really couldn't do anything to get him off the T.
He was just insanely good at the core aspects of the game, however, when it went into the front corners or a loose ball came out into the middle, his deception and accuracy to the front was also ridiculous, I had absolutely no clue where the ball was going to go and he would mix it up with something different every single time.
I really enjoyed that match and, despite being in a terrible physical state, I like to think that I still learned a lot.
But, by this point, I'd already played two matches and it was only Friday evening, next up was the start of the doubles which started at 9am on the Saturday morning, followed by my first round plate match which was at 11:30am.
I'll mention the doubles next, but I'll quickly gloss over my next singles matches on Saturday first. In my plate first round, I had quite a straightforward match against a local player who worked at the club, I won that one 3-0 and then had another pretty tough match in my plate second round at about 5pm.
It was against another player who I think was in the 10,000s on Squash Levels, but at this point, I'd played so much squash that I was absolutely broken.
I ended up losing 3-0, but it was a very close 3-0. The first was maybe 11-6, but, I put a big fight up in the second game and had about 3 game balls. However, after some questionable decisions from the referee (in my opinion at least), I ended up losing that one. The third game was perhaps 11-7 so not too bad either.
Overall I was still thrilled with how much fight I had in me for that last singles match. But, I was also quite glad I was pretty much done by Saturday evening so I could have a couple of drinks and watch the very high-quality main draw singles matches.
There were a bunch of awesome players to watch including a number of members of the Malik family as well as Portuguese World No.56, Rui Soares. The standard was absolutely awesome!
I'll not go too deeply into the doubles, but essentially my partner and I reached the plate semi-final that was played on Sunday morning (when everyone was very hungover) and we lost out after that. We played 4 doubles matches in total.
It was absolutely great fun though, it's funny seeing so many great singles players struggle so much in doubles against more tactical players who perhaps aren't as skilled. This is what happened to me and my partner in a few of our matches.
Anyway, after 4 singles matches and 3 doubles matches in just two days, I thought I'd be sick of squash after playing that much in such a short space of time, but it has really left me wanting to play more and do more tournaments.
Despite the tight schedule, the tournament was organised incredibly well and it was a great experience. There was also great prize money at stake, and, two friends of mine won the doubles (and got something in the neighborhood of £300 between them)
The social aspect is a huge reason why I play squash, and, going to tournaments like these where you get to play and meet a bunch of new people, is what makes me love the game.
A huge group of us (who weren't still in the tournament) drank at the club and had a big night out on Saturday which was great fun too.
If there are any tournaments at clubs near you, I urge you to enter them and give it a go, you definitely won't regret it.
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