Jacqui Ryder won her second straight title and Sean Bailey joined her on the podium as the men’s champion following two gripping finals in the Rystix SA National Squash57 Championships at Crusaders in Gqeberha on Sunday.
In a repeat of last year’s title decider, Eastern Province’s Ryder defeated provincial teammate Kacey-Leigh Dodd 2-0, while Bailey, also Gqeberha, just had too much in the tank for a game Tyler Whitby, also winning 2-0.
The finals were a climax of another successful weekend of squash57 matches as players fought for the ultimate honour of being crowned champions across nine sections.
The women’s showdown turned out to be a fascinating battle as two evenly matched players battled each other for 32 minutes, Ryder eventually snuffing out a courageous fightback by Dodd in the second game to win 15-8 15-12.
It started with Ryder quickly gaining the upper hand, producing good length shots to keep her opponent under pressure.
When Dodd tried a few shots of her own, she found the tin on several occasions and it resulted in a telling 11-5 lead for Ryder, which she comfortably converted into a 1-0 advantage.
The second game followed the same pattern as two early mistakes by Dodd and a few excellent winners by Ryder saw the champion shoot out to an 8-1 lead.
But then Dodd regrouped and by eliminating errors from her game and forcing her opponent to work hard for every point, she closed the gap to 13-12.
By this stage Ryder was starting to send out distress signals. Twice she tried to outfox her opponent at the front of the court, but Dodd was on track with winning counter-drops which almost gained her parity on the scoreboard.
Eventually, though, Ryder produced the perfect drive to the back out of her opponent’s reach and then Dodd, to her disappointment, mistimed a volley into the tin to give Ryder a hard-earned victory.
The men’s final between Londt Park clubmates Bailey and Whitby was equally well contested before the former’s boundless enthusiasm to keep returning the ball eventually proved too much for his opponent in a 15-10 15-6 win over 27 minutes.
Whitby’s situation was made more difficult by an error count which was just too high against the persistence of Bailey and it led to the eventual champion dominating the early stages by building an 8-3 lead en route to winning the first game.
There was a slight momentum shift at the start of the second game when it was Bailey who made a few mistakes and Whitby went 4-1 ahead.
But the experience and determination of Bailey came through as he settled down into a strong rhythm and by the simple exercise of making his opponent play one more shot, he took control of the match.
As the error rate mounted for Whitby, he could win just two more points to give Bailey a well-deserved victory.
The finals results were:
Women
Open section: Jacqui Ryder bt Kacey-Leigh Dodd 15-8 15-12
B section: Janet Byrnes bt Lisa O’Grady 13-15 15-1 15-8
45-plus section: Jacqui Ryder bt Joanna Dodd 15-9 15-5
Men
Open section: Sean Bailey bt Tyler Whitby 15-10 15-6
B section: Shaun Hoekstra bt Lyle Ferreira 9-15 15-9 15-6
45-54 A section: 1 Julian Smith, 2 Craig White
45-54 B section: 1 Roger Muller, 2 Frans van der Merwe
55-plus A section: Gary Webb bt Paul Manson 15-8 15-6
55-plus B section: 1 Wayne Smit, 2 Andrew Wilson
Port Elizabethan
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