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Meakins wins gold for
Barbados in Trident Insurance 2004 |
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The Barbados Open defending champion Karen Meakins, who has also won the last four Barbados national squash titles,
clinically dispatched the top seeded Canadian, Ruchika Kumar, in straight games
to win her fifth Barbados Ladies Open title when the curtain came down on the
Trident Insurance Barbados Squash Open last night (Saturday).
Meakins, who is arguably the best female player to have ever represented
Barbados at squash was seeded this year at #2, but gave a lesson to the top
seeded 19 year old Canadian who was playing in a tournament in the Caribbean for
the very first time.
In the ladies’ final, that was played in front of a packed audience at the
Barbados Squash Club, Meakins started a little nervously and at one time trailed
Kumar 6-7 in the first game. However, after settling down, Meakins began to
ruthlessly expose her opponent’s weakness on the backhand side of the court and
kept pounding the ball deep into the backhand corner and waited for a loose
return to employ her own trademark backhand straight drop shot into the front
left corner. As a variation on this theme, occasionally Meakins would hit wide
and deep to the forehand back corner and waited for the inevitable defensive
boast and followed up with a deft straight winning drop. It was all over in a
mere 30 minutes (9/7 9/1 9/3) as Meakins won 21 of the final 25 points in the
match against her nonplussed opponent who was never able to employ her powerful
forehand drives and volleys to any meaningful effect. The men’s final was
another matter entirely.
In another epic match of the highest quality that lasted 78 minutes, the #3 seed
from Guyana, Shawn Badrinath, showed how much he has improved from last year by
outlasting the French top seed Johan Bouquet, in a breathtaking encounter that
went the full distance. The fact that Badrinath had played a five game marathon
semi-final match against the #2 seed, Arthur Poupel, the night before was never
evident as neither player in the men’s final ever flagged. After half an hour
Badrinath was two games to love up (at 4 and 5) and seemed in command. Bouquet
then regrouped and began to play steadier and grew more confident as his
immaculate length and excellent volleys caused a few errors to creep into the
Badrinath game, notably on the drop. After a further 25 minutes had passed it
was all square at two games each. Badrinath had only picked up five points in
that time and it was Bouquet, ranked at #21 in France, who now had the look of a
man who was supremely confident of his ability to outlast his opponent in the
fifth game. It was not to be. Badrinath rushed to an early 4-0 lead, only to see
it whittled away by his younger opponent who then gained the ascendancy at 7-5
and then at 8-5, match ball.
More info
and pics at:
www.squashbarbados.org |
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