English Scoring Tournament (By Dallas, Malcolm and KK) 

54 squashers stepped back in time on Saturday 11th March for Ye Olde English 9 Point Match (the format where you have to win serve before winning a point).

Teams, with players from every division and an age range of at least 50 years, were hand-picked by captains Malcolm Kerr and Brian MacDougall (left and right above with thier opponents Lincoln Chan & Dave Robinison).

Players seemed to fall into two camps regarding the English scoring system.  Camp A thought it was wonderful and were mystified why it was ever abandoned.  Camp B pretty much loathed it and could not wait to get back to the Point-a-Rally system.  I think 9 times out of 10 the same player will win English system or Point a Rally to 15, but certainly the winning margins under the English system tend to be much larger as a weaker player struggles to get two consecutive rallies and so finds it hard to get any score on the board at all.  It can be a bit depressing!

Monique Wong got the first result on the board for against Nadia Nunez on court 7 while 14 year old Russell Kuan held his nerve to beat the crafty and highly experienced Javy Wong 9-7 in the 5th – much to the delight of Cpt MacD and Russell’s mum!

There were many more nail-biters to follow including impressive comebacks from Mike Z. Vs Big Dave C, the irrepressible Graeme M vs Dave Chan and Julian T 10-8 in the decider vs a lightweight version of Eli Bitan.

The bar was open by the time the top ranked pairs got on court so the survivors were treated to a couple of cracking matches capped with Andrew Ward finding a way to beat our new Thai star Sun Phat in 5.

Ultimately, the key differential between the teams was not the scoring system, but the masterly selection of team by Malcolm.  Offered the “Odd” numbered players or “Even” , after a nanosecond of deliberation Malcolm selected “Odd” as he was already in that group. The rest as they say, is history!  A convincing win 17-10 by the Odds resulted although notably Malcolm's only other contribution was getting hammered by Linc C!

Big Mac will be studying the stats a bit more closely for next year - we may have to pull out the wooden racquets and whites to really even it up.

Thank you all who participated, came to support and stayed behind to watch the other games while enjoying a cold beer or three.