Rising stars score major upsets at St. Louis MPM Open
by Kirsten Carlson
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FLYING EGYPTIAN Nothing was out of reach for Amr Shabana in St. Louis.
Remember that bully who haunted you as a kid, that one person who you didn’t want to mess with, who for some reason instilled fear in your little heart? Perhaps it was an older sibling. Perhaps it was some punk at school. Maybe they didn’t actually steal your lunch money. Maybe you never actually had a meeting under the oak tree after school. Maybe they didn’t even talk to you. But for some reason they intimidated you. For a while. At some point, everything changed. Your squeaky voice was suddenly as deep as theirs, you even towered a couple of inches above them. You had grown up. And what do you know; all of a sudden that person was just not that scary anymore. They were, well, human.
And that is what happened to two of squash’s fastest rising stars at the St. Louis MPM Open Squash Tournament in mid-September at Saint Louis Galleria. The bullies got whooped. The kids showed up with a no-fear “I can beat this guy” attitude. And did they ever. They won their meetings under the oak trees in convincing style. Though neither walked away the ultimate victor, they proved that they would no longer move out of the way of the big guys.
Laurens Jan Anjema was the first to step up. His first round meeting brought him face to face with Lee Beachill, one of the most consistent and feared men on the tour. But rather than back down, Anjema brought his “A” game and crushed the then No. 2 player in the world 11-9, 11-6, 11-7. For Anjema, at the time ranked No. 33, Beachill became another scalp on a growing list of upsets that include the likes of Peter Nicol and John White. After the much-deserved victory, Anjema was ecstatic and Beachill was bewildered. And with that, one schoolyard bully went down.
UPSET MINDED Laurens Jan Anjema took out England's Lee
Beachill in the first round.
James Willstrop became the next to score a major victory, after a fight that would have drawn a screaming crowd in the hall of any high school. In a five-game nail biter against Thierry Lincou, Willstrop claimed his first PSA Tour victory over a world number one. It was a long, hard fought brawl, spanning a mind-numbing 85-minutes. Willstrop, undeterred after losing the first game, came back and eventually wore Lincou out, capturing the fifth game from the exhausted Frenchman. Willstrop was elated with his big win.
“I was thrilled to beat Thierry. It was something I believed I could do,” said Willstrop. “I know that I am up there now that I can beat those guys. It is probably one of the best wins of my career. I am very happy.”
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