Roll Over Beethoven (And Nicol and Power):

Here Comes Palmer

Photos by Steve Line/Squashpics.com

David Palmer

This tournament was the second Open played in last eight months. The horrors of 9/11 ended last year's Open, also scheduled for Symphony Hall, before it even started, and the 2001 Open was belatedly played in January 2002 at the Sheraton. At this year's opening ceremony, an honor guard from the Boston Fire Department presented colors and the national anthem was sung. Boston took notice and there was an encouraging amount of coverage in the media. Television stations did live broadcasts, radio stations dispatched reporters and all three Boston dailies (Globe, Herald and Christian Science Monitor) deigned to cover the event.

For only the second time since the 1993 edition in Philadelphia, the finals of the US Open did not feature either Jonathon Power or Peter Nicol (the first was in 1995 with Jansher Khan beating Simon Parke in three in Providence). Stewart Boswell put out Power in the quarterfinals. Nicol fell to a man, David Palmer, who surprisingly had more mental toughness to draw upon. Their four-game, hour-and-a-half semifinal match was a virtuoso performance.

The finals did not reach great heights. Even with the unusual starting time of two on a Sunday afternoon (because of Yom Kippur starting at sundown), a crowd of a thousand was lined up around the block at Symphony Hall an hour before. But the match became a walk in the park for Palmer after a straining first game. Familiarity breeds dullness. These two colleagues from junior days in the land of Oz knew that Palmer could impose himself on the match if he wanted to, and, with a $9,500 check on the line, he did, winning in three: 13, 10, 11.

To read the complete article, please see the October 2002 issue of Squash Magazine.