-Jeffrey stops Nicolette’s man-slaughtering crusade
After brushing aside two male opponents, international squash star Nicolette Fernandes was stopped by reigning under 19 champion Kristian Jeffrey who represented his gender to the fullest by sending Fernandes packing in three straight games in last night’s semifinal of the Guyana Squash Association/ GT&T Senior National Championships.
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ust minutes after Jeffrey watched Fernandes crush defending champion Keisha Jeffrey – his younger sister- 9/0 9/1 9/0 in the first ladies semifinal, Kristian took to the court with plans to avenge his family’s name and his lost to Julian Chin in last year’s final and last but not least, uphold the pride of men around the world.
With a fierce look on his face, Kristian brought his ‘A’ game to the court, having no thoughts of mercy or affection to his challenger who happened to be a former world number 27 ranked player of the fairer sex.
The first two rallies of the match were probably the longest as they lasted for close to ten minutes combined.
Speaking to Stabroek Sport in a post game interview Jeffrey said, “After the first two rallies that I used to test her game, I felt that I had control of the match because I was able to get the better of her then.”
After that pole position start which put him up 2/1 early, the younger racer did not look back and captured the first game 9/2 with Fernandes in the rear view.
The confidence from completing such convincing win in the first game took Jeffrey’s game to the next level as he chased down each and every one of Nicolette’s shots making her work extra hard just to gain serve, which rarely happened.
His errors were few, while Nicolette on the other hand may have been letting the pressure of being down 0-2 get to her.
The relatively huge audience for the semifinal match, which included a notably large amount of women, groaned every time Nicolette lost a point.
Nevertheless Kristian’s father Kevin Jeffrey who was one of his few supporters, encouraged every step of the way.
He won the by capturing the second and third game 9/1 and 9/1.
After being congratulated on a superb victory from nearly everyone who watched the match Jeffrey said “It was really tough match because I had to work for every point and push myself to win those long rallies.”
Jeffrey also said that in his opinion Fernandes was not at her optimum last night and that although his confidence is sky high from defeating her, he will not take anything for granted in the finals.
Fernandes who had taken out defending champ to secured her spot in the ladies finals said “Kristian was better that me, we was quicker and he was just the better player.”
Fernandes also said “It was what I call a rude awakening but it helped me to see that I have a very far way to get back to where I was a year ago.”
“I look at this as my first step to getting back to the international circuit and although I am very disappointed I know now that I have a lot of work to do to get up the rest of steps,” she said.
On the brighter side of things, Fernandes said that after that very challenging and physical match her knee held up just fine.
