By Kiev Chesney
It was expected that Guyana’s top female squash player Nicolette Fernandes would win the women’s singles title at the Georgetown Courts Saturday night.
She did.
What was not expected was that Kristian Jeffrey would make light work of Nicolette’s brother Robert and gain his first ever national title.
He did.
Saturday night at the final of the Guyana Squash Association/GT&T Senior National Championship at the Georgetown Club saw Jeffrey writing his first page in the history of squash in Guyana while Fernandes added a third chapter to her dominance of women’s squash locally.
In a post game interview with Stabroek Sport, 19-year-old Jeffrey said: “It is an unbelievable feeling to capture my first male title and I am very excited because it is something that I have worked hard for.”
Now that he has fulfilled his dream of becoming a national senior champion, Jeffrey said that his next goal will be to create a storm at the Southern Caribbean Squash Championships which, incidentally, will be held on his home court-Georgetown Club squash facility, in August.
The internationally-re-nowned Fernandes, who had peaked at number 27 on the WISPA world-ranking list, defeated reigning Caribbean under-15 and national junior champion Ashley Khalil 9/5 9/0 9/1 to rack up her third senior national women’s squash singles title.The four-time Sportswoman-of-the- year gave the current Sports-woman-of-the-year Khalil a thorough tutorial in shots and retrievals selection to quickly bring closure to her first competition after her career-threatening injury.
Although she only lasted six games Khalil showed much determination but that quality was overshadowed by the overwhelming talent on the other side of the court.
Khalil said after the match that although she expected the eventual outcome, she was honoured to have played with such an outstanding player and counted the experience gained during the match as invaluable.
The men’s final, which, incidentally, was a rematch of last year’s semi-final, was also a three game duel as Jeffrey maintained the superb form which got him past Nicolette in the semis to steal the title from her older brother Robert.
Robert Fernandes got out to a slow start and committed a few blunders to give Jeffrey a 3/1 lead in the first set but got right back into the game tying it up 4/4.
After a few testing handouts Robert Fernandes seemed affected by an obstruction call that went Jeffrey’s way and lost the opening set 4/9. Jeffrey continued to hit superbly-placed power shots which left Fernandes fishing in the back court and, apart from having a hard enough time trying to retrieve them, Fernandes also seemed to be bothered by the calls notably high obstruction calls – appealing to the match referee for ‘let’ when trying to avoid or when contact was made with his opponent when attempting to retrieve a shot.
Jeffrey, on the other hand, never strayed from his focus and went onto win the other two games 9/1 and 9/3.
Jeffrey, who fell to Julian Chin in last year’s final, said that he was devastated because he pulled-up with a hamstring injury which stopped him from winning.
Having worked hard to improve on his game over the past year he told Stabroek Sport that he was glad that he has been free of injuries and that he hoped to carry the same form exhibited at the nationals to the St. Lucia Open sometime next week.
Earlier that day Jeffrey’s younger sister Kayla, who had exited the ladies category early, completed an exhilarating victory in the ladies’ plate final ahead of Most Improved Player of the tournament Mary Fung-A-Fat and Daina King.
Peter Michael deGroot captured the men’s plate while outstanding junior players Deje Dias and Jason-Ray Khalil placed second and third respectively.
Keisha Jeffrey claimed third place in the ladies’ category and although Regan Pollard was adjudged third place finisher in the men’s category, he presented his trophy to Nicolette after he could not play the third place match because of injury.
