27 April 2011

DON'T RUN, WALK: JOHN WHITE vs. JONATHAN KEMP

Not to be copied, that's what we've said about great John White a few posts ago. This time even though I would love to encourage anybody (myself first) to copy what he does - he is basically walking instead of running out there - but am afraid very few people can achieve this exceptional level of anticipation, a mixture of deep rooted knowledge of squash and extra fast perception. And White is not doing it against an average talented club player in an exhibition match, but against another pro, the ever solid top20-top30 player Jonathon Kemp (a mystery why never have been ranked higher). After this rally White was leading 1:0 in games and 7:4 in the second. Based on the cat and mouse type of difference that this rally is demonstrating, I guess you will be surprised to hear that Kemp, after being 2:0 down in games, came back to two-all, and finally lost only 11:7 in the fifth. But this is how squash is: just always slightly more complicated and more unpredictable than one could guess.