Squash Company

Squash coaching with passion

Squash Blog

The London & South East Regional Closed

The London & South East Regional Closed – Tournament Director’s Report
By Nic Davies
Director, The Squash Company

The England Squash London & South East Regional Closed was held on the weekend of Saturday 14th and Sunday 15th November at the K2 Leisure Centre in Crawley, Sussex.

It was organised very quickly by The Squash Company and several parents after it became apparent the event was not initially going to run. It is a real testament to the London & South East counties that 130 players entered the event in spite of the last minute nature of the event.

Kent were the most successful county, taking home 5 senior titles, whilst Sussex captured 4 and Middlesex won 1 through Margot Prow in the GU15’s. All four counties took home silverware in the Plate, with Surrey’s Phoebe Colman securing the GU17’s Plate title.

While there were all the usual ups and downs of tournament squash, it was a fantastic weekend for all and a real celebration of squash which we hope to repeat next year.

Presentations were carried out by Paul Millman, Chairman of Sussex Squash and Racketball. 


U11’s Events

London & South East Regional BU11 Final

C. Boy (KEN) bt. T. Greengrass (SUX) 11/8, 11/7, 8/11, 11/2

Bu11 Winner-min

London & South East Regional BU11 Plate Final

C. Thomas (KEN) bt. R. Campbell (SUR) 11/3, 11/1, 11/7

London & South East Regional GU11 Final

E. Tunon (KEN) bt. L. Hill (KEN) 11/8, 11/6, 11/5

GU11 winner-min
London & South East Regional GU11 Plate Final

L. McColm bt. H. Baldwin 11/5, 11/5, 11/7

U13’s Events

London & South East Regional BU13 Final

F. Smith (SUX) bt. T. Saba (SUR) 11/3, 11/4, 11/9

BU13 winner-min
London & South East Regional BU13 Plate Final

A. Hughes (SUX) bt. C. Chak (SUR) 11/8, 11/4, 11/7

London & South East Regional GU13 Final

T. Malik (SUX) bt. A. Wilkinson (MDX) 11/2, 11/6, 11/1

GU13 winner-min


London & South East Regional GU13 Plate Final

A. Bryant (SUX) bt. E. Welch (SUX) 11/4, 11/3, 11/2

U15’s Events

London & South East Regional BU15 Final

J. Mitterer (KEN) bt. P. Malik (SUX) 11/9, 11/7, 6/11, 8/11, 11/8

BU15 winner-min


London & South East Regional BU15 Plate Final

N. Meredith (SUX) bt. D. Sanches (SUR) 11/4, 11/4, 11/7

London & South East Regional GU15 Final 

V. Prow (MDX) bt. B. Burki (SUR) 16/14, 7/11, 11/9, 9/11, 11/8

Gu15 winner-min


London & South East Regional GU15 Plate Final

M. Hill (KEN) bt. R. Moss 11/6, 11/6, 8/11, 11/7

U17’s Events

London & South East Regional BU17 Final

A. Shapcott (KEN) bt. J. Standish (SUX) 12/10, 5/11, 19/17, 11/9

BU17 winner-min


London & South East Regional BU17 Plate Final

D. Sanches (SUR) bt. A. Wilkinson (MDX) 11/1, 14/12, 11/7

London & South East Regional GU17 Final

L. Taylor-French (KEN) bt. M. North (SUX) 11/1, 11/5, 11/3

Gu17 Winner-min

London & South East Regional GU17 Plate Final

P. Colman (SUR) bt. A. Coxeter (KEN) 12/10, 6/11, 8/11, 11/4, 11/4

U19’s Events

London & South East Regional BU19 Final

C. Malik (SUX) bt. T. Walsh (SUX) 11/4, 11/8, 11/6

Bu19 winner-min


London & South East Regional BU19 Plate Final

J. Sheeran (SUX) bt. J. Collins 11/7, 10/12, 11/9, 6/11, 16/14

London & South East Regional GU19 Final

L. Walsh (SUX) bt. E. Murrell (SUR) 7/11, 11/4, 5/11, 11/4, 11/6

GU19 winner-min

Being ‘front-on’ in the front of the court



In squash, it’s important to have different shot options wherever you find yourself on court and perhaps even more important to make your opponent think you have multiple shot options.

The front of the court 

Being in front of your opponent in the front half of the court is one of the most advantageous positions to be in, in squash. From here you have the entire court open to you and you also have your opponent’s full attention, which enables you to use deception and disguise to great effect.

There are numerous ways of being more deceptive but one quick way is to play as many shots as you can from a ‘front-on’ position. To be ‘front-on’ in the front corner means to have your body and chest facing the front wall as you strike the ball, in contrast to the traditional ‘side-on’ position where your body is facing the side wall as you strike the ball.

DSC_0043

Being ‘front-on’ has numerous advantages. Typically, it is quicker to get into this position but perhaps more pertinently, from this position it is easier to play cross-court shots meaning you can play to the whole court with greater ease than when side-on. With this in mind, it is very difficult for your opponent to anticipate what your shot will be, which will leave them under increased pressure.”

The other major benefit for deception and disguise is that it makes you physically bigger, as we talk about in another blog post ‘Using your body to disguise shots’. By being front on, you are capable of blocking your opponent’s view of the ball, which means they can quite literally lose track of the ball, which is of course a major advantage.

It isn’t all positive though, as the reason players are encouraged to be ‘side-on’ is for improved control. When you are front on, it is often far more difficult to control the ball and keep your shots accurate, particularly when going for a straight shot, so there is some trade-off to playing a shot from a ‘front-on’ position. At times, this trade-off is worth it, especially if you’re short on time or if your opponent plays a weak shot and you can hide the ball from their view but at other times, you can’t beat being side-on.

Have a few goes on it and see when and how being front on at the front works for you!



It’s time to make squash so good they can’t ignore us.



This time I wasn’t even surprised to hear squash had failed to make the shortlist of sports recommend for inclusion for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. Having failed now for the last 12 years, it just seemed inevitable in some ways. It’s hard as a sport to pick ourselves back up and go again but that’s what we have to do. Though perhaps, this time we need to come from a different angle. This time we need to make squash so good that they can’t ignore us.

We can go on all night listing all the positives about squash and how great a game it is but then we all know how good a game it is. We all know it’s a fantastic sport and a brilliant workout. The problem is most people don’t. Surfing and climbing don’t seem like olympic sports in the slightest but what they do have on their side is the fact everyone knows what they are.

I go into schools every week coaching squash and I rarely get more than one or two kids who have played the game or even have an idea about what it is. Often, when we invite them to our courts for an Open Day with their parents, their parents bring along rackets that really belong a museum and tell of how they used to play when they were younger. Granted, these parents have all lived for longer but they all know what squash is and have played a bit before. Will the same be said of the current generation of children when they go have children of their own? I’m not confident it will. As part of the development work I do in Sussex, England, the main problem we see at our clubs is a declining membership of which the majority are 45 or over and male.

This is something we as a sport have to change and it needs all of us to take up the charge if we are to be successful. It doesn’t even take much. It could be as simple as taking your child, wife or friend on court with you and introducing them to the game. We simply need more people to be aware of what squash is and also more people playing the sport on a regular basis. Or if you have a passion for the game, why not consider becoming a coach or starting a junior set-up if there isn’t already one? We need to grow the number of clubs offering coaching services and junior groups, get more clubs interacting with local schools and community groups and get more women and people from different backgrounds involved.

We need to build and build and get to the stage where we have members complaining at every club because the only court they can get is at 8am or 10pm at night because all four courts are being booked and because there are loads of young players about stealing all the courts. We need to have every club fielding not just one ladies team but two, three or four. We need to get schools up and down the county having squash as part of their PE curriculum and see hundreds of young people introduced to squash at every school.

We need to stop talking about how good squash is and show everyone how good it is. We have to band together and build this momentum to such a fever pitch that it gets to the point where squash is impossible to ignore. We need to make squash so good that the Olympics can’t ignore it.



‘Keep the ball up one shot longer than your opponent’



A Primitive playing style but sometimes that last ditch shot is the winning one. 

I didn’t like the phrase when I first heard it and I still think it’s a rather crude and primitive way of playing the game. I’m not a big fan of attritional squash and I don’t think it’s a long-term way of playing personally but it does have a time and a place.

One of my early coaches imparted this one liner to me and whilst I can be pompous about it, it is undeniably true. No one who has kept the ball up one shot longer than their opponent, at least in the eyes of the marker, has ever lost a rally.

A focus when lacking sharpness 

I was reminded of that line this week as I returned to court for the first time in nearly a month after holiday and found myself making a lot of poor decisions and not hitting my target areas of the court. Despite a poor first game riddled with errors and sloppy movement, I decided that it would be better to keep going and practice my aggressive play, as I judged it would just take me time to get sharp again and I should play through it, which is a fair argument. It didn’t stop me from losing the match soundly that day though or the next day as I was beaten again in similar circumstances. Without much court time behind me, I just wasn’t finding the touch or accuracy I needed with any of my short shots or length on a consistent basis.

It’s amazing how many times you retrieve a good shot by just getting your racket on the ball or with a loose shot at full stretch, which  your opponent should put away, but instead they hit the ball in the tin because they got sloppy thinking they’d won the rally.”

It wasn’t too much of a problem, as it was just a training game after all. However, thinking more pragmatically, in order to improve my chances of winning the game, I should have adopted a more pragmatic approach and focused on keeping the ball alive. I just wasn’t sharp enough to get in the proper positions necessary to attack effectively, which meant I essentially forcing my shots and naturally made a lot of unforced errors. Cutting out the errors, I might well have won the match.

Secondly, if I’d kept the ball up more, I would have had more shots in general during the rallies, which would’ve also been significantly longer. The more shots I had, the more practice I would’ve got and the sharper I would’ve been from the practice. After all, the best practice is the practice that provides you with the most chances to hit the ball. With a few more shots under my belt, I might well have found myself starting to find my range and accuracy a bit more.

SH13068-min

Everyone has got to have that steel about them no matter how skilful a player they are and there are always times when you simply need to keep the ball up and keeping that ball up just once more can often prove the difference.

It’s amazing how many times you retrieve a good shot by just getting your racket on the ball or with a loose shot at full stretch, which  your opponent should put away, but instead they hit the ball in the tin because they got sloppy thinking they’d won the rally.

Sometimes, you just need to keep that ball up one shot longer than your opponent.



Let your hand go beyond the ball



Is the follow through replacing backswing?

In this post, I will discuss a small technical point which I believe can improve almost all shots for players of all abilities in squash, which does sound like a bold statement to make.

When you strike the ball, check whether your hand goes beyond the ball. If your follow through is really long enough, your hand should go beyond where the contact with the ball took place. If the ball had co-ordinates in time and space, your hand would need to go beyond this point.

If you make this subtle yet significant change to your follow through, you should notice significant improvement in your ball control, particularly when playing from the back of the court, although I have also found it very useful while volleying and playing touch shots, such as the drop and drop volley, as well.

There is always time to follow through a shot though and so the follow through is almost consuming the backswing in the modern game.”

One professional player who does this particularly well is Mohamed El Shorbagy. At times, his backswing is nearly non-existent. His follow through though is phenomenal and allows him to get superb power and control.

Greater emphasis on the follow through is something that seems to be happening at the top level of the game and is something that can also be applied at club level. With the game becoming faster and faster, there simply isn’t the same time to prepare the racket and get a perfect backswing.

There is always time to follow through a shot though and so the follow through is almost consuming the backswing in the modern game.

Once you get comfortable with letting your hand go beyond the ball more (and if you get any improvement!), see if you can begin to hit your shots quicker by replacing some of your backswing with this extended follow through. After a bit of practice, it will allow you to execute your shots quicker which is exactly what you need for taking the ball earlier. With this extended follow through, you can move higher up the court and hit the ball higher up the court, thereby applying more pressure to your opponent by reducing the time between your shots and increasing the pace of the game.

Try it out! It’s such a small change but one that can revolutionise your game and ball control.