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Alex Arjoon and Nicolette Fernandes are Digicel Senior Squash champs
The Guyana Squash Association in collaboration with its number one corporate sponsor Digicel ran off the fifth and final day of the Digicel Senior National Squash Championships at the Georgetown Club Courts yesterday and when it was all over Alex Arjoon and Nicolette Fernandes emerged as the respective Men’s and Women’s champions.
National champions Nicolette Fernandes (left) and Alex Arjoon (right) along with Digicel Junior Marketing manager Ms. Tandika Johnson after the presentation.
Starting things off in the men’s plate final, Deje Dias cruised past Nicholas Narain in straight games 11-4,11-3, 11-5.
In the play off for third place in the plate, Alan Downes and Jo Jo Mekdeci had a marathon match. Both players pushed themselves to the limit and the match went the full five games. Downes came out victorious 6-11,19-17,7-11,11-8,11-3.
In the men’s classic plate finals Steven Xavier surprised Nyron Joseph and won in straight games 11-3,11-9,11-4. In the classic plate third place playoff Raphael DeGroot played extremely well to dispose of Ben Mekdeci in five games 6-11,11-4,8-11,11-4,11-6.
The women’s classic plate final saw Victoria Arjoon having to use all of her experience to get past Akeila Wiltshire. This match also went the full five games as Victoria won 11-5,4-11,11-9,7-11,11-4.
In the third place playoff in the women’s classic plate, Kathy Ten-Pow again prevailed against Larissa Wiltshire. This time around Larissa seemed determined to win the match and after having won the first game at seven, lost the second at three, won the third at five and up six one in the fourth this seemed as if it would happen, but Kathy dug deep and came back to win the fourth at nine and then won the fifth game 11-5.
The matches then came down to the main draws.
In the women’s third place play off Ashley DeGroot showed that her game is improving all the time as she prevailed over Mary Fung A Fat 11-9,3-11,11-8,7-11,11-7.
In the women’s final Ashley Khalil was no match for Nicolette Fernandes. Even though this match was played immediately after the men’s final match Fernandes still won comfortably 11-1,11-9,11-6.
In the men’s third place play off Jason-Ray Khalil ran former national champion Regan Pollard to all four corners of the court and even though Pollard never seemed out of the match Khalil was still able to win in straight games 11-9,11-9,11-5.
The main action saw defending Men’s national champion Alex Arjoon pitted against Women’s World number 26 Nicolette Fernandes.
Both had won their semifinals fairly comfortable and both had trained fairly hard over the past few weeks for this particular match. The match lasted just about an hour. Both players started well but it was Nicolette who took the first game 11-7. Alex came out blazing in the second and jumped out to an early lead, was up five love and then seven one before Nicolette finally settled down in the game. Alex however closed out the game 11-5.
The third was even more exciting as both players were moving each other around the court and displayed amazing retrieving abilities. The game got extremely close with several long and extremely brutal rallies. Fernandes got to game ball with Arjoon at six points but just could not close out the game as he got to as close as nine but she was finally able to win the game on her fourth game ball.
Game four was just as good, or even better than game three with both players exerting a lot of energy and the afternoon heat started to take its toll. Nicolette seemed to be getting more tired than Alex and after one of those long brutal rallies it seemed to take all of the energy from her as she was never the same player after that. Alex won the fourth game eleven seven and the fifth was not close at all as Nicolette had no energy left and Alex won it easily eleven points to one. The squash displayed by both of these players was amazing.
Presentation of the prizes followed immediately after the finals and was done by Digicel representative Ms Tandika Johnson, Junior Marketing Manager.
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