THE TRUE MEANING OF CHRISTMAS: SQUASH!

Julie Vande Vusse

By Stu Hadden

The DAC’s winter holiday squash fixture took place on Friday evening, whereby all participants bring a wrapped gift and play off through 4 rounds of Swiss format squash to have a chance at winning first pick of the gifts.

This year’s format was changed up a bit which proved to be a hit with the players. The layout was 4 games played to 5, with each game worth 1 point. At the end of 4 games, a one-point sudden death rally would be played for a 5th point. The match-ups were picked randomly out of a hat for the first round, with one player set to draw the joker (a first round bye due to an odd number of players in the event). In each subsequent round the players would be chosen to play other participants with the same point total as them. At the end of four rounds, the player with the most points would be crowned the victor and win first pick from the gift table.

Vikram Chopra

The evening kicked off with a wacky bit of mysticism from Julie Vande Vusse who arrived equipped with her crystal ball and successfully predicted both the order in which her name would be drawn from the hat, and who her opponent would be - the joker! This was to be the first of two Julie related scandals.

Derek Aguirre pitched up a little after the start time sporting sharp business attire and was mercilessly teased by our DAC squash captain in chief, Mick Joint, for his tardiness. After watching Derek’s first round I can only presume that he was late because he had been finishing up a block of top secret squash training at an undisclosed off-site location… he was on fire! It is widely believed that he turned up in a suit to show that he meant business since there was no messing around out there as he demolished opponent after opponent to finish second only to Vikram Chopra.

Midway through the second round a couple of the chaps wanted to demo rackets so I went up the stairs to grab them. Upon my return I was dismayed to discover Julie scandal number two: that she had taken over my job as the squash pro and was now running the tournament. Side note - If anyone knows of any job openings in the metro Detroit area please contact me directly.

 

Vikram proved to be in fine fettle, even after putting away many a beer, managing to hold his squash on lockdown and only dropped one point throughout the tournament. This occurred in the one point shootout where he was simply outgunned by Mike “The Cowboy” Wilson in an explosive sudden death finish. Everyone had a blast and the new format proved to be a huge hit with the players. If I don’t see you before, Merry Christmas to all of you and thank you for welcoming me to this amazing club in this amazing city.