GETTING BACK ON THE HORSE

Horsham Masters Tournament July 25-27, 2025

Stupidity? Senility? A very late mid-life crisis? It’s been just over a week since I decided to venture back out into the tournament scene, my first attempt in… testing my memory here… must be August of 2019. Back then, I thought spending a week in a half in Miami during the hottest part of the summer where the humidity was so horrific one needed scuba gear just to walk the streets, was a magnificent time to play an international squash masters event. Didn’t think that one through. 

Wasn’t thinking much here either. I’ve been back in Melbourne for just over 2 months now, and nothing struck me as more attractive that to grab my good ol’ squash buddy, Chris Barned, and haul his hindquarters about 300 km northwest into the expanse of the Victorian countryside and spend a weekend reliving our long forgotten youth playing a squash tournament in the do-not-put-on-your-tourist-bucket-list metropolis of Horsham. In the winter. During a monsoon. Yes… I’m a genius. 

I really did not know what to expect. Squash-wise. I definitely knew what to expect social-wise, as both Chris and I, re-connecting after 23 and a half years, continued on as if that time gap never happened. And, being a Masters tournament, socializing is an expected part of the gig, an essential part of the gig, and I have to admit it was refreshing to actually play a squash tournament and not care terribly much about the results. We cared that the beer was cold, the crowd accepting, the laughs genuine. We met a lot of delightful people, and the two organizers - Michelle Rowles and Darren O’Neill - made us feel extremely welcome. I am no stranger to organizing squash events, so I am fully aware of the work and time that is sacrificed. I sincerely tip my hat and wholly appreciate their efforts and result of their labor. 

Phil Taylor, me (!), Chris Barned

That being said, I still wanted to win. The only other player in the draw that I knew was Chris. Unknown entities can work both ways and I’m not in exactly the best shape of my career, so I was fractionally nervous going in. Furthermore, one is somewhat more cognizant of the risk (and fear) of injury, so body preservation was a priority. I don’t need to desperately channel my inner Miguel Rodriguez and dive for balls anymore. 

Battling my first opponent on the Friday night helped neutralize some of the doubts. It also neutralized my nerve endings, as it was quite possibly colder inside the center than out. Not all the rain was kept on the outside of the building either, throwing more obstacles in the way, but everyone goes with the flow (pardon the pun) not taking ourselves too seriously. My first tournament match and win in 6 years, I won 3-0, and was thrilled to partake in the post-match tinnie, wishing I had a stubby-holder to avoid the onset of frost bite to my fingers. At least the shower at the roadside motel was warm, and once the blood flow to my extremities had returned, Chris and I wasted no time in meeting up in the motel “party-room” with our fellow participants afterwards and making ourselves comfortable next to the esky. 

My Saturday match went very similar to Friday’s. Happy to be standing upright without any significant damage, another 3-0 escape, and an another brewski to celebrate. In fact, regardless of their on-court results, everyone was unconditionally chuffed to celebrate late into the night. An excellent live band at the local golf club kept the party hoppin’, great food and company, these are the moments why these tournaments are popular. It’s simply a damn good time. 

Sunday meant finals day. I was feeling pretty good considering, my body holding up better than I expected. I was looking forward to a tough final. Cameron Penna is from Bendigo, hits the ball way, way harder than I do, runs way, way faster, and is way, way younger. Undoubtedly, he is way, way smarter too, so the only trick I had up my skinny sleeves was experience. It worked for a while. I was 2-1 up, but I knew at the end of the third game that my day was done. Unfortunately, my body wouldn’t cooperate and Cameron - as he should - took full advantage, showed me no mercy, showed the ref no mercy, and made quick work of me in the final 2 games. At least I made him take his Geelong top off. Savor the small victories, right?  

Cameron Penna murdering another forehand

So maybe I wasn’t quite 100% ready for a tournament, but no regrets. I would absolutely recommend and repeat the mission. Hanging out with Chris all weekend was something I missed terribly from days past, and it’s times like this that moving back to Australia was irrefutably worth it. If you haven’t experienced a squash event like this before, if you are sitting on the fence, let me push you solidly over the edge. Do it. Enjoy life. And if it’s in Horsham - take some gloves, scarf, winter jacket... and a stubby holder. 

Division 1 winners and finalists. I'll open my eyes next time.

CLASSICALLY NORMAL

DAC Squash Classic Feb 10-13, 2022

Two years removed. Covid killed just about all squash tournaments in 2021, and as we were preparing to run this year, we were somewhat worried that Covid would claim us a second time as the Omicron variant was spreading and Ontario was once again in lockdown. Fortunately, the world was starting to open up as the start day approached and although we did not reach our usual maximum number of participants, I’ll take the 137 players we did get any day of the week. 

The worry was that the Canadians were not going to be able to cross the border at all, but with the contingent from London, Toronto, Sarnia, Chatham, and Windsor, we still managed 22 overall as opposed to the usual 40 or so. I was very pleased they made the effort and it was wonderful to see their familiar faces back at the DAC. That’s not to downplay the non-member entrants from the US either which included Chicago and Toledo, Lansing, Ann Arbor, and our friends from the BAC, Life Time Fitness in Troy - without each and every one, the tournament would simply not be the same.

The event felt very much that we had returned to ‘normal’… whatever ‘normal’ is these days I guess! Missing the one year actually felt like we had missed 10, so much has changed. Except the DAC Classic. I try to stick to the formula that seems to work and I hope that all the competitors felt very welcome and at home during the 4 days.

The squash…

In the lower categories, DAC members make up the bulk of the players. So, our odds of winning those categories is significantly higher. In the 2.5, all but 2 players were from inside our walls. AJ Peleman led the way with an almost perfect record to claim the title. His one ‘blemish’ was in the semi-final where he dropped a game to Matt Thatcher. AJ’s opponent in the final was a little surprising to me - Joe Schmidt. Joe had a terrific upset win in his second match taking out AJ’s biggest threat in Paul Gormley in 5 games. Joe’s run continued through the semis with a 3-1 win over Niko Ahee. AJ beat Joe 3-0 in the final, but to place a little perspective into Joe’s effort, Paul Gormley beat AJ last week in the boasters league. Naturally, AJ refused to hand over to Paul his winning Classic trophy… So standard-wise, based on that, one could claim they all are rather even!

Matt Wilson can claim the “Iron-Man” of the weekend. Entering 2 categories, he ended up with 8 matches. In the 3.0 a clean sweep. All four matches were a 3-0, including the final against Andrew Peleman. Matt is another one of our young members that has improved quickly over the past season. Mainly through athleticism and essentially being on court and playing countless matches, he does have an awkward style but so far it has been effective. It will be interesting to see how far he will be able to take this way of plying into the higher levels. We had 26 matches (including consolation) in the 3.0 draw, strangely, only one of them went to 5 games.

In the 3.5, Matt almost did the double-double. All but one of his matches were 3-0. His first round was the anomaly, he beat Tom Fabbri 3-1, and then matter-of-factly swatted away the next 2 opponents 3-0 to once again reach the final. It is unusual for anyone to reach the final of the main draw in 2 categories. If a player reaches the final in the 3.5, what is he doing in the 3.0? This is not Matt’s fault - if anyone is to blame, it’s me. Typically, the DAC Classic would be a stronger field than our club championships based on the non-members that enter. But this year, we just didn’t get as many of them. In fact, all players in the 3.5 category were DAC, and only 4 players in the 3.0 were not. Matt’s 3.5 opponent in the final was a new kid on the block, in fact had just been declared a DAC member 2 weeks before the tournament started - Sean Abelarde. His timing was perfect. I had just received a cancellation in the draw and Sean’s email reached my desktop not 10 minutes later asking if there was room in the same category. Sure enough, I slotted him in, and sure enough, Sean’s first DAC squash experience was a golden run to the title! He stopped Matt’s 7 match win streak with a 3-0 victory.

Now it starts to get tough for our lads. The 4.0 draw had some new players to the Classic, many of them were worthy to take the winner’s trophy. An extremely competitive field, only 3 of our members reached the quarter finals, and only one of them survived for one more match. Dark horse of the tournament was a veteran to the game - Dominic Carroll from Life Time fitness, who actually learnt his squash way back in the day in Zimbabwe / South Africa.  Dominic did it the hard way and maybe - just maybe - he has recovered by now. A quarter final win over our good friend and supporter Jay Nash from London, he then had to turn back the years to tackle a young set of legs from the Racquet Up Detroit crew - Antwan Ramsey. Using all the experience he could muster, somehow Dominic held off the whippersnapper for an 11-9 in the 5th victory. And just a few hours later, he had to play the final. If it was me, just thinking about backing up a match like that on the same day is enough to give me an aneurysm, make me curl up in the fetal position and wish myself off to my happy place… But for Dominic… Bring. It. On. Jeff Wong (Sarnia) was his opponent, and luckily for Dominic, Jeff hardly had a breezy walk through for his semi either. Jeff was taken to the brink by our Tom Howe before squeezing the 3-2 win. Somehow, some way, Dominic pushed Jeff to the limit - although most likely it wasn’t how he would have wanted it on paper - to another 5-set match. But in the end, finally, it caught up with him. Jeff breathed a sigh of relief with his 3-2 win. I bet the beer never tasted so good to both players!

Matt Paradiso continues to impress. In 2020, he won the 3.5 category. Now he was competing for the 4.5. He had a pretty straightforward run to the final, not dropping a game. His opponent in the final was another youthful spring chicken from Chatham – Gabe Van Moorsel. Tall with reach. And doesn’t know what tired means. And too young to drink - which for the DAC Classic can be a monumental advantage! Gabe’s run to the final was not as elementary. JC Tibbitts tested the lad in the quarter finals and took him to a deciding set but couldn’t finish the job. And Gabe had all he could handle against Matt. It was anyone’s match for the taking. Especially when it gets to 9-9 in the 5th. Who can hold their nerve more? Who can frame that lucky winner? Anything can happen. Unfortunately for Matt, luck was not on his side this time around. Gabe was just a couple of rallies too good in the end, negligible really, but enough to take the 11-9 in the 5th win!

The DAC had little representation in the 5.0. All quarter finalists were non-members, and 3 of the 4 semifinalists were from the BAC. Competitive matches throughout however, I can always rely on Brad Steel (BAC) to completely mess up the scheduling and push the matches way back since he insists on playing 5-set matches every time. Okay, okay, his first match was 3-1, but it still went past the allotted time! His semi was against Avinash Gali (Life Time). Similar playing styles, long rallies to length with the occasional boast, less- occasional drop, and the even less occasional winner. Of course, the 5 set match seemed to take all of Sunday morning, one would think they were playing a best of 9 games, not 5, but Avinash ended the marathon 3-2. His finalist was Jack Parks (BAC). Jack had an even tougher morning since not only did he have to play his semi (he won that 3-1 against his club compatriot Zach Edinburgh) he also had to play his Doubles A final - which will be mentioned shortly. The doubles seemed to take a lot of the skip out of his step, and he reluctantly made his way to the singles court. He still put up a decent resistance, but he couldn’t stop the Avinash freight train from winning 3-0. Avinash has been supporting the DAC Classic since 2015 where he won the 4.0 division. Dare he try for the Open in 2023?

In the Open, a smaller draw than previous years, but a strong level. Our 2019 club champion - Stefan Houbtchev - had his work cut out for him to win the category with David Mill (Windsor) in the draw. Stefan and David grew up together in Windsor and have been playing against each other not only through those junior years bit also at college in London Ontario. David has also won the u/23 Canadian championships a few years back, so he knows how hit a ball - hard. Both reached the final without drama. In the first game, it was Stefan who was the steadier of the two, David was uncharacteristically clipping the tin on a regular basis and it cost him. But he found a better line and pace in the second and forced his way back in the match. The next three games had the pace and level that we were expecting from the two, and David was the one who managed to keep his nose in front for the most part. It was a 3-1 win. We hope to be seeing more of David in the near future as he has applied to join the DAC!

On to the doubles. In the C, we had a full 16 team draw. Once again, the most shocking standout here was the lack of 5-set matches - there weren’t any. In fact, there were only three 3-1 results - out of the 15. I’m not sure I can remember ever seeing such one-sided looking results all the way through a draw - not to say that the matches were not competitive, they were just sweeps. Dominated again by our members, three of the four semifinalists were DAC. Rich Stimson and John Roarty were always going to be competing for the trophy and no exception here. They reached the final taking out the Canadian pair of Jess Wilken and Joe Longo to meet up against Jeff Rogers and Brian Ellison. On paper, this should have been down to the wire. Anything but a 3-0, right? Don’t tell Rich and John. It’s not the victory itself that was an upset, it was the 3-0 score line.

Closer matches through the B draw. Local favorites JC Tibbitts and Jason Currie were my pick to reach the final and they proved me right. They had a ding-dong semi against fellow members David de la Torre and Scott Beals - who by the way, made up a t-shirt with the name “de-la-Beals!” - and took a gritty 3-1 win. For the final they had the arduous task of playing Rory Bradd (Sarnia) and Gabe Van Moorsel (Chatham). It was a great match, JC and Jason doing all they could to keep up and for the most part they did exactly that. Overall though, the constant pressure ended up being a little too much to handle and the Canadian pair took a spirited final 3-1.

Doubles A. One of the most exciting draws we’ve seen for a while. Jed Elley and Ryan Covell won this category in 2020 but were agonizingly close to being eliminated in their first match this time around. The team of Max Franklin and Jess Berline (BAC) gave them everything they could handle and then some. At 2-2 and 10-14 down in the 5th it looked all but over. Miraculously, they found a way and came back to snatch victory 15-14! It was a short-lived joy though, they were then beaten soundly 3-0 in the semis by Stefan Houbtchev and David Mill. Peter Logan came all the way from Montana to team up with legend John Seidel (Toledo). The veteran team of the draw, but hardly push-overs. A rusty start to overcome the power of the father-son combination of Kevin and Carter Furmanek in 5 in round 1, they almost upset the second seeded team of Robin Basil and Zach Archer (Chicago) in round 2 to go down 15-12 in the 5th. It’s a thing of beauty to see experienced doubles players execute the angles so effortlessly on the doubles court. We hope to see John again on our courts, he is moving to Colorado later this year. Mark Eugeni (Windsor) is another staple feature of our tournament. He has won our singles and doubles titles multiple times over the years; he has enough steins to open his own coffee shop. His usual partner in crime is Jon Uffelman (BAC) but Jon is recovering from injury, so Mark teamed up with Jack Parks (BAC). Jack is not known for his doubles prowess, but he should be now. Impressive. He’s fast, he hit some wicked backhand angles to boot. They beat the Basil / Archer team 3-1 in the semis, to reach the final. However, it was always going to be difficult against the Mill / Houbtchev combination. Relentless power hitting, David’s balls sound different coming off the front wall. So exhausting to defend against, Stefan and David took the riveting final 3-1.

We look forward to 2023. I am expecting to be back to full capacity - barring any world-wide disasters! - so mark this same February weekend on your calendar. Thank you all around to all the sponsors, all the DAC staff and managers: Rob Barr, Nick Peet, Ryan and Val and all their locker room staff. Shout out to Josh Slominski and Morgan for their help with registration. And to Stu Hadden, our mercurial assistant squash pro.

MARCH MADNESS MAYHEM

By Stu Hadden

March Madness Doubles Tournament – London, Ontario, Feb 28-29

As many of you may be aware, Mick and I are far from doubles specialists. But, we have recently made the decision to work on our doubles game. Last weekend Haytham Hermiz, Mick and I traveled to the 'fake' London (Ontario) in search of glory and silverware at the hardball doubles event appropriately named “March Madness”… even though it was in February for some strange reason.

Friday night’s match for us was anything but straightforward as we had only ever played one doubles match together and were struggling at the start to get to grips with the very different tactics of this type of squash. Our opponents on the other hand almost exclusively play doubles and were, for want of a better turn of phrase, crafty little scoundrels. We slowly but surely adapted our strategies throughout round 1 and by the end of the match had hit decent form. I was playing mainly high and deep, generating loose balls for the Australian sniper waiting on the right wall to shoot the lights out.

Haytham, as per usual had brought his running shoes with him and picked up far too many balls for his opposition to be in with any reasonable shout of winning. In the bar that evening he and one of his opponents for the semifinals – Owen - produced one of the finest displays of Jamison drinking and smack talk that I have ever witnessed, the kind usually reserved only for Australia vs England cricket matches. When I am king of England, I fully intend to offer him honorary citizenship for his efforts both in the bar and on the court where he miraculously turned up for his at 9am contest the next morning and duly backed up the trash-talking with a 3-1 shellacking over Owen.

In our semifinal we were up against stiff opposition in the 2 seeds who are serial winners of the DAC Classic A doubles draw. Unfortunately for them we picked up where we left off at the end of our last match and I had finally figured out the technique for putting the ball away on the backhand side. Ultimately we trounced them 3-0 in just shy of 45m, putting on a clean and crisp display of doubles.

We then watched the other semifinal and realized we were in big trouble. The left wall in our match would end up looking like Harry Potter vs Hagrid as the left hander from Toronto (Will Byrick) had me by well over a foot. The oak hit the ball like an absolute rocket and had a polished classic forehand technique. Surveilling his first game was pretty amazing as he rolled out nick after nick beating Brad Hanebury and his partner Derek Moore almost single handedly 15-2. On the left wall, Mick was also clearly going to be in for a bit of a night. His opponent (Chris Boden) not only hit the ball harder than both of us but had a real set of wheels on him, regularly throwing out full length splits, dives and pirouettes.

After watching Haytham claim victory in the C doubles we felt inspired (pressured?!) to go and do the same. A late start at 9pm, but the time came around quickly and suddenly we were up. As expected our opponents got off to a good start, slotting winners and trying to hit the ball through the front wall. I hadn’t found my range on the cross court nick yet and gave away a bit of a lead which we would eventually peg back. We made it to 14-14 before Mick’s opponent jumped about 3 feet in the air and rolled out a nick to give them the first. Bugger.

The second was one of the worst games of squash I personally remember playing, with yours truly missing the ball on three serve returns in a row. Mick was probably getting ready to bury me in the hill out back – or make me walk back to Detroit in my squash shorts in the 25 degree weather.  Needless to say with my “scintillating” form we were quickly 2-0 down.

We were far from done though.  Coming out guns blazing in the third, we caught them off guard with a far more aggressive style of play. Comfortably taking the third. The fourth game was solid but at the back end of it, Chris suddenly caught fire and had a patch of about 5 mins where he simply couldn’t and wouldn’t miss – which made him shoot even more - and was completely unplayable. Even Mick’s last ditch dive (old-man stumble?) wouldn’t be enough to keep us in the match and our Canadian contemporaries ran out a 3-1 victory in over an hour.

Cheers to London squash club for having us down and to Rob Doherty for organizing the event. We are really looking forward to going back next year, hopefully with a large contingent of DAC doubles players.

GRADUATING CLASS OF 2020

DAC Squash Classic Feb 6-9, 2020

Have we all recovered yet? I am typing this report 6 days after the completion of the DAC Classic, and I still feel like I need more sleep. Although, that could very well be because I am no longer a spring chicken  (more like a hackneyed and wrinkly rooster) and nothing to do with the tournament at all! It could also be that Stu ran me around a couple of times this week as well and his young legs clearly don’t make it a fair contest.

By all accounts - and I mean feedback not just from the competitors, but from the fellow DAC staff and managers - the DAC Classic this year ran very much like clockwork. Matches were on time, most people were able to turn up (we did have a couple of late cancellations but all due to legitimate personal reasons that certainly outweigh the banality of a squash tournament), the food was plentiful and as always up to the expected standard of our club, and we thankfully didn’t have any injuries or… off court festive, over-indulging incidents to deal with. No one lost their shirt, right GS? I did deplete my stock of Band-Aids though as one of the London players had no issues diving all over the court and leaving half his skin behind every other rally! But that’s not to say every single person was happy. As is with any event, some are unhappy with the way the draws pan out, feel like there is a conspiracy against them based on who their opponents are, and make arguments to me that are head scratching at best. It’s all part of the deal, I hope the keg eased their pain somewhat!

So who won? Rather than go through category by category this time, I am going to highlight the outstanding performers…

Farzin Habib Pour, Brad Hanebury, Jed Elley, Ryan Covell

Jed Elley and Ryan Covell. Doubles A. Team “Jed-Co” - or “Covelly” were unseeded and to be honest I didn’t hold much hope - or thought - they would do any damage in this event. How wrong I was. The Doubles A draw must have been the toughest we have had since at least 2005, teams from Toronto, Chicago, London… a number of candidates to take the title. But Jed-Co? Talk about finding form at the right time, Jed and Ryan swatted away their first 2 opponents 3-0, including the number 1 seeded team from Chicago. They then had their toughest challenge in the semifinal against a team from Toronto but all in a day’s work for our lads, a 3-1 win had them in the final and many of us wondering if, after all these years of dreaming, a DAC team could actually win the Doubles A…

The finals opponents were out of London - Brad Hanebury and Farzin Habib-Pour. They had swept through the draw up to this point without dropping a game and looked formidable. It appeared as though that trend would continue for the final after Brad and Farzin controlled the first 2 games and were sitting pretty for a 3-0 victory. Cue the “Covelly” comeback. Cracks appeared in the London wall, they suddenly were not as sharp - errors started to creep into their game. Ryan and Jed stepped up the pressure, they started to sense a little opening and they were not going to let this opportunity slip. Egged on by the local crowd, our boys turned it on, grabbing the momentum and never looking back. They completed the comeback and ended up winning the 5th 15-10 and earning what was an unlikely - but fully deserved - title.

Dave Devine in action during the Doubles C final

Marc Lakin and Brian Ellison. Doubles C. The DAC are no strangers to winning the Doubles C at the Classic - in fact we have won the title four of the past five years. A big reason for that is numbers, we make up a good percentage of the teams… still have to win though! Brian Ellison was actually paired up with Patrick Petz for this event, but Patrick was struck down with the flu last minute and had to withdraw. Luckily we had Marc on standby who was more than ready to jump in and like a kid on Christmas morning, Marc grabbed his racquet and started tearing the place up. With no problems, Marc and Brian won their first 2 matches 3-0, had a slight hiccup in the semi where they won 3-1 against David Pontes and our long lost missed friend Ken MacDonald (who comes back to visit us from Denver every year) and were waiting in the final for their last victims.

Meeting them there was another DAC pair - Jeff Rogers and newly elected DAC Prez David Devine. Jeff and Dave also stamped their authority leading up to the final without dropping a single game. This would be Dave’s second chance at the winner’s trophy - he came very close to winning the C draw in 2017 with Alan Howard only to lose in 5 games. Unfortunately for Dave, the Ellison / Lakin team was merciless. Nothing more than “too good” would be the theme for this match, there wasn’t much Rogers / Devine could do. Clinical work for the 3-0 win, Marc and Brian should be proud of the weekend’s work.

Scott Beals in the Doubles B final

Scott Beals and JB Miller (Maryland). Doubles B. The DAC almost got a clean sweep of the doubles categories which would been a monumental achievement given our past history of results. Scott Beals teamed up with a buddy of his out of Maryland and they were certainly going into the draw as an unknown entity. My money was leaning towards the Jason Currie / JC Tibbitts team, who won the B’s last year and I saw no reason why they couldn’t repeat that effort. The two teams met in the semifinal and even though I didn’t see any of it, I am predicting it must have been a great contest considering it went to 5. (I am of course assuming all 5-set matches are awesome!) Scott and JB ended up winning it, earning their ticket to the final.

Their opponents are also past B Doubles champions of the Classic. Laura Savage and Betsy Carson from London won this title in 2018… although consistency seems to be their Achilles heel a little - they lost round one last year. Laura and Betsy had an easier run to the final, dropping only one game in the first match, and winning 3-0 in their semi over John Mann and Ryan MacVoy. (John and Ryan won their second round 15-14 in the 5th!) So would Scott and JB be compassionate to the lovely ladies of London? Ummm. No. No they would not. It was a tough final though, but the boys were not standing down to the girls and they took a 3-1 victory!

The DAC had 5 of 6 doubles winners this weekend. Remarkable.

Matt Paradiso - 3.5 singles.  How much as Matt improved in the last 12 months? Plenty. A year ago

Stephen Canis and Matt Paradiso

he was coming fresh of his 2.5 singles win in the Classic, this year he was agonizingly close to pulling out of the event with the flu. He decided to stick with it - and good thing he did too. Skipping the 3.0 altogether, Matt got stronger as the weekend moved forward. His toughest challenge came in his second match against Nathan Labenz (Franklin) who stretched Matt to 5 games. Outside of that, he was relatively untroubled all the way through the tournament, taking every other match 3-0 including the final. At this rate he’ll be competing for the 4.5 title next year…

Drew Barr and Alex Ford

Drew Barr (BAC) - 5.5 singles. Gotta love the youngsters. Drew is 17. Drew was the number one seed. Drew is very unassuming and quiet spoken young man. Drew is also good. Drew has committed to the University of Virginia next year, and they are picking up an excellent recruit. And he proved himself to be rather mentally tough this weekend as well - something you don’t see every day in someone so young. His calm demeanor and temperament is to be admired.

He did win the 5.5 the hard way. A 3-0 win in his first match, he then took on our club number one - Stefan Houbtchev. One of highest quality matches of the weekend for sure, Stefan actually headed into the fourth game 2-1 up. But Drew never gave up and worked very hard to keep the pressure on Stefan who was finding it difficult to put an end to this match. Sending it into a 5th, the two kept it very tight all the way, but it was Drew who was the steadier player. You could see that he made sure his shots were not going to hit the tin, whereas Stefan was cutting the margins just a fraction too much. Timely unforced errors, Drew held on for an 11-9 in the 5th win. Onto the final just 4 hours later. It would test his fitness too.

His opponent would be Alex Ford from London. Alex cruised through the draw, slicing and dicing everyone 3-0 and with the easier semifinal of the morning, certainly held the edge on Drew over energy levels.

Alex almost pulled it off. In fact, in reality, he should have. A 2 games to 1 lead, and a 10-8 in the 4th to earn 2 match balls as well, Alex may have lost sleep on this one. Drew’s never-say-die attitude came to the fore, rock solid steadiness, forcing Alex to win the rallies rather than gift him any, he got back to 10-all. The tie break was rather epic as well, Alex won himself two more match-balls only to have them squandered with Drew’s brick wall squash. The 14-12 to Drew in the 4th broke the Londoner. Drew didn’t let up in the 5th, kept to the same strategy of just clinical, relentless squash and grabbed the win. Impressive stuff!

For all the winners, finalists and consolation winners, please see this LINK.

Ironman Award… Howie Webb (Franklin).  Howie is a glutton for punishment. I always say that you enter 2 singles categories at your own risk. Of course that warning goes often unheeded, and Howie was this year’s victim of that unheeded-ness. Howie reached the final of the 3.0 main draw and the final of the 3.5 consolation for a total of… TEN matches. He lost both finals, but at least picked up some hardware for being the 3.0 finalist. He also picked up a desperate need of a massage, hot tub, steam, beer, a week off, new set of legs, and a desperate inner reflection of one’s self as to why he abused his body so violently and appeared to enjoy every minute of it.

Dancing Queen Award… Gary Sullivan (London). Won’t go too much into this one, but needless to say, we hope we don’t have to see this again in future years, as the photos I received of his… ‘moves’ were not exactly Michael Jackson -esque but maybe more Elaine Benice -esque (Seinfeld reference for those who aren’t that old!).

Fashion Faux-Pas Award… Joe Longo (London). Now, where you would shop for a pair of black sparkly pants is beyond me, but why would you would even think of wearing a pair of black sparkly pants is beyond-er me. Not many people can pull this off. And I am not sure Joe did either.

It goes without saying that without the support of the sponsors, the DAC Classic would be a shadow of its current form, so my hat goes off to you all. There are countless thank you’s to hand out, another reason this tournament gives all involved the unforgettable experience the DAC can provide year in, year out: My (new) right hand man, Stu Hadden; Assistant Athletic Director Nick Peet; Men’s and Women’s locker room staff; the Catering department, chefs, housekeeping crew. Dave Devine, Josh Slominski… the list is long, everybody plays an important role. The behind the scenes - the un -seen work - is what sets us apart.

2021 is scheduled for Feb 11-14…