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| Julie Vande Vusse |
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.
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| 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.
