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400+
competitors from 39 countries set out on the
road to British Junior Open glory today.
With action spread over 15 courts and three
venues, matches from 9am to 9pm or later,
keeping track is a trifle tricky, so as ever
in the early stages we'll bring you snippets
of the action and the atmosphere, more than
a few photos, and news of any upsets ...
Under way at
Abbeydale,
Boys U19 & U15 round one
The Boys U19 top seed Amr Khaled Khalifa,
got his campaign off to a sound enough
start, beating England's Robert Harrison
11/8, 11/4, 11/4 in 20 minutes in the first
of two rounds today.
The World Junior Champion is down on the
draws simply as Amr Khaled - "I looked at
the draw and wondered where I was," he
joked. It turns out that in Egypt, he's
known as Amr Khaled, but internationally
he's Amr Khaked Khalifa.
That was the second match on court 3 which
is going nicely to plan, but court 8 is
already well behind as Qatar's Syed Azlan
Amjad overcame Puvendren Subramanaim of
Malaysia 17/15 in the fifth in 46 minutes
(matches are scheduled for 30 minutes) in an
early U15 matchup.
"It was more painful than nerve-wracking to
watch," commented Dan Jenson, the
former top-ranked Aussie who is over here
with the two Qatari players. "They both had
three or four match balls and judging from
how they played there were both pretty
nervous."
Quickest match so far was Daniel
Polishcuk's U15 win over Charlie Gamble,
the Israeli winning 11/5, 11/4, 11/4 in 16
minutes, a time matched by Egypt's
Hussein El Reyes in his 11/5, 11/4, 11/6
win over France's Mathias Grondin.
That rounded off a disappointing start for
the French contingent as Grondin joined
Damien Volland and Auguste Dussord in early
exits.
Reigning U17 champion Marwan El Shorbagy,
aimoing to keep the family name on the U19
Drysdale Cup for a fourth successive year,
started off impressively enough with an
11/3, 11/4, 11/0 win over Finland's Jaakko
Vahamaa, although it took him 27 minutes, he
may need to cut out some of the experimental
shots in the later stages!
Jerome Dadot stopped the rot for the
French with an 11/8, 11/3, 11/3 win over
Spain's Manuel Ruiz.
Sobhy off to solid start
The girls U19 event, which looks
particularly competitive this year, started
off with comfortable wins for some of the
favourites.
World Junior Champion Amanda Sobhy
kicked off with a 3/0 win over England's
Charlotte Kirkwood, but she's likely to face
Egyptian opposition all the way from here on
in with Menat Nasser up next,
followed by the winner of Farah Abdel
Meguid and last year's runner-up
Salma Hany, all of whom also came
through in straight games, all against
English opposition too.
 Seeded
to meet Sobhy in the semis is Nouran El
Torky, who needed to save a game ball in
the first before beating Northumbria's Sam
Ward 14/12, 11/6, 11/3 with increasing
authority.
"I'm here on my own this year for the first
time," said Nouran, who still looks too
young to be an under 19! "My sister Heba is
too old now and my father hasn't come this
time so I'm here just with the Egyptian
National coaches." Plus all the other
Egyptians in the draw, of course, Nouran.
The rest of the girls' first round passed
without incident, leaving it to the Boys to
complete their second round to finish the
day at Abbeydale ...
Then it was off to Hallamshire to
catch the end of the Boys U17 round two ...
It was a late finish at Hallamshire, where
the second rounds of the Boys U17 concluded
fourteen hours of squash, with all the
seeded players going through to tomorrow's
last sixteen.
In fact that was the story of the day at all
three venues, so tomorrow sees the last
sixteen of all eight events and, with any
luck, an earlier finish so we can all watch
the final of the darts !
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