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BSPA UK GRAND PRIX |
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Artemis EN BREF Issue #3
Everything you never knew you needed to
know about the Edinburgh Open ...
by Steve Cubbins |
Another one ...
 Blimey,
I thought I was a workaholic. But when I arrive in the morning he's there
... and when I leave at night he's still there.
ESC manager Ian Williams, originally from Wales, has been here for
5 years now, moving up from London where he was in charge of facilities at
the Oval, and looks forward to the Artemis week every year. It's the
highlight of the season and although it's hard work he loves every minute
of it.
"It's good to see some of the world's best players arriving in Edinburgh.
Some seem like old friends now, coming back every year, and there's new
faces each time as the event gets bigger."
Today, having organised all the functions that go on around the event, and
having paid out all but the finalists' cheques, Ian's final duties will be
to introduce the players onto court for the finals and round off the event
for the presentations.
Then it's back to the daily business of running one of Scotland's premier
sports clubs - and of course the planning for next year's Artemis. But he
loves it really ...
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Glasses for the Refs
No, we're not having a go at those stalwart officials who turn up to
officiate matches day after day, often year after year.
Although players sometimes utter the immortal words "you must be blind,
Ref", everyone appreciates that it's a tough, often thankless task, and
every bit of encouragement we can give to our refs - organised superbly
here this week by Ken Gibbs - is well deserved.
So it's not reading glasses we're talking about here, but the type you can
see in the photo. Come on, if you've just been hauled off court seventeen
after losing in the fifth on a dodgy decision and ordered to mark the next
match on court, you deserve a reward, don't you ....
Love the t-shirt ...
"stroked", it says on the back! |
Sorry, Simon!
You know the feeling. You go on court with a borrowed racket, clip the
wall and jokingly say "sorry, [insert name of lender]."
Then, two rallies later, you realise that you have actually broken it ....
so sorry, Simon! |
Artemis Expansion
This is the fifth year that Artemis, the Edinburgh-based insurance
company, have sponsored the Edinburgh Open, and it's just getting bigger and
better every year.
 "We
used to run it just as a local tournament, with myself and Peter O'Hara
usually playing in the final," says Tournament Director Simon Boughton
- this is his eighth year in charge.
"Then we got talking a few years ago about raising the profile, and Artemis
gave us £1000 to see what we could do. So I gave Tim Garner a ring and he
just happened to be sitting with Marcus Berrett and Nick Taylor.
 "So they came up, gave Peter and I a good drubbing in the semis, and that
really whetted the appetite for top class squash up here.
"The next year Artemis put up the £3000 needed to put the tournament onto
the BSPA Grand Prix and it was a great success.
"In five years the prize fund has been £1k, £3k, £5k, £5k, £7k and now £10k,
and the standard of entry and squash has just got better each time.
Mind you, it takes a lot of organising - don't forget there's the "Artemis
Graded Championship" going on too. When Simon dropped me off at the hotel at
12.30 last night he quipped "see you in a couple of hours!", and he wasn't
far wrong ... |
Anyone for Doubles?
With doubles featuring in the Commonwealth Games, a number of countries have
invested heavily in doubles courts - usually of the glass variety with
moveable walls to allow for 'singles' play aw well.
But here in Edinburgh they have always had a dedicated doubles court, the
only one in the UK of its type.
It conforms to the American Hardball standard, which means that it's bigger
than the WSF specification - so big, in fact that you can almost fit a
badminton court in there!
Jenny Wright, just back from a trip to the states, said "a few of us had a
game on one of these courts out there, it was great fun, but hard work."
The WSF reduced doubles scoring to 9 (two clear) in an attempt to speed up
matches, but in the recent world doubles in Australia one match still took 2
hours 35 minutes... Oups... |
A Graceful Exit
When the organiser says "would you like a game, someone's dropped out of the
'C' event", what's one supposed to do, let some poor soul go home without a
game, or do your duty.
So yours truly donned some kit loaned by Simon, suffered the indignity of
seeing several dozen of his famous lob serves hit the roof on the illegally
low court on the way to a 9-7 in the fifth loss, and beat a hasty retreat
back to the keyboard.
Next year I'm bringing my bat .... |
World's Best Ref ?
Tournaments like this rely on their referees, and the lucky man charged
with being tournament referee this weekend is Ken Gibbs.
"I bet you're looking forward to a busy weekend," I asked, half jokingly.
"Busy weekend? I've been at it all day every day since Tuesday!"
Apparently there's been some Under-23 home internationals going on at the
Sports Club, with Scotland taking on the Netherlands and Wales.
"Matches have been on from 10am to 11pm each day, so actually I'm looking
forward to a bit of a rest over the weekend," said Ken!
Ken's skills have stood up well - "World's best ref," said Eddie
Charlton, who Ken had just reffed in his qualifier. "Get him on the
PSA and WSF lists now ..."
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Hair we go again
We've featured a few players' hair styles over the months - remember Jesse
Engelbrecht's Mohican, Wael El Hindi's DIY look, and the 'Big Hair' crew
from the BJO?
But Shahid Khan's patterned cut surely takes the cake. "I go to
this guy who specialises in these cuts. It's not meant to symbolise
anything, it's just a nice pattern, I have a different one each time."
"But the one I had the time before was really cool," said Shahid, as he
whipped out his phone to show us a photo ... and you know what ... he was
right!
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A Good Start
Edinburgh is just a short train journey - albeit in another country - from
Whitley Bay, so it was pretty obvious that I was going to
do this one.
 Trains
are pretty frequent, normally every half-hour, so I didn't bother checking
the times, I just headed off to Newcastle Central and hopped on. It was
one of those new Virgin Voyagers with power points, which meant I - and
everybody in my carriage, it seemed like - got to charge my laptop up on
the way.
I guess it's a sign of the times that I was vaguely disappointed
that the train didn't offer wireless internet access (how do they do that?
amazing stuff) ... maybe we should learn to be grateful for small mercies
... |
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