I hope some of you have had a chance to watch some matches on www.prosquashtv.com

I’ve had a good tournament so far, with some comfortable matches in the first two rounds. My first match was against a local player Sudesh Ojageer, which was light hearted and good fun. He was very grateful that I didn’t beat up on him too much and we put on a good show for the crowd, in which I won in 4 games.

I had a comfortable victory in my quarter final match against Ricky Weisskopf from El Salvador, although it wasn’t tough physically, my brain wasn’t very switched on. I was a little lackadaisical, as I was feeling very comfortable and under no pressure. I won the first after I think 2 game balls down, which rattled him. I won the second very comfortably and then totally switched off for the third, which I lost in a tie-break. I wasn’t worried at all, but Ricky came out firing in the 4th and I was 5-0 down. I started to get a little worried at that stage, but knew I was physically in better shape, so I just started extending the rallies. This strategy worked very well as, very quickly he was sucking wind and not able to compete with my increased intensity. I won that game and the match (in the end) comfortably.

My semi final match against Fabian Kalaitzis from Greece was a very good match. Fabian had won his quarter final match in a tough 5 games and I knew he’d be tired. He’s been around for years and is a great player, but once again after his quarter final match my game plan was just to pulverize him physically. I started out at an extremely high tempo and was in a much better frame of mind than my earlier matches. I was volleying a lot and taking the ball short on the 17inch tin, which made Fabian have to do a lot of work. I won the first game 11/6. The second game I knew Fabian was tiring, but he played really well and dug deep into his reserves to win the second game 9/11. I wasn’t worried at all with losing the second game as I knew he’d worked extremely hard in the first two games. I increased the tempo in games three and four and Fabian couldn’t sustain the pace, I walked away with the last two games and the match 11/4 11/4, winning 3-1.

I’m looking forward to my next match with Mohamed El Sherbini, who knocked out the number one seed, Stephano Galifi from Italy. I played Mohamed two years ago in Baltimore and won easily in 3 games, but he’s improved a lot in the last two years and it’s going to be a very difficult match.

I hope you can tune in for the final with myself vs Mohamed El Sherbini at 2.45pm (Sunday afternoon).

Wade