Waters in gutsy victory
Alison Waters will fly home to England happy after she dug deep and came away with a gutsy victory in the Matamata Open squash tournament at the weekend.
Matamata squash player Kylie Lindsay also participated in the open.
Twenty- eight- year- old Waters beat Cambridge’s Joelle King in the final at the United Matamata Squash Club on Sunday, winning an epic 83-minute battle 11- 5, 8- 11, 15- 13, 7-11, 13-11.
Waters is ranked 16 in the world but only returned to the court in February after almost a year out of the game because of an Achilles tendon injury.
So her ranking had dropped from three to 40 and she is trying to win tournaments to get it back up to its previous level.
The Matamata tournament was ranked in the Women’s Squash Association’s silver bracket, with a total prize pool of $35,000.
Waters definitely got her money’s worth after being unseeded and fighting through some tough matches.
In the first round on Thursday she defeated India’s Dipika Pallikal (world No 15) 11-6, 11-6, 11-8, on Friday she survived a comeback against Australian Rachael Grinham ( world No 9), winning the quarterfinal 11- 8, 11- 8, 8-11, 4-11, 11-5 in an hour, then in Saturday’s semifinal she came from 2- 1 down to defeat Malaysia’s Low Wee Wern ( world No 11) 9- 11, 11- 7, 11- 13, 11-7, 11-5 in 78 minutes.
King, the world No 13, has now lost to Waters on the two occasions they have met but she had not dropped a set on the way to the final.
She beat Line Hansen of Denmark (world No 27) in the first round 11-3, 11-8, 11- 8, she then downed Australian Donna Urquhart ( world No 18) 11- 6, 11- 3, 12-10 in the quarterfinals, before accounting for fellow Kiwi Jaclyn Hawkes (world No 19) 11-2, 11-8, 11-5 in their semifinal.
And the 23-year-old had her chances in a topsy-turvy decider.‘‘I thought it’d be a long flight home to England so I just thought I had to win because then I could just sit there and be happy.’’
Along with third seed Grinham, the other two world top 10 players – world No 5 Madeline Perry of Ireland and world No 6 Annie Au of Hong Kong – were also bundled out in the quarterfinals.