Kiwi ‘Superman’ flies high
Paul Coll’s journey from Greymouth to Doha for the world championship final has been been challenging. Ian Anderson explains.
Before Paul Coll became a squash Superman, he was a couch-sleeper. The 27-year-old who contested the men’s singles final at the world championship in Doha overnight, has become a sporting success story with his own trademark move.
But the rise to the top has been achieved on a platform of hard work and sacrifice.
Coll will endeavour to become the second New Zealander to win the men’s singles world title – matching the feat of Ross Norman in 1986 – when he faces world No 2 Tarek Momen in Doha.
After Coll’s semifinal win over Marwan ElShorbagy yesterday, Norman said Coll was ‘‘a very average player from five or six years ago’’ – something the Greymouth product likely would agree with.
‘‘When I was playing juniors, there were usually three or four guys better than me. It wasn’t until I was picked for the New Zealand team that I decided to figure out how to get better at it,’’ Coll said recently.
His promise began to emerge as a boarder at Christchurch Boys’ High School, when he was part of a team that won the national secondary schoolboys crown in 2009, and the following year he claimed the North Island under-19 title after finishing runner-up in the South Island event.
In 2010, he gave the first inkling he could feature at international level when he helped New Zealand to sixth place at the world junior championships in Ecuador – their best performance since 1992.
That had Squash Canterbury district coach Mike Allred predict that Coll was a top-10 world prospect.
He won his first national singles title in 2015 with a come-frombehind 6-11 11-5 11-5 11-6 victory over top seed Campbell Grayson but despite also winning the Australian Open, exited in round two at the world championship as he sought to climb the rungs on the world rankings.
Coll based himself in Holland in his early years on the world circuit and found money and joy hard to come by initially.
‘‘There’s definitely been some really tough times where I’ve phoned mum back home and said ‘I need some help, I’m really down’. There’s been countless times where I’ve slept on people’s couches when things haven’t quite gone that well.’’
Coll was brought up on the sport at the Greymouth Squash Club, with his father, Michael, being a West Coast representative. His uncle, Tony Coll, played 30 tests and 65 games as a second-rower with the New Zealand rugby league side.
‘‘We’re a competitive family,’’
Coll admitted. ‘‘Christmas dinner at our place, there’d always be some challenge on – like who could hold up the weights with outstretched arms the longest. Or planking.
‘‘Whatever it was, the aunties and everyone would be in.’’
In 2017, Coll made the quarterfinals of the world championship in Manchester before bowing out to top seed
‘‘There’s definitely been some really tough times where I’ve phoned mum back home and said ‘I need some help, I’m really down’.’’
Paul Coll