[3] Joel Makin (WAL) 3-2 Curtis Malik (ENG) 11-8, 11-9, 9-11, 8-11, 11-4 (77m)
OH MY GOD WHAT A MATCH!!!
To be honest, I don’t have to break my Blond Brain to analyse the match: donnons la parole à Joel – let’s Joel do the talking: “He was disruptive, he varied the pace and hit quick angles, which caught me flat footed a few times. He could play free and he had nothing to lose, he was very aggressive, so fair play to him. My lines weren’t good enough and he capitalised.”
Done, sor’ed.
When I spoke with Curtis – I’ve had my eyes on him for quite a while now, since he beat Omar Mosaad in his home club in Cairo a couple of years back – yesterday, I could feel how hungry for the battle with Joel he was. And when I saw him play against the Golden Tiger, I realised why…
The first game saw Joel very dominant to start with, 7/1, but Curtis finally found his balance on the glass – after the traditional yesterday – and only lost the 17m opener 11/8. We knew then we had a match on our hands.
And match, we certainly had. 3/0 to Curtis at the start of the second, 3/3, 6/3 Curtis still, 6/6, 7/7, 8/8, with the Welsh finally taking the game on his second attempt, 11/9, 16m game.
If a few players might have thrown the towel, the Englishman took the Golden Tiger on. Twisting and turning him as very few players have managed, Curtis got Joel completely out of his comfort zone, preventing him from finding his legendary accuracy at the back of the court.
And strangely enough – I cannot remember Joel playing that way – he started trying not to lose, instead of trying to win, went passive and only reacting, for the next two games. “Come one Curtis”, shouted an avid squash fan behind me, “we want to see more squash!”
More squash we saw! Curtis played probably the best squash of his life in the third and fourth, and managed to get 4 strokes out of Joel in the 3rd alone. Nothing between the players the whole of that game, though: 10/8 Curtis, stroke to Joel, 9/10, stroke to Curtis, 11/9, 11m, 1/2.
The fourth is on the same model, 13m, nothing between them throughout, a few calls and reviews, but a better quality game than the third, 11 winners between them in that 3rd, and 14 in the 4th, ending 11/8 to Curtis.
2/2. Deep Travel into the British Kindom, I felt, with the Joel camp on the left, and the Curtis camp on my right. Changes from my normal Egyptian families set up, methinks.
But if Joel was a bit passive in the last two, he got out of that torpor from the very start of the 5th. Helped by a young player that got a bit excited, losing his review from the first point of the game, Joel was the Master on Board. 7/0 is a very high mountain to climb, and Curtis did his best to claw back but too little too late, and it’s 9/3, 11/4 in still 13m of very very hard work….
Curtis : ‘I think that the first four games were all closely contested. I did what I tried to stick out to do.
I needed a big push at the end of the fourth, I was feeling it a bit physically. And at the start of the fifth, he came out really hard and fast, and I was a little bit slow. He got to a quick 6/0 and I only clawed back four points from there, and that was not enough.
I needed to find the balance of twisting and turning him, getting him uncomfortable with his patterns, but also sticking to my lines, it’s a tough balance to get right because if you get it slightly wrong, you end up just sending the man up.
So I went out trying to do what I wanted to do, I did it for four games, next time, I need to do it for longer.
Joel : “We’ve done plenty of work together, and he went about the match exactly as he should do.
“He was disruptive, he varied the pace and hit quick angles, which caught me flat footed a few times. He could play free and he had nothing to lose, he was very aggressive, so fair play to him. My lines weren’t good enough and he capitalised.
“But I got back in and did what I do well, I closed the court down, got back in front and won the big points when it mattered.
“I tried to get the pace back into it and volley a bit more. He was beating me down the backhand walls, so I had to engineer a bit of pace myself. Once I got more fluidity in my movement I managed to stretch out the court.
“He [Youssef] always looks very impressive, but I’ve got to do what I do well and pin him back. He went to five with [Ali] Farag in the last event and not many people do that. The next stage for him is to get it over the line against these top guys.
“That’s why he is still where he is, but he’s knocking on the door every single time. I’ve got to do what I’ve done the last couple of times against him, but it’s been very close, so I’m looking forward to it.”
