South West Squash Masters bring tournament home

After five years hosted in Bunbury, the South West Squash Masters made a massive return to Busselton.

54 Players from the south west and Perth competed in the 37th iteration of the event, held at the Sebel Resort from Friday to Sunday.

The competition started in Busselton in 1987 with only 25 players. Now, it’s the biggest master’s Squash event outside of Perth and one of the longest running.

The tournament was played across three divisions with ages from 35 to late 70’s. Busselton had 13 players over all three divisions, seven of which competed in the finals on Sunday.

The coveted Division One shield was taken out by team ‘Winds of Treasure’, which included three Busselton players Dave Windsor, Chris Richards and Warren Oliver – The latter two playing up from their normal Division Two positions. They defeated the ‘SA all the Way’ team of Anthony Shear, Leigh Kaye and Marc Kaye 3 games to 5.

It was a fixture of extremely high standards, with long rallies, incredible touch, and at times what seemed to be impossible retrievals to keep the rallies going.

Richards lost 1/2 before Windsor won 2/1, leaving the final match live. The first two games were tight, with some amazing gets and superb volleys. Perth’s Greg Lawrence dominated in the last game to bring the win home for Winds of Treasure.

Division Two was taken out by ‘3’s Company’, made up of Busselton’s Warren Oliver, Bunbury’s Amol Agrawal and Katanning’s Jim Hine. They took the win over the ‘Cambridge Lobs’ team of Jim Barr, Mason Woods and Barb Wood five games to four in a very close fixture.

Hine lost 1/2 but the game he won was very close as did Agarwal, with one game in Agarwal’s match going to 22/20 in a game played to 15 points or 2 in front – probably the longest game of the weekend.

Oliver won 3/0 with all three games being very close. He ended the weekend undefeated.

Division Three saw Busselton’s ‘Jetty Jumpers’ team of Chris Harris , Matt Suriani, and Ngaire Ayres defeat the ‘Canningvale Punters’ which included Busselton’s Fred Piekarek along with debutants Paul Abercrombie and Mark Vandervart.

The match started with Ayres going down in 0/3 games. Suriani equalised 3 games to 0, and in doing so going through the weekend without dropping a game – the only player in the tournament to achieve this feat.

This left an interesting final match in which Harris lost the first game against Peikarek, then pulled out all stops to win the second game 17/15 after having match point against her. She then went on to win the third game 15/11 to win the shield.