The Quarter Final Matches
The global weather says that the Monsoons are still weak in the Indian Ocean and so they do not get as far north as Chennai. As a result, we have yet to experience the “real” India rainstorms and it is another bright and sunny and hot day in Chennai.
We must be getting used to the 35C temperatures because last night we were all commenting that it was cooler than previous days: 30 vs 35 was our best guess.
The courts are air conditioned so it usually about 25 at court side and the ball is bouncing like a rocket once it gets warmed up. Sam and all of the players have an athletic glow thru out the match and the sweat is still pouring off Sam well after the end of a match.
The quarterfinal matches are today with India playing Canada, Malaysia playing Egypt and New Zealand vs Hong Kong. The Egyptians are clearly on the top of the world with 4 players in the top 16 in the world and the 1st and 2nd place players in the individual event. However all of the other matches are going to be tight. Since all of the matches are played at the same time, we cheered for Canada and darted in to catch glimpses of the other events.
Canada and India played on the glass centre court to a good audience of enthusiastic supporters from both teams. The picture below shows the players matched up before the match and set to wish each other a good competition.

Sam played in the first of the three matches and won 3-1. It was her classic game. She won the first game of the match with good length and then short drops that her Indian opponent could not retrieve. The second game the tables were turned as Reddy took the game and countered Sam’s drops with good winners of her own. In the 3rd game, Sam hit hard length that drove Reddy back repeatedly into the corners and she could not run down the kills. The fourth game was a foregone conclusion. Sam won easily 11-2 and started Canada off with a 1-0 score.

The second match involved Laura Gemmell from Canada and Dipika from India. Dipika was the #1 seed coming into the individual tournament and she lost in the semi finals to the Egyptian, Nour El Sherbini, who won the individual gold medal. Dipika has a wicked forehand kill so Laura played her hard on the back hand wall and there were great rallies. Unfortunately for Canada, Dipika hit more winners than tins with very hard low kills and she won the second match 3-0. That set up the 3rd and deciding match between the #3 ranked players for each team. Jennifer Pelletier played for Canada against XX. It was a great game of chess on the court. Both girls played lots of lobs and drops and moved each other around. The first game was 13-11 for India. The second game was about 11-8 for Canada. However the next two games went to India so Canada lost the overall match 2-1.
In the other matches, Egypt, Hong Kong and the USA were the winners. As a result, they will move on to battle for the top 4 spots and Canada, New Zealand, Malaysia and England will battle for the 5 to 8 positions in the team event. The girls are a bit disappointed since they hoped for a medal finish. However, they have played very well under conditions that are far different than their normal training pattern and the competition is very good. A couple of points has separated them from a victory over the USA and it was the same thing here when Jenn lost the first game 13-11. It is incredibly close thru out all of the top matches.
We all jumped into the swimming pool at the squash courts after the matches. This pool is a wonderful ‘perk’ that we have used frequently to cool off. The 30C water feels very refreshing relative to the air outside. Then it was back to the hotel and we started to make a plan for a dinner adventure to a local restaurant while the team plotted their strategy in the next game against New Zealand tomorrow. More on that tomorrow.