Archive for April, 2002

“BAILEY’S DAY WILL COME WITHIN FOUR YEARS” from the report below on the British Open Final.

Despite the scoreline making it look like a quick match, 9-3, 9-0, 9-0 – the match lasted for 34 minutes.

Tania made a good effort to respond to Sarah’s confident opening surge and pulled back from 5-1 to 5-3, but unfortunately she failed to win another point as the world number one dominated proceedings.

Fitz-Gerald said: “I am pleased to have got another British Open out of the way and I am looking forward to coming back to this magnificent venue for the Commonwealth Games in the summer. Tania is a very good young player and I am sure we will see much more of her at the final stages of main events in the future.”

Tania Bailey reached her first British Open final, beating Cassie Campion in a see-saw women’s semi-final. Tania began in positive fashion and Cassie looked a little nervous at the start. Tania took the first game 9-2 but Cassie turned the tables in the second, playing in a far more positive fashion to win the game 9-3.

We now had a battle on our hands and it was Tania who came out fighting in the third. She stepped up the pace again and made very few mistakes as she won it 9-4. Cassie took the fourth 9-3 but could not maintain her dominance as Tania raced to a 5-1 lead in the fifth. But Cassie hit back to lead 6-5 before again recovering to nick it 9-7. A very apt description, because at 7-7 she got a back-wall nick to move to match ball. She finished with a penalty stroke to enter her first British Open final.

“After the second game I tried to hit the ball cross-court,” explained Bailey, “Cassie was cutting off anything straight and I won a lot of points on cross-courts. I’ve only ever beaten Cassie when she was really injured, and I don’t think I believed I could beat her until yesterday’s match, which gave me lots of confidence.”

A philosophical Campion was “disappointed not to make the final, but I played as well as I could – I just felt a bit laboured. I can’t take anything away from Tania though, she played really well.”

Looking forward to the final, Bailey said ” I’m pretty much back to where I was before the lay-off, but I’m a better player in my head now. I don’t care who I play tomorrow. I am just delighted to be there.”

Tania blasted world number two Carol Owens off court for the best win of her career.

Tania dominated from the start, with Owens always struggling to keep up. “I think I played really well,” said Bailey to the crowd afterwards. “I hadn’t even thought about the next match because Carol is such a fantastic player, although she made a lot of errors today.

This is my best win, and now I’ve got to play another great player in Cassie. I’m really looking forward to it though, this is my first British Open semi-final.”

The match started off as a close affair. Tania started well to take the first game. Linda fought back to take the next two games.

Tania started very well in the fourth to go 3-0 up, when she then crashed into Linda causing her to limp a little. Linda then requested an injury break for a dead leg and had an off-court physio come to help.

Unfortunately for Linda, she had to retire injured after 55 minutes of play.

Tania now has a tough quarter final match, on Saturday, against Carol Owens the World Number 2. All the rest of the matches are now being played at the National Squash Centre in Manchester.

Tania won in 40 minutes, 9-4, 9-6, 9-6. She now has a tough match against Linda Charman-Smith tomorrow, who won very comfortably in 21 minutes (9-2, 9-0, 9-0) against a qualifier.

Having got through the qualifying round 3-0, it was to be a tough draw for Tania in the 1st Round.

So it proved, with Carol Owens, World Number 2, winning 9-1, 9-5, 9-6.

Click here to see the full draw of the Hurghada Open, Egypt.