Seventy players, including 20 juniors took part in the Belbin Malta International Open which was held recently at the Marsa Sports Club..
The players came from Malta, Poland, Czech Republic, Croatia, France, UK, Sweden, Denmark, Brazil and Australia. The tournament was a great success and over 130 matches were played in all.
There were no surprises with regards to the winners in the junior categories. In the under 17 Colette Sultana beat all her opponents easily to retain her title for the 4th year running. In the final Jean Balzan who has been taking his training very seriously played very well and there was a very marked improvement in his performance from last year.
The winner of the under 15 category was Ryan Rizzo who after an absence of more than a year came back to show that he is still one of the top juniors. The other finalist, Daniel Vella, could not match Rizzo’s expertise on court but was very happy to reach the finals.
Eleven year old Kimberley Cauchi, who has just started taking part in European Junior tournaments won the under 13 category with ease. She is very calm and focused on court and looks like she could be following in Colette Sultana’s footsteps. The runner-up was Daniel Borg.
In the Men’s Open ‘A’, Bradley Hindle Deguara met Croatian Spolyar Domagoh in the final after beating all his other opponents with ease. This was by far the match where he had the most opposition but he still went on to finish the tournament without dropping one single game.
It was a welcome surprise to see Karl Magri, who used to be one of Malta’s top players, in the final of the Men’s ‘B’ category, against Arthur Castillo. Unfortunately Castillo’s famous lobs were not working on the day but it was still a close 3-2 to Magri.
Another 3-2 final was the Men’s ‘C’ match between Matthew Borg and Kelvin Edmunds.
The top four players in the Women’s Open really fought hard to gain a place in the final.
In the first semi-final, Martina Kakosova beat Johanna Rizzo 3-1 but the score does not reflect the standard of play of Rizzo in this match. In the other semi, young Colette Sultana narrowly missed getting to the final in her match against veteran Theresa Brousson. The score was 3-2 and 12-10 in the last game.
The match between Johanna Rizzo and her niece Colette Sultana, for third and fourth place finished in favour of Sultana by the narrowest of margins. Rizzo was 2 games to 1 up but Sultana never gives up and came back to win the next two games and finish third in the tournament.
In the final against the Czech Martina Kakosova, Theresa Brousson was not playing her usual high standard of squash and the match was rather one sided and Kakosova won 3-0.
Malta Squash thanked its sponsors, Belbin Malta Ltd, P. Cutajar and Co., as well as the Kunsill Malti ghall-Isport, the Malta Olympic Committee and the Marsa Sports Club, for their support.