T&T's hopes of a semifinal or final berth at the first-ever Professional Squash Association (PSA)-sanctioned Queen's Park Cricket Club Professional Squash Tournament at the Racquet Centre of the Queen's Park Oval in St Clair, Port-of-Spain were dashed on the first day, Tuesday.
All eight local players finished on the losing end of the knock-out tournament, making painful exits from the tournament, which entered its quarterfinal round, on Wednesday.
Seth Thong, the country's junior squash champion, was the only player among the eight to have won a set. Thong, who admitted that the highest level of competition he would have engaged in was at the US Open a few years ago, did not look too bad though, taking the advantage in the first set, 12-10, against Barbadian Shawn Simpson.
Afterwards, it was all the Barbadian national champion who sealed wins in the other sets to gain his entry into the quarterfinal round of the tournament with a, 12-10, 3-11-3, 6-11, 4-11 triumph to complete an overall 3-1 victory.
In the other matches, Colin Ramasra, a former national squash standout who played professionally abroad for some time, was beaten by world 265th-ranked player Leo Vargas of Mexico in straight sets 3-0 (11-3, 11-1, 11-3); Brandon De Montrichard lost to Taylor Carrick of Bermuda 3-0 (11-1 11-3 11-6); Joel Augustine succumbed to a 3-0 defeat to unranked Nick Sutcliffe of Great Britain (11-1, 11-2, 11-2); Marc Pontifex was beaten by Felipe Tovar of Colombia 3-0 (11-5, 11-3, 11-5); Julian Chin went down to Jan Wipperfurth of Germany 3-0 (11-5, 11-4, 11-3); Zachary Loquan lost to Jason Ray Khalil of Guyana 3-0 (11-2,11-2, 11-4); and Nicholas Lequay went down to Santiago Orozco of Colombia 3-0 (11-0, 11-1, 11-4).
On Wednesday, Ryan Jaggessar, a former national squash standout who is the tournament director, said he was satisfied with the performances of his charges regardless of the results.
"I was very satisfied because here, the locals are not professionals and those guys are full-time pros. I am particularly happy with Seth Thong who was the only player who won a game at the age of 15 years.
"I think now we're going to lobby for support from corporate T&T to get support for him," Jagessar explained.
He noted further that this year's tournament was a small one to see what can be done in the future for the sport.
Jagessar confirmed that the tournament will now be held annually and organisers will seek to have an upscaled tournament next year which will be twice the magnitude of this one.
