[6] Emily Whitlock (WAL) 3-0 Ellie Breach (WAL) 11-5, 11-3, 11-8 (34m)
Impressed Fram. This young girl, only 19, is like a little bomb of energy! She is not very tall, very muscular, wonderful backhand technique – textbook really – loved the skills she has – in particular her long drop shots to die for!
Emily had to bring her A game at the end of the match, and if the score doesn’t tell the story, the length of the games do, 10m, 8m, 12m. Hard work, very fair match, The future of Welsh squash is looking guuuuuud…
Emily W : I was impressed by the change in Ellie’s fitness. We trained a bit at the European Champs last year, and I was under the impression she was not as fit as she is today, maybe she was that fit in the juniors, but had a gap year for the University first year.
Today she played a match with no pressure, bleeping heck, she needs to keep playing on like that because that was great! That’s encouraging for Welsh women!
I was very impressed, and I was happy I didn’t take her for granted. She was better handling things than she was last year. It wasn’t a total surprise but I was surprised how much she had improved in a year, and that’s great.
Tomorrow, I’m playing Grace Gear. We are playing on the glass, I’m very happy with that, I love that glasscourt. We haven’t played for two and a half years, I’m different, she is different, everyone is training like mad! It’s also on the glasscourt, which last time it was on a traditional court. I won last time but it wasn’t easy at all.
So happy to have my first match out of the way, that’s very good to have, so tomorrow, it will be good to play a good quality squash.
Last year, I got injured at this tournament, and I played the rest of the season about 70%, which was very frustrating. So after the British, I decided not to go back on court until I was 100% fit, and I took 3 weeks off.
I had 8 weeks of non disruption training, I’ve been able to consistently train, I thought I moved ok today, if I can do that tomorrow, the result, yes, it’s alright to win but if I can walk off a squash court, injury free, that’s would be nice. And that’s the aim.
