Patrick Rooney (Eng) 3-2 Curtis Malik (Eng) 8-11, 11-5, 11-4, 8-11, 12-10 (65m)
This is a match Malcom Willstrop would have enjoyed. Patrick, one of the most gifted players to come out of Pontefract, has been struggling to find his form, squash, personality on court. For years.
SquashPlayer did a great article about him, which is all about giving it a last push. And I feel that article gave him like an extra motivation, an extra freedom to be who he needs to be. As a friend of mine told my last week – thanks Ayman – “it’s never too late”.
To mention Malc once again, “Winning is a habit”. So we’ll be looking forward to Patrick getting into that habit for his sake…
Today, I was just being myself. If you think about squash itself, I didn’t do anything standard. Everything seems to come from instinct, from me just expressing myself. That’s what I’m good at. That’s what I want to do. And that’s something I didn’t do for a long time.
Trying to break that top level, I was trying to do the wrong things, just things through the standard way and it’s just not how the good players do it, and get to the top. They are all different. And I’m very happy I was ableto prove that.
I couldn’t be prouder of that win today.
