On a night when the sport reached a higher level than ever before in this country, the two favorites came from two groups down to advance to the final of the Premiere Professional Squash Association (PSA) QPCC (Queen’s Park Cricket Club) tournament of Friday night. .
It was a minor miracle that Rowan Damming was able to win the second semi-final of the country’s first professional squash tournament at the QPCC Indoor Racquet Centre, Queen’s Park Oval, St Clair.
Young man no. The world No. 1 not only lost the first two sets but found himself trailing Maceo Levy 7-4 in the third.
Third-seeded Damming, who had been pushed to five sets in his previous two matches, somehow managed to claw his way back into the decider.
But the Dutchman, ranked 205th in the world, dropped the first four points and his fans had to think he had no chance of escaping again, especially against the eight-seeded Frenchman who had knocked out the no. 2 seed in the quarterfinals.
It got worse for Damming as the left-handed Levy kept his foot on the accelerator and still had a four-point lead after reaching two points in the championship match.
But the 18-year-old world junior champion then produced something even more magical than he did in the closing stages of the third set as he won five straight points to reach match point at 10-9.
But Damming still had to work extremely hard to complete one of the all-time great comebacks as the 275th-ranked Levy fought to match point and four more after having one of his own before finally surrendering 4-11, 8-11. 11-9, 11-4, 16-14.
After losing two marathon games to start the first semi-final, Colombian Andreas Herrera began to wear down Elijah Thomas and it looked as if the top seed would come home when he raced to a 4-0 lead in the fifth.
But fourth-seeded New Zealand, who are 86 places behind world number 158 on the computer, refused to throw in the towel and got within a point (8-7) of the tie-breaking proceedings before eventually going down 11-13 . 10-12, 11-7, 11-2, 11-8.
Although both games went the distance, this 111-minute contest was almost twice the length of the second.
The final was set after press time last night.
All seven Trinidad and Tobago players were eliminated in the first round on Tuesday.
