James Stout believes he has returned from Europe a better player after experiencing the cut and thrust of top class competition.

Stout is back in Bermuda after competing in three major squash tournaments on the other side of the Atlantic.

The national team player made his European debut at the Scottish Junior Open in Edinburgh before travelling south of the border to Sheffield for the British Junior Open and then to Belfast for the Irish Junior Open.

He had his best finish at Queens University in Belfast grabbing fifth place.

On Monday it was announced that he was ranked 99th among juniors on the European circuit. The ranking was based solely on his performance in Scotland and he is expected to make further inroads on the standings when next month's statistics are released.

Stout turned professional earlier this year and will graduate from the junior divisions to senior competition in August.

It was a decision that was fraught with risks, but the player believes he has made the right move.

"Playing in these tournaments pretty much just wrapped it up for me that this was what I wanted to do," he said.

Stout said he had butterflies before he went to Europe but soon settled down once he arrived and was surprised at just how competitive he was.

"I was nervous because the calibre of squash is of a completely different level to what it is in the US or here," he said. "But when I went to the Scottish and Irish Opens I was a bit taken aback by how much I was in there with the rest of them."

The only time he encountered a problem was at the British Open - one of the best tournaments in the world.

"I was a bit unfortunate in the British Open, losing to a very good player in the preliminaries - there was nothing I could have done to beat him," he said.

"That was pretty much my only bad match."

Though pleased with his fifth place in Belfast Stout believes it could and should have been even better.

"It was a round-robin and then went into a knockout," he said of the format. "The two players that beat me in the round-robin stage ended up number one and two in the entire tournament.

"I gave the eventual winner his toughest match, so looking at it that way it was pretty impressive."

Stout was actually forced to cut short his involvement in the tournament.

"I had to retire from one of my matches," he said. "It was my third match of the day and I wasn't feeling too well. I had a headache and my knees weren't responding and I thought it would be wise just to stop playing then rather than risk an injury."

Normally a player has a trainer or coach in their corner to help them through games but Stout was on his own.

"It makes things a lot harder because you have to realise yourself what you are doing wrong," he said.

"I found it tough when I first tried to do it because I wasn't really concentrating on what I was doing.

"But as I progressed I found it easier to "But as I progressed I found it easier to realise where I was going wrong, what my mistakes where and what I needed to do change things around."

Stout believes his style of play was a factor in his being able to mix it with some of the world's top juniors.

"I'm very unorthodox," he said. "A lot of people don't know where the ball is going to go when I play. I'm not conventional - I'm not used to just rallying straight down the line. There's a lot of changing direction."

The teenager is realistic enough to know that he still has a long way to go and he is far from the finished product.

"The experience of being by myself was huge and meeting new players and playing in these kinds of atmospheres just makes you better," he said.

"I still need to work on my fitness and that is what I am going to be focussing on now with Ross (Triffitt, director of squash).

"We didn't really do much before now because of the chance of injury but now I'm really ready to crack down."