Kyme's a national hero
Nick Kyme confirmed his number one seeding in the Fast Forward Freight National Squash Championships by winning his fourth national men's title at the weekend.
His opponent in the Division One Men's final, number two seed Chase Toogood, could not live up to his name on this occasion and never looked in control of the rallies.
Kyme won the first game 9-3 in just over 15 minutes by playing error free squash. Toogood's only points in the game were earned by some rare moments of aggression which produced a couple of great winners.
Unfortunately, that was the only glimpse of aggressive squash from Toogood as he then sat back into the role of retriever, trying to keep the rallies going as long as possible.
His tactic worked briefly at the start of the second game as Kyme made a string of errors and Toogood jumped into a 6-2 lead.
Kyme quickly settled back down and used his larger repertoire of shots to make up the deficit and run out the second game 9-7 in 25 minutes.
The third game was much like the first with Kyme asserting his superiority and keeping Toogood on the back foot throughout.
Toogood tried to match it with Kyme at the beginning of the game, hanging in the rallies and earning his few points from Kyme's mistakes.
But eventually all the retrieving took its toll on Toogood and at 5-2 Kyme quickly finished him off winning the remaining points without losing a rally and taking the third game 9-2.
Kyme's victory this year is the second in a row where he has gone through the tournament without dropping a game. The player flew back to Trinity College in Hartford Connecticut yesterday but will be back in Bermuda on April 3 to help Bermuda defend the Men's A title in the upcoming Rosebowl Championships.
In the Consolation Final, which with the feed-in draw is the play-off for third and fourth place, Harry MacKenzie could not repeat his giant-killing performance of the night before and lost in straight games to Ryan Bell 9-4, 9-2, 9-2.
The Ladies Division One Final was a lot like the Men's with Tessa MacKenzie defending her title by defeating Lyn Furtado in straight games.
The favoured MacKenzie started strongly winning the first game in quick fashion 9-1 over a nervous Furtado. Furtado reversed her form at the beginning of the second game by jumping out to a 2-0 and 3-1 lead before MacKenzie gathered her composure and wrapped up the game 9-3.
In the final game MacKenzie won 9-0 without dropping the serve.
The third and fourth place play-off was contested between Liz Martin and Denise Kyme. This was their second match against each other within three hours after competing in the Ladies Veterans event earlier in the evening.
Martin was consistent by winning both matches 3-1 and wrapped up this match in a thrilling finish 9/2, 6/9, 9/5, 10/9.