Hart Squash

Muttley got promoted to cannon-fodder for the firsts and the ever-amiable Prof joined Max and SB for the long trek down to Hungerford. The Prof (Phil) was first up against Gor-Don of the drop-shot.. Wherever Prof hit the ball, the reply was a drop-shot. Straight drops, angled drops, cross-court drops, boast-drops, volley-drops. Even the normal cheery sparkle on the Prof’s face dropped. The Prof dropped the first leg 3-0. Meanwhile Red Max (Hilmar) was winding-up the tempo, not to mention his opponent on the other court. The highlight was Max’s opponent losing his rag at the Icelandic roar. After some 3-way discussions between players and marker it was decided that as Max was being neither rude nor un-sportsman-like, just very LOUD. Max was too strong for his now partially deaf opponent and came through in 3 games. Sergeant Blast (Simon) mis-fired his way around the court and later complained that the courts were so noisy that he couldn’t hear the ball on his opponents racket. Anyway, despite being “in” the first 2 games, SB failed to win enough points (too many mistakes) and soon found himself 2-0 down. There was some hope in the 3rd as SB got to 9-8 but then played a couple of scruffy points to lose the 3rd 10-8. Blubber Bear (Paul) was more of a Grizzly Bear in his game. He never really got going, the air was blue and the marker was delusional – awarding strokes instead of no-lets almost exclusively to Grizzly’s disadvantage. Grizzly managed to sneak a game but it ended 3-1 to Herongate. Clyde (Ian) was last on. His opponent was late because he had been playing elsewhere earlier – an ominous sign. Clyde battled hard and gave his opponent a lot of bother, particularly in the 3rd but a few errors from Clyde and almost error-free squash from his opponent was telling. Clyde went down 0-3 and the team 4-1.