The Year of the Tiger is already having a tremendous influence on our UCSC league warriors .... we are off to a roaring start with 3 wins from 3 matches (so far)!

The F-grade began in earnest on Wednesday evening with our Team 1 'F'hantoms and Team 2 'F'ighters in action.

The Team 2 'F'ighters lived up the moniker I cheekily gave them by edging out Hollandse Club by 8 games to 7. Young Matthew Hui had an excellent start to this year's campaign when he came back from 1 game down to beat his older opponent 3-1. Foo Chuan Kit then gave his all only to fizzle in the rubber and lost 2-3 but still gave good reasons to expect better things to come from this young warrior. Manik's 0-3 loss belies the individual game scores. He only lost narrowly in all 3 games by 9, 12, 9. Next time, Manik... next time. Buddy, Chakra, then dispensed the same medicine to his HC opponent with a comfortable 3-0 win.

Team 1 'F'hantoms' elderly opponents from PUBRC didn't stand a ghost of a chance as they were whitewashed by our youth brigade 0-4. Ben Chan, Jeremy Goh, Warren Seow and Darryl Tan devastated their opponents by similar 3-0 scorelines. Awesome, lads.... Just awesome (even scary).

Finally, last evening on Thursday, our trusty 'B'ombers legally broke the law ... The law-men's hearts that is, from Police Sports Association. Jon Cheu started proceedings against Nur Adawiyah (a one-time UCSC-sian) and one of Singapore's top lady-players (Nur,... not Jon). Jonathan nonchalantly won the first game but then took his foot off the pedal for one-and-a-half games (dropping the 2nd game and trailing in the 3rd) before he stepped on the gas again and charmed Nur off the court with a well-deserved 3-1 win. We suspected that he may have just been trying to be a gentleman. Good job, too.

Young Jason Ho then stepped onto court with super-veteran, Kho Kim Hak, who although super-fit for his age, simply could not handle the magic dripping off Jason's racket. It was like target-practice for Jason, emulating the firing-range just next to the squash courts at the police academy.

Yours truly, (Michael Tan), then stepped into the court to settle old scores with Chang Kam Hong. Michael had lost to Chang 2 years ago in the same match-up on the same venue. In the first game, it was like deja vu. History looked like being repeated when Chang tucked away precise winners from drop-shot after drop-shot. Picking up the pace in the 2nd game however, Michael levelled the score. The pivotal moment came after a particularly gruelling rally (please note: anything more than 5 strokes qualifies as a 'long rally' for Michael), the law-man was left huffing and puffing and never quite recovered from it. Michael emerged a gratified 3-1 winner. YES!

In the next court, usually trusty and crafty Uncle Daryle had a particularly bad off-day against the evergreen and effervescent Gurhka, (them of the "never-say-die" legend), Chhabilal Paija Pun. We suspected that Daryle may already have run out of steam just trying to greet his opponent by his full name. Anyway, with a muscled body transplanted on 'tree trunks' which he calls 'legs', the sporting Gurkha locomotive simply ran down Uncle Daryle even though Uncle D. is blessed with far superior racket-work. We decided against requesting for a blood-test on the still-smiling Gurkha after the match and graciously accepted our otherwise, good 3-1 overall win.

We know look forward to next week's thrillers when all the grades go into action. Watch out for a separate annoucement on next week's match schedules.

UCSC Lives & Breathes Squash!