NEWS PHOTO RYAN MCCRACKEN - Brock Janzer returns a shot to Jake Hooker in the Gas City Open squash tournament final on March 31 at the Downtown YMCA.
Brock Janzer didn’t expect to be playing in his hometown again this year, but he’s sure glad it worked out.
The 22-year-old will be on court at the Downtown YMCA around 3:30 p.m. today in the Medicine Hat Open, eight months after the city’s stop on the Professional Squash Association calendar seemed to have been lost.
“I really like playing at home,” said Janzer, who will play American Faisal Riaz in a first-round matchup. “Aside from the squash it’s always a really fun week, I get to see a lot of people I grew up with, friends and family.
“Sometimes when you’re on the road, you’re playing these tournaments where you don’t know anybody, no one’s there watching you. You just don’t have as much support.”
Tournament organizer Scott Richter confirmed to the News that several sponsors lined up after the original ones backed out of the Gas City Open just before it took place in March.
“Once again, we had tremendous sponsors step up to support this annual event which allows us to bring high level professional athletes to Medicine Hat,” Richter said via press release Monday.
It’s a smaller prize pool of $5,000 than the $25,000 that was up for grabs in previous years, but it has drawn 22 players ranked as high as 102nd in the world.
As Janzer points out, the new stop just happens to line up with many players’ schedules after PSA tournaments in Kelowna and Saskatoon this month.
“It worked out, the European players came over and tried to hit up all three of them,” said Janzer, ranekd 334th in the world. “It’s just more affordable.”
Janzer hasn’t registered a match win in a PSA tournament since April but did come in third at a Squash Alberta event recently at the University of Calgary, and was second in the downgraded Gas City Open in March which featured mostly amateurs.
The Hat-born pro – who moved to Calgary to pursue his career – feels wins and losses at this level are less important than how he’s actually playing, which against top-100 competition isn’t always that obvious.
“It’s funny, squash is not always a game you can go on results,” he said. “A lot of it is just how you’re playing because sometimes you play much better players, other times you can get easy draws. For me right now I’m improving and still playing quite well, I think.”
A trio of Czech players got the top seeds for this weekend. Daniel Mekbib is 102nd in the world and reached the semifinals last weekend in Saskatoon. Martin Svec is 106th while Ondrej Uherka is 132nd.
There’s also an amateur event this weekend starting Thursday, with both finals scheduled for Sunday afternoon. Seating is limited for viewing at the YMCA, so tickets for the pro event cost $20 per day with rush seating.
