WISPA is on the move by the sound of this report.

WISPA launches a $150k Grand Slam Series.

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In the May 2008 WSF update, here is the latest news regarding the WISPA PAR Scoring.

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The women's game tried out the 11 PARS scoring at the English open in December. It was viewed as a success, although the final , in which Vanessa Atkinson won in 3 games only last about 25minutes or so if memory serves me correct. IMO that's a bit too short.

sparty

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Hello and good morning (evening) and Happy 2008 to all...

May I disagree with CORRY writing "...the very old and very dull hand in scoring systems up to 9"??? That's a bit silly argument. Why? Because PARS scoring system was invented by PSA and it has (almost) nothing to do with WSF. Please keep in mind that majority of men tournaments (European championship, Team championship) are played till 9. So, in this light you can see that the system is NOT DULL and NOT REALLY OLD.

From the other hand - it reminds me the discussion on which English is proper one? British or American?

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You've lost me on what that has to do with scoring in the women's game Ed?

The acknowledgement of ref's decisions has nothing to do with the IOC's decision whether or not to let Squash into the Olympics. Competative sport by its nature will always contain an element or disagreement with referee's decisions when a 50/50 decision goes against a player. And regardless of how clear cut rules are, it still falls to the observation of the referee to call it how they see it, which of course can be wrong!

Also in theory, two almost evenly matched players that would normally be separated by a winning shot by the better player, can also be separated the other way by a poor refereeing decision at match ball. So you see a player in some situations is not always responsible for loosing the match and the better player does not always win!

And back on topic, the main idea behind the rule change, was to make the game easier to follow and more exciting for the general public. Having show-men (and women!) in the sport is essential in adding to this, as love them or hate them, show-people of sport are what people pay to see. Ronaldo in football, Macenroe in tennis, Power in squash. People watch to see these players play. The passion, the skill, the crowd-pleasing. That plays as big a part in IOC selection as anything else!

But As I said earlier, I don't see how this is related to the question at hand which is the women's scoring system? Why don't you start a thread entitled something like "Referee abuse is wrong and should be punished by death (even when they do make mistakes!)"? That way people can have a proper dicussion about refereeing without hi-jacking other threads about more interesting topics.

CORRY:

I'll try to find out off a PSA referee that I know why the changes haven't been implemented in the ladies game. Might be the same reasoning as why the women use a different height tin?

Cheers

Adz

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Hi Adz,

As long as PSA players learn to lose graciously and to acknowledge that on off days or when u play a bad shot, to respect the ref's decision, the earlier squash will be to accepted by IOC.

Pls learn to keep it clean as children of all ages are watching to grown man slugging on tv. Bottom live is keep the game clean and do cheat or argue, when u opponent is on top of u...

May the best man win, on this given day, that's the mark of a true and worthy champion.

Happy Squashing

Edmond Sng

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I think it originally had something to do with the men's matches becoming so long with the 9 point system. Matches were often going over 2 hours and players were becoming too exhausted to give a good performance later in the tournament. Plus it was incredibly boring for people to watch on TV when there could be 10 mins of play before a point gets scored!

Women's matches never went on as long as men's matches and I guerss there was no need felt to introduce the system into the women's game. Given that different people control such things in PSA and WISPA. I'm pretty sure that they've trialed some events in WISPA using the PAR11 system, and some of the women have come out in support of it, but there doesn't seem to be any urgency in changing over to it. Malcolm Wilstrop has said that it is one of the things that he'd love to see happen in 2008, so I guess it's just a matter of watch this space!

Personally mt 2008 wish list is:

1) Televise squash more often (Sky, BBC @2am, Setanta - I don't care where, just do it!!)

2) Squash to get the nod for the 2016 olympics

3) Squash DVD's to become reasonably priced (More around the £12.99 mark containing 4 hours of matches per disc! or £29.99 - £39.99 for the complete tournament's worth of show-court matches).

Squash will never become mainstream on TV until it can be watched cheaper and easier than it is now. PSAlive is great, but the quality doesn't match a DVD and there are limited amount of matches available (and once again the costs are quite high for what you get).

Adz

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