30-Jan-08:
Duncalf looks to title defence
under new rules ...

Jenny Duncalf's title defence in Manchester won't be quite what she expected. Only three weeks before it began she learnt that the British National Championships were to be used as an experiment with the scoring system. "I was pretty shocked," she said.

The change to point-a-rally 11-up scoring is being used instead of the traditional hand-in hand-out scoring at the request of the Women's International Squash Players' Association, which wants to trial the system adopted on the men's professional tour for the past three years.

It only took a short time for Duncalf to generate positive feelings as well but you could see why initially she was taken aback. For a while she has remained ambivalent about it too. "It had never been used before in a big tournament, and no-one asked our opinion," she explained.

"I don't think I have ever played in a tournament with it, but you have to try to move forward with the times. I guess it's good for WISPA to use the Nationals as a measuring stick. It will be interesting to see if it makes the game more attacking."

If it does, it may work in her favour, she thinks. Duncalf does have an attacking style and is one of the most naturally talented players. She likes to play shots and use angles and to mix it up and try and hold the ball.

She is less good, she believes, at using these options at the right time and sometimes opens the court up too much. Tactical improvement has for some while been one of her goals.

All this hit her quite hard when she had a bad patch in 2006 and her world ranking fell from a career-high No.6 down to No.12, for she felt she was good enough to be significantly higher.

"I was 24 years old and it hit me a bit," she said. "I thought I'm 24 and not that young any more. I was hoping to have done a bit better by now."

Hence the importance of winning the British National title, a success which came out of the blue, raised her morale, and suggested that she could still improve. Individually it was, she said, the most important success of her career.

Strengthening her tactical mind will be important for defending it, something which may not be unrelated to becoming more organised in day-to-day life. That used to be something people gave her stick about, especially after a sequence of absent-minded mistakes in which personal possessions could be left about in all sorts of unlikely places.

"I think I had a part of my brain missing," she said. But recently she acquired her own flat and the responsibility of looking after it has spread to organising training and thinking more about what she needed to do.

She won't start as favourite to defend the title, and she reckons she will have more pressure upon her than last year. But at least she may have found out where that part of her brain is after all.