A Rose Among the Thorns

Roll out the red carpet and polish up the crown. In the midst of Saturday's squash holocaust at Hemenway Gym, the Crimson's Mike Desaulniers clearly established himself as the king of college squash by turning his showdown match with vaunted Tiger sophomore Tom Page into a one-sided farce, in one of the great athletic performances of Harvard history.

An overflow crowd packed the seats behind Hemenway's court an hour before the match in anticipation of the first meeting in college competition between the 1977 men's national champ--Page--and the collegiate champ--Desaulniers. What the crowd witnessed was a one-man magic show, as Desaulniers mystified Page with some of his brilliant shotmaking while munching on Page's assortment of shots as if they were so many smoked baby clams.

For the record, the score was 15-6, 15-12, 15-5. In other words, Page was overwhelmed.

"It was good fun, a good battle," the Tiger number one man said after the match. "Right now he's just better than I am."

"By the way," Page added with a grin, "where's the nearest place around here to get a cold beer?"

Page never really got into the match. In the first game, he made an uncharacteristic number of unforced errors ro give Desaulniers the momentum. After that, Desaulniers took control so well that Page never had a chance to show his stuff.

Desaulniers did let up slightly early in the second game, making a few mistakes to give Page a 9-7 lead.

Besides that, though, Michael owned the match. Desaulniers' game had more angles than a geodesic dome, and he simply stunned the crowd with a masterful assortment of tweaks, drops, put-aways and quick-dying three-corner nicks.

Most amazing of all was Desaulniers' floating court movement. He seemed almost to know where Page was aiming every shot, and he had Page walking away from some of his shots even as Desaulniers was hitting them.

"I actually made a few errors," Desaulniers said yesterday, "but I got away with them. He seemed to make a lot more errors than I've seen him make lately."

Squash goes a long way back for the smooth-looking, bearded sophomore, but it was during the last summer--playing in his native Toronto--that Desaulniers' game improved from very good to great.

"I spent the whole summer training and playing English squash (soft ball, larger court) with the Canadian national team, and my game just seemed to have taken a hop," Desaulniers commented.

Since then, Desaulniers has beaten Vic Niederhoffer (twice, this fall), made it to the finals of the Boston Open, and moved to a national amateur ranking of fourth. Although he has yet to defeat the immensely talented Sharif Kahn, Desaulniers has to be counted as one of the best in the world.

Getting back to Saturday's match, Page said, "I didn't do as well as I wanted, but we won the team match, and that's what counts, isn't it?"

And, of course, Page is right. Still, Desaulniers' display was awesome, and for now he is the reigning king.