Evening Press Sport

All the seeds came through last night's matches in the York Open Men's Squash Championships at York Railway Institute without dropping a set.

Former champion and third seed Matthew Inglis showed no mercy in his match when Chris Plowman only managed three points in the entire match.

Dave Shiel put up a good performance against Ian Tooms (7) but Tooms' experience and accuracy was too much for the York league player.

The closest game of the evening saw RI's Chris Kent comeback from 2-0 down against Chris Johnson (Wigginton) to win 9-1 in the fifth. Kent now meets number five seed Paul Adams.

Nick Clifford, last year's open plate winner, lost the opening game against Kirkbymoorside's Nigel Richardson, but won a tight second game 9-7 to level.

Clifford took the third 9-3 then in the fourth Richardson led 5-3, 6-4 and 7-5 before Clifford rallied in one handout to get in front and had match ball at 8-7.

However, it took three more handouts before he was able to finish off the match.

All eight seeds play tonight in the Evening Press-sponsored event and are expected to book their places in the quarter-finals.

Injury has forced number four seed Sharon Bradford to pull out of the York Open Ladies Squash Championship, sponsored by the Purey Cust Nuffield Hospital.

The experienced Suzie Booth has also pulled out which gave her first round opponent Amanda Hartland a walk over.

Pick of the opening round matches was Andrea Mayne's five set battle with Anita Beattie in which she took the last game 9-0.

A feature of this year's championships have been a number of entries from Queen Margaret's School, Escrick, and one of their county junior's, Rachel Hepworth, showed real talent, grit and determination in her defeat at the hands of number three seed Trish Kochaniec.

Angela Kitching went through to the next round after a close match in which her opponents, Sue Green, conceded at 8-6 match ball as she was unable to play in the following round.

Tonight sees the quarter final matches with the pick of the matches being champion Katie Watson's battle with fifth seed Kim Chadwick.

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