SQUASH - Kitchen: Revived NZ Open proof of upswing

Kaitaia's Shelley Kitchen believes the resurrection of the New Zealand Women's Open is another sign of the resurgence of squash here.
Squash New Zealand has announced that A1 Homes will be the main sponsor the US$45,000 ($75,000) prize pool needed to add the open to a handful of tournaments on the professional world tour with "gold" status or better.
The tournament has not been contested since 1996, but will return as part of the highly successful Mount Maunganui Festival of Squash in August, which also includes a men's demonstration event and another tournament for New Zealand players.
"It's great news, especially with what's going on economically in the world, it's pretty amazing for squash in New Zealand and will again focus attention on the sport both nationally and locally in the Bay of Plenty."
The event should attract most of the world's top women's players because of its timing.
"It falls in with rest of the circuit, before the New Zealand Open we have the Malaysia and Singapore Opens, so that will [further] attract the English players - and there are about four of them in the top 10 at the moment - to play at the tournament," she said.
For Kitchen it's another opportunity to play in a New Zealand tournament after she won the women's event at the Auckland Open last weekend, beating rising star Joelle King in a four-set final on Sunday.
"Apart from the Kaitaia Summer Open in January, the Auckland Open was the first time I've played in front of an New Zealand audience this year and it is always good to do that and kind of pay people back for the support I get here when I play overseas," she said.
The 29-year-old also continued what is becoming a trademark of her local performances by entering the men's draw in Auckland as well.
"It was good but it meant I had to play eight games over three days, so that was pretty tough but it's good preparation for the Seoul Open next weekend," she said.
A good performance in the Korean "gold" event will probably help the Kiwi No1 to maintain her international top-10 ranking.
When the May list was released, she improved her ranking for the third successive month after winning three recent Wispa World Tour events in Malaysia.
Kitchen has also swung her support in behind the sport's world organisation effort to have the sport included as an demonstration sport at the 2016 Olympics.
Although she admits it maybe too far in the distance for her to be involved as a player, she wouldn't quite count herself out completely.
"I definitely won't be playing then, although I might make a comeback ... maybe," she laughs.
"But probably not, I'd definitely like to do as much as I can in support of that and we're actually doing a big push for that at the moment with one Kiwi squash fan [Phil Buscke, who is also a guitarist with New Zealand rock band The Datsuns] bungee jumping off the Auckland Harbour Bridge on Breakfast TV tomorrow," she said.