R1: Curtis overcomes Abud in 5

Curtis : I think my toughness on court is a mixture of good things really.

First thing is, I always seem to play better when I’m down behind, forcing in my my what I call my super-focus mode. Also, my younger brother went through brain cancer, and nothing I’ll ever go through will be as bad as all what he went through. So it give me a lot of mental strength that I know I cannot leave that court untill I’m tried everything or push as hard as I possibly can, that helps as well.

And also, my training, trying to stay as solid as I can, you might not having your best day, but you still got to find a way to win that match.

In the first game, I started to do what I wanted to do tactically, but for the rest of the match, I didn’t do what I set up to do. Actually, the 4th game, although I was pegging the whole way, I managed to play the way I wanted to, to get out of 7/10 match ball down.

And from that point on, I played my best squash.

Because of skillful he is, you’ve almost got to accept the way he is going to play those outrageous shots, and you know that at some point, there’s probably going to be a few errors as well. You’ve just got to stay as consistent as possible, but not too negative. It’s finding the balance between fiding the balance and playing some of my shots.