Results for the Curragh Open 2014 – 1st Tour Event

The first senior tour event for this season with The Curragh Senior Open 2014 took place from Friday 12th September to the 14th September.

The top seeds were Brian Byrne at no. 1 and no. 2 Michael Craig who has had a very busy summer, having played the Commonwealth games in July and then being part of the successful U19 Ireland team that came 7th in the World Championships in August which took place in Namibia.

Again we had -a young player and a very experienced player at no. 3 & 4 seeds in  Ballymena’s Steve  Richardson and Michael Convoy. There are 76 players entered in 1 women’s with Ciara Moloney as no. 1 seed and 4 men’s sections. Ciara won her 1st senior cap at the Europeans last May where she played in the 3/4th place match vs the Czech Republic where she played superbly in her debut.

Report on Results by Brendan Murphy

The third running of this first senior tournament of the new squash season took place last weekend at The Curragh Squash Club at The Curragh Camp in Kildare.

It featured a good mixture of seasoned seniors and high-ranked juniors.

In the men’s A event Michael Craig of Ulster returned to defend his title won last year in a hard-fought final against Sean Conroy. This year Michael and Sean had to be content with third and fourth places respectively. Michael met in-form fellow Ulster man Steve Richardson in his semi-final where the much older man showed all of his experience and great fitness and stamina to come through against Michael who is still a junior and played on the Irish junior team in the recent World Junior Championship in Namibia. Sean Conroy was beaten by Brian Byrne in their semi-final. The final went to 4 games but in the end the super-fit and agile Byrne proved too much for Richardson.

In the ladies event Ciara Moloney successfully defended her title coming through against fellow Carlow player and top junior Casey Luther in the final.

A notable return to Irish tournaments was Ulster man Gordon Harpur who played in the men’s B section. He just failed to qualify for the A/B playoff by losing a marathon 2-3 battle to Curragh player Neal Murphy.

The men’s C section was won by 13-year-old Sutton junior Conor Moran in defeating Mark Furlong, who plays for Celtic in Waterford, in the final by 3-1.

Veteran Donal Kelly of Mount Pleasant won the men’s D final in a close 3-2 final versus Noel Walsh of Freshford.

For the full draw and results Click here