Reigning U.S. champion Timmy Brownell opened his second season on the PSA World Tour on a high note, winning his second career title at the $12,000 Sam Aguiar Louisville Open, September 10.
The twenty-four-year-old US Squash High Performance Program player entered the draw as the top seed and faced a difficult first round opponent in the form of former top 30 Pakistani Nasir Iqbal, who Brownell overcame in four games.
The American then put together two 3-0 wins in under half an hour to set up a final against Mexico’s two seed Alfredo Avila. Brownell clinched the title 11-4, 11-8, 7-11, 11-6 in fifty-minutes to the delight of the Louisville Boat Club crowd.
“It feels great to start my season with a title, we put a lot of good work in over the summer at the Specter Center,” Brownell said. “Playing PSA tournaments can sometimes be a fickle game so it’s nice to get a win right on the board. It was a little weird being the top seed, but from the get-go my opponent was a former top thirty player so I knew I was going to be up against it. So I had to take everybody seriously and treat this event as if I wasn’t the top seed and it worked out in my favor.”
Brownell’s ranking rose four places to match his career high world No. 64 following the win. The Harvard graduate adds the Louisville Open title to his Tournament of Champions Challenger title that he won in April.
“I was really happy with how I played, especially the early rounds where the conditions were tough and the opponents were dangerous,” Brownell added. “I was really pleased to get through those unscathed and then back it up again in the late rounds. That’s one of the most difficult things on the PSA, the opponents don’t get any easier.”