The 2012 edition of the World Masters Squash Championships kicked off in Birmingham yesterday. It was a fairly leisurely opening – compared to what’s to come – with Men’s O45, O50, O55 and O60 first round matches at the University of Birmingham and Edgbaston Priory, two of the four clubs which are hosting the event, which sees 750+ competitors from 47 countries aiming for one of the 18 world titles on offer.

There were plenty of short matches, with many of these older Masters using PAR to 11 scoring for the first time – competitively at least – and a few epics too. Sadly there were simply too many matches to report on, hence the “MishMash” page on the official site which aims to give a flavour of the event and random match overviews and player interviews.

The day concluded with an exhibition match between James Willstrop and Saurav Ghosal on the glass court in the University’s brand new Bramall Music Building, the first performance of any type in the 450-seat arena which was packed to the rafters.

Sunday’s day two sees no let up in the action – indeed, as more age groups enter the fray, so do the Solihull Arden and West Warwickshire clubs, with a total of 515 matches to be played today over the four venues!

So, once more it will be a case of selected snippets until later in the week when the draws thin out a little. On the official site you can find daily schedules, ‘Today’ roundups, flash results, ‘MishMash’ reports, Photo Galleries, and a whole lot more.

All we can really do at this stage is to point you there to have a browse around …

www.squashworldmasters.com