So who won the Battle of the Brands at Worlds?

By PIERRE BASTIEN

Is it possible to find out which squash equipment brands “won” the 2013 World Squash Championships? Let’s have a bit of fun and try to find out the top-performing racket brand, and the top-performing shoe brand.

Of course it’s clear-cut which player won the tournament: England’s Nick Matthew sealed his third world title. But since brands are used by multiple players, how do we find out which did best?

One way is to use a points system. Let’s try that – we’ll assign points based on how far each player got in the tournament. For example, Nick Matthew won the tournament using Dunlop squash rackets and Hi-Tec squash shoes, so those brands should get lots of points. A player who lost in the first round would contribute a few points to their brands of choice.

Since the PSA World Tour already has its own points system to determine player rankings, let’s borrow it. Here’s how many points the players get, based upon how far they got in the tournament:

Winner: 2,890 points
Finals: 1,900
Semi-finals: 1,155
Quarter-finals: 700
Round of 16: 410
Round of 32: 205
Round of 64: 125

Nick Matthew, then, by virtue of his win, would contribute 2890 points each to team Dunlop and team Hi-Tec. And so on down the line. (I’ve left out those earning points in the qualifying rounds…sorry guys, I still love you though.)

Without further ado or further maths, your 2013 Squash Brand World Champions are:

Squash Rackets Champion

Our 2013 world squash racket champion is Dunlop. The venerable mark did not have the most players using it – Prince, Tecnifibre and Harrow all boasted more players – but Dunlop carried the day thanks in large part to the performance of champion Nick Matthew and runner-up Greg Gaultier.

Meanwhile, Prince narrowly beat out Tecnifibre for the second spot.

Squash Shoes Champion

This year’s 2013 world squash shoe champion is Asics. Though the two finalists wore Hi-Tec and Adidas, Asics easily took first place thanks to its surprising depth – more than half the draw wore Asics shoes.

Second place goes to Adidas, and third prize to Hi-Tec.

The Data

For those who like to see the raw numbers, here is the complete breakdown. For further info, including the exact rackets and shoes used by each player, you can also check out my complete World Championships equipment recap on Squash Source.

Read more about Pierre, rackets, shoes…in fact almost anything squash related you can think of at: www.squashsource.com