Four island squash players competed at the World Masters Tournament in Poland last week.

Manx players at the event were Malcolm Levy, Hamish Thornton (both over 45s), Ashley Sandyford-Sykes and Mike Hayler (both over 50s) who have all received seeds to see them through the first round with a bye.

The World Masters history is not long, but certainly illustrious.

It was 1991 when the first global tournament purely for mature age players was held in Auckland, New Zealand.

It has come a long way since then and at the 2018 edition of the biennial event, in Charlottesville, America, there were 755 players from 59 nations competing.

Last week’s tournament had 643 entrants from countries all round the world competing in the 20 events against players of a similar age and gender.

The age group categories go from 35 plus right the way up to 80 plus.

The tournament took place in Wroclaw and, with 33 courts at their disposal, the hosts planned to make this the biggest championship in history.

The tournament was played using a ‘MONRAD’ draw which means the players move up or down the draw and at the end of the tournament the player will have an overall ranking or position.

The first round was a mixed bag of results for our guys – Sandyford-Sykes and Levy both took what looked like comfortable 3-0 wins.

Thornton lost out 1-3 and Hayler lost 7/11 in the fifth.

The second round was played on Tuesday and saw Sandyford-Sykes remain in the main draw of the over-50s after taking a 3-0 win.

Levy was knocked out of the main draw of the over-45s after a 0-3 loss. Elsewhere Thornton picked up a 3-0 win and Hayler lost 0-3.

Wednesday ushered in round three and Sandyford-Sykes’s winning streak came to an end when he was downed 0-3 by the number one seed from Ireland.

Levy was back to winning ways with a hard-fought 3-0 win. Both Thornton and Hayler got their monies’ worth with five-game matches, Thornton winning 12/10 in the fifth game whereas for Hayler it was 11-8.

Thursday’s set of matches brought a 0-3 defeat for Sandyford-Sykes and a 1-3 loss for Levy.

However Thornton and Hayler both enjoyed comfortable 3-0 wins with Hayler only allowing his Hungarian opponent seven points in total.

This was the final appearance of the Manx contingent as, owing to flight availability, they had to return home the following day.

It remains to be seen if this pre-season trip will enhance the playing performance of these four players when the Squash Rackets Association league starts on September 12.

But they put Isle of Man squash in the map with finishing positions of 24 (Levy) and 36 (Thornton) in the Over 45s and Sandyford-Sykes 16th and Hayler 52nd in the over 50s.