A small group of players were in contact with the ESM Committee both prior to and at the Players' Meeting in Hull asking that the Committee conduct a consultation with players on two aspects of the organisation of ESM events. Firstly, the group wished to alter the scoring system from PAR 11 to PAR 15 (or possibly HiHo to 9) for all age groups. Secondly, the group wished to make the default ball for age groups 65 and over a single yellow dot.

The ESM Committee undertook to perform this exercise and in preparation for doing so gathered data from all the Regional and Major events in 2021/22 and produced detailed information on match times and their relationships to the number of games played and the ages, gender and seeding of the players. Further, the Committee reviewed the broader impact of changes and advised players of some of the unintended consequences of a scoring change such as capping entries due to court availability, ESM falling out of step with all the other major Masters events in the world, and failing in our aims of promoting squash and retaining players.

The survey was sent to 1154 players who had entered ESM events in the last five years. The response was 24%, 281 which I believe is a good return in such things. The Committee would like to thank all of the players who took the time to complete the questions and provide extra feedback on ways in which ESM can continue to improve the tournaments which we offer.

A full analysis will be published shortly, but, in summary, a large majority, 79% of respondents opted to retain PAR-11 as the scoring methodology. As to the ball issue, in the 65-80 groups 55% of respondents opted for a double dot although there was support in the older groups for a single dot and the Committee will look into this further.