Bermuda is seeking to become one of the premier stop-offs on squash's professional tour.

Years in the planning, the Island's Squash Racquets Association is set to reinvent the Bermuda Open with the hope of attracting the cream of the world's players to these shores.

"The Open has been run in the past and it's really just a question of finding a sponsor and getting the money to run the event," said Bermuda's director of squash Ross Triffitt.

"We have the infrastructure to be able to handle it but at this time we are still looking for some support locally to be able to put the event on.

"We ran it as an exhibition event in 1996 and it was attracting the top players in the world.

"We have always had a high profile with top professional players so it should be quite easy for us to attract that sort of talent again."

At the end of the day though it would come down to finances, Triffitt said.

"We have a date that we have essentially secured just after a major event in New York next year," he said.

"We have a had a good commitment from the players - knowing some of them first hand has helped there.

"But it's really going to come down to the bucks. We have got the players, we have got the date, now all we need to do is make sure we can finance it."

Triffitt said the BSRA hoped to have the tournament up and running by 2004.

"We are looking at a two year project," he said. "The first year (2003) would not be sanctioned as a professional event, it would be as an exhibition the idea being that our local players would get great exposure and be able to compete in the event and benefit from hitting with the top players.

"The following year we will have a full blown PSA ranking event with the same level of players."

To do that the BRSA would have to meet with certain criteria.

"There are certain stipulations with regards the to running a professional event, the spread of prize money and the amount on offer, and it can restrict the field and talent that is available to you," said Triffitt. "We are not being too ambitious with the first one although we are trying to attract players from the top ten.

"We can handpick them and as it is not a sanctioned event we can call in a few favours to get them to play for less prize money.

"We believe we could run that sort of event for $30,000, however, to run a fully sanctioned PSA ranking event with top ten players we are probably looking at between $50,000 and $100,000. With that sort of prize money it would become one of the biggest events on the calendar. We would be

right up there with the British Open.

"We want to take it to the top level. We want to have a top tier professional event that will give us the opportunity of having a wildcard entry."

Such a competition would allow the likes of Nick Kyme or James Stout entry into the first round, thereby avoiding tricky qualifying matches and guaranteeing them points towards their world ranking.

On a second front, Triffitt said Bermuda was also seeking to organise its own Junior Open.

"At present our juniors are travelling to the US but it is very expensive to get there, so what we are hoping to do is have our own Bermuda Junior Open where players from the US will come and compete on our soil," he said.

"We have had the go-ahead from the US Squash Racquets Association so it will be a sanctioned event and our players will earn points towards US rankings. This will help them get better seedings and positions in US tournaments."