Franklin eyes pro career
Micah Franklin has all but outgrown Bermuda and if he beats Nick Kyme in the final of the BCS Club Championships he will travel to Canada next month to start life as a fully-fledged professional as the Island’s number one.Franklin is moving to the National Squash Association of Canada in Toronto in January where he will live and train under former world number one Jonathon Powers.The Bermuda teen is foregoing university and throwing himself fully into joining the ranks of the world’s professional squash players, a move he hopes will one day see him break into the top 100. He’s being backed in the move by Digicel, who are supporting him financially for his first year on the World Tour.“I’ve decided to try and make it as a full time professional now, and there is only so far I can take a professional career in squash in Bermuda,” he said. “Bermuda is so small and there are only a handful of players I can really use to push me, so I need to get out and train with players that are going to push me every day.“It seems like Canada is the best bet for me right now.”A trip to the World Championships in Germany in August convinced Franklin that he could mix it with the best and all he needs to do now is get enough ranking points to break into a tournament.“I got to play against some of the best in the world (in Germany) and I realised ‘I think I could get to this level’,” he said. “I didn’t see anything to make me think it was impossible.“That was such an experience, that’s helped me improve, getting to see guys play and even playing against them.”Before he takes on the professionals Franklin must beat Kyme, something Franklin said would be a ‘dream come true’, and the two are on course to meet in tomorrow night’s final at the Bermuda Squash Raquets Association club in Devonshire.Reaching that goal will be no easy feat. Kyme, who reached number 63 in the world during his time as a professional, has won the championships a record 11 times and has beaten Franklin in their last five competitive outings. It is exactly this type of challenge that Franklin must rise to though if he wants to succed on the World Tour, the next target on his list after Kyme.“If I can beat Nick that will be a huge breakthrough for me because I’ve lost to him the last five times we’ve played in tournament situations,” he said. “It’s just now if I can get past him, then I have nobody else to get past here in Bermuda, so that’s why this is important to me.“My first goal since I was 13 was to be number one in Bermuda and to accomplish that would be huge for me, that’s my dream pretty much. And then my second goal, which I set in the past year or so, is to try and break into the top 100 in the world, so that would be my next goal.”