ISDA Squash Tour 2008

Writen by Rob Dinerman
Date: September 28/06

As the International Squash Doubles Association (ISDA) gears up for the October to May 2006-07 season, the eighth of its highly successful existence, the opening portion in particular of the 16-stop tour
(which kicks off with the fourth annual Maryland Club Open next week) seems likely to be characterized by a turbulent jockeying for position among a claque of top-tier players, an unusually high percentage of whom are joining up with new partners this fall.

So advanced is this latter phenomenon that the relatively sparse five-tournament total that Scott Butcher and Clive Leach logged together last winter/spring after partnering up in February are enough to make this New York-based pairing of former PSA tour veterans the third longest-serving present partnership on the entire tour! The only teams ahead of them in this regard are Chris Walker/Viktor Berg, whose partnership began on Opening Day last autumn, and the dominant tandem of Gary Waite and Damien Mudge, whose seven years as partners have produced seven No. 1 team rankings, 71 ranking-tournament titles (in 78 attempts), 76 final-round appearances and a well-deserved standing as the greatest doubles team in the history of the sport.

Seven of those trophies were garnered by The Champs last season, during which however, they also lost one semifinal (in Cleveland in mid-winter at the hands of eventual champs Walker and Berg) and one final (15-14 in the fourth in early November in New York to Preston Quick and Ben Gould, who lost a final-round rematch in Toronto one week later on a Quick tin at simultaneous championship-point), necessitating a several-tournament hiatus from the tour in order to reload. This Waite and Mudge successfully accomplished to the extent of rejoining the tour in late January just in time to notch their sixth consecutive North American Open title, the ninth straight and 10th overall for Waite, who annexed this prestigious crown with Scott Dulmage in '94 and with Mark Talbott in 1997-99 before he teamed up with Mudge for the 1999-2000 campaign.

Despite an impressive late-season Waite/Mudge title-taking surge that included Brooklyn, the U. S. Nationals, Long Island and the Kellner Cup, there were some undeniable fissures that began to appear in their skein of invincibility that may well carry over into this upcoming campaign. In addition to being pressed to five games late last season by Butcher/Leach in a Brooklyn semifinal, by Jamie Bentley/Paul Price in the U. S. Nationals final in St. Louis and again in a Kellner Cup semi by Butcher and Leach, who surrendered only eight combined points in the third and fourth games, there were some disquieting post-Kellner Cup chronology benchmarks and injury issues that have emerged as well. Waite turned 40 earlier this month and Mudge, who similarly celebrated a milestone birthday when he turned 30 last spring, badly injured his right (i.e. playing) shoulder while surfing early this past summer, a wound serious enough to cause the power-hitting Aussie to contemplate surgery before he ultimately opted for an extensive physical-therapy program. As well, it seems fairly clear that the Walker/Berg contingent is likely to be even better for having now had a full season together under their belts, and already may constitute the most formidable threat to displace them from No. 1 that Waite and Mudge have ever had to confront.
Price will be teaming up with his Aussie compatriot Gould this season, as will Quick with John Russell. They are four of the 13 of the top 19 ranked players on the ISDA computer who will start the season with partners whom they have previously played with either never or only once. Not included in this group are the oldies-but-goodies team of Willie Hosey and Bentley, who were ranked second behind Waite/Mudge in the early 2000's and who will be rejoining forces after several years during which each thrived with a number of different partners. A potential real wild-card in this year's tour is Blair Horler, a three-time ISDA tour title winner with Leach in 2003 (Toronto, Long Island and the Kellner Cup), two of them at Waite/Mudge's final-round expense, who underwent what appears to be successful knee surgery, his second such procedure, just a few weeks ago and plans to resurface with his extraordinarily powerful backhand blasts by mid season.