ISDA Squash Tour 2012

Tournament Results:

Mudge And Berg Triumph In Brooklyn Heights By Rob Dinerman

February 23 -- Damien Mudge and Viktor Berg remained undefeated in calendar ’08 this afternoon at the Heights Casino Club, where they thoroughly out-played Ben Gould and Paul Price 15-12, 12 and 10 in the final round of the $ 35,000 David C. Johnson Memorial Invitational. This win made first-year partners Mudge and Berg four for four (Boston, Greenwich, Cleveland and now Brooklyn) this year, while giving them five ISDA titles (and six final-round appearances) in the last six events (they won in Wilmington right after Thanksgiving before losing to Pricec/Gould one week later in Vancouver) and consolidating their recent displacement of Price and Gould from the No. 1 team ISDA ranking. Mudge, who as Gary Waite’s right-wall partner captured this tournament throughout the six-year period from 2002-2007 before switching to the left wall to play with Berg this season after Waite announced his retirement last spring, has therefore now won seven consecutive Johnson titles, while Berg won his first-ever ISDA title in this same Montague Street site when his rookie 2000-01 season was highlighted by his and Michael Pirnak’s final-round victory over Waite and Mark Talbott, who retired from pro doubles competition after that match. This happy Heights Casino history for both of today’s eventual winners may have played some role in this afternoon’s action, as likely did the 13-match winning streak, the longest of any team all season, that they carried into the final. But whatever the backdrop, Mudge and Berg emphatically evened their in-season record against their Greenwich final-round victims Price and Gould at two matches apiece by running off to 11-6 and 13-9 leads against Price and Gould in both the first two games, holding off late charges that in each case ended on unforced Price tins at 12-14, and ripping off a five-point spurt from 6-8 to 11-8 in the close-out third game, which also ended on a Price tin after Berg had brought his team to championship-point on an amazing cross-court nick serve-return that rolled insolently out at Price’s feet. The latter, whose four or five splendidly struck front-court winners per game were almost equaled by a series of costly errors, was convincingly out-performed all afternoon on the left wall by Mudge, who came out on top of nearly all their left-wall exchanges, created chaos for both his opponents with his range and power, displayed a touch on his backhand reverse that had never been as apparent during his many years as a dominant right-wall superstar and generally showed a level of confidence and comfort on his “new” wall that belies the recency of this switch. Berg and Mudge had advanced to the final with a pair of four-game Saturday wins over first Steve Scharff and Ayman Karim (round of 16 winners over Mark Chaloner and Michael Pirnak) and then Clive Leach and Chris Walker, who took the first game of this semifinal in overtime but lost the next three to a Mudge/Berg team against which they had gone 3-0 during the fall portion of the schedule. As had also been the case in last year’s Johnson semi (when they had rallied from 11-12 to 15-13), Price and Gould had trailed John Russell and Preston Quick late in the fifth game Saturday evening, 11-7 in this case, when immediately following a ball change Quick uncharacteristically committed three consecutive bad tins, part of a disastrous 8-1 end-game slump for Russell/Quick in which they lost six of their eight points on racquet errors, the one big exception being a beautiful Price roll-corner winner at 12-all. In other action, Joe Pentland and Mark Price, Price/Gould’s quarterfinal opponents, advanced that far by subduing U. S. Nationals A champs Whitten Morris and Michael Ferreira; Willie Hosey and Matt Jenson defeated Ben Howell and Tyler Millard before meeting Walker/Leach; and Jamie Crombie and Michael Puertas, after surviving their qualifying bracket, had to default to James Hewitt and Jeff Mulligan due to a leg injury to Crombie late in his final-round qualifier that worsened afterwards to the point where he couldn’t play that evening. One perennial Johnson participant who ALWAYS comes to play has been and continues to be head referee Larry Sconzo, who this year manned that important capacity for the THIRTIETH consecutive year, fully half of the 60 editions of this venerable event that have now been held. Highly popular among players and club members alike, Sconzo has been a remarkable advocate of squash in this country, and his enthusiastic embrace of the refereeing duties even extended this year to the first-ever JUNIOR Johnson final, which was followed by first the pro-am final and then the Pro final, all three of which Sconzo refereed in succession.

Draw