ISDA Squash Tour 2012

Tournament Results:

Price And Gould Soar to Victory In Creek Challenge Cup by Rob Dinerman

Hammered throughout the opening game by top-seeded opponents who had been dominating the ISDA tour for the past several months, second seeds Ben Gould and Paul Price conjured up an 8-0 spurt early in the second game and never looked back, convincingly out-playing Damien Mudge and Viktor Berg 8-15 15-5 15-9 15-7 in the final round of the early-April Creek Challenge Cup and thereby sending a message to both their No. 1-ranked foes and the rest of the ISDA tour that, after struggling through a difficult winter stretch, they are now fully back on top of their formidable game. This Long Island setting, now in its seventh rendition (making it the longest continuously-running annual stop on the ISDA tour other than Greenwich, Boston and Brooklyn) had not been kind to either Gould or Price in recent years: Gould had been unable to convert multiple-match-ball opportunities both with Preston Quick two years ago in the quarters against Scott Butcher and Clive Leach (who rallied from 1-2, 11-14 to 15-14 before winning an anticlimactic 15-8 fifth game) and with Willie Hosey last year, when they were overtaken in the semis by Berg and Chris Walker in a fifth-set tiebreaker, while Price lost a five-game quarterfinal two years ago with Jamie Bentley against Matt Jenson and Jeff Mulligan and had to miss last year’s event altogether with a back injury. Mudge on the other hand had combined with Gary Waite to win all but one of the six prior editions of this tournament, that lone exception having come five years ago when he and Quick were battling Leach and Blair Horler on even terms until late in the second game, when Mudge collided with Horler and crashed head-first into the left side wall, disorienting him enough to require a team default and an immediate trip to a nearby hospital, where he was diagnosed as having sustained a concussion. Mudge had been playing as well as ever throughout the weekend – it was his clear-winner backhand reverse-corner at 17-all in the third game of a semifinal battle with Quick and John Russell that keyed that five-game, two-hour victory, which ended on another Mudge winner at 14-12 in the fifth --- as had his sharp-shooting partner Berg, who was on fire during the first game of the final. The five-tournament, 19-match undefeated streak this first-year pairing had compiled during what had been an unbeaten calendar ’08 slate coming into this event had been the longest of any team in the two and a half years since the last truly protracted (19 tournaments, 64 matches) Waite/Mudge run had been ended by Quick and Gould in the ’05 Big Apple Open. Two of those five consecutive titles (in Greenwich and Brooklyn) had come at the final-round expense of Price and Gould, and the first game of the Creek final had been more of the same. But after dropping the opening point of the second game, Gould and Price (who had had their own semifinal travails in their taut 3-1 match with Leach and Chris Walker, which ended when on a fourth-game simultaneous-game-ball a Price cross-court handcuffed Leach, whose response soared out well over the back wall) strung together those eight straight points, a harbinger of what was to follow during those last three single-figure games, none of which was characterized by quite as extended a point-winning run but all of which were marked by the two Aussies’ compelling superiority in every facet of the game over their heretofore nemeses, who were constantly on the defensive, trailing both statistically on the scoreboard (which showed leads for Price/Gould of 10-6 and 13-8 in the third game and of 9-3 and 11-4 in the close-out fourth after that 15-5 second stanza) and territorially on the court; Gould’s fierce blasts were opening up the court for Price’s stinging shot-making, puncturing the wondrous court coverage that had played so large a role in the recent dominant success of the Mudge/Berg duo. Gould’s powerful presentation has been in consistent evidence all season; the real difference in his team’s output this weekend compared to most of the last three months lay in how engaged and alert Price was, right from the beginning of the weekend. His front-court brilliance, so much a part of their ascent to the top team ranking a year ago and occasionally absent or at best fitfully present during much of this current season, was on full display, as was his vaunted creativity. It will be interesting to see if he and his talented teammate can maintain their season-best Creek form through the season-culminating Kellner Cup competition three weeks hence, when all four top teams (none of which lost a game in their respective quarterfinal matches) will be vying for the top prize of the 2007-08 ISDA tour.

Draw