Writen by Rob Dinerman
Date: January 30/08
This ISDA season has been a series of waves, with each of the top three teams (two of which were formed only this past summer) taking a turn at the top. First, Clive Leach and his British compatriot Chris Walker celebrated their virtually brand new collaboration (they had partnered up only once before, 17 months earlier) with a pair of eleventh-hour rallies past reigning No. 1’s Paul Price and Ben Gould that brought the English pair to the winner’s circle of the season-opening October tour stops in St. Louis and Baltimore and enabled them to briefly wrest the No. 1 team ranking from Price and Gould. Then the latter pair of gun-slinging Australians resiliently captured four of the five November/December events (in, sequentially, New York, Chicago, Toronto and Vancouver), with only a mild hiccup in the form of a fifth-set tiebreaker semifinal loss in Wilmington to Preston Quick and John Russell one week prior to Vancouver.
During these autumn months, Damien Mudge, who along with his eight-year left-wall partner Gary Waite had dominated the tour until the 2006-07 season, setting records that have no chance of ever being broken, was in the wake of Waite’s retirement this past summer getting accustomed to both a new partner (Viktor Berg) and a new wall, having switched to the left. Neither transition was easy, especially in light of Berg’s preseason hamstring pull, which sidelined him for St. Louis and lingered inconveniently on throughout much of the fall. But just after Thanksgiving, everything suddenly came together for this talented duo, which handily out-played Russell/Quick in the Wilmington final (after first ending their three-match losing streak against Walker/Leach in the semis), reached the Vancouver final and, more dramatically, have overwhelmed the field in both January tournaments, namely Boston and Greenwich, site of one of the most prestigious tournaments in the whole schedule, the North American Open. It was the eighth such crown in the past nine years for Mudge (who won it from 2000-2006 with Waite before they were barely overtaken after leading Price/Gould two games to love in the ’07 final) and the first for Berg, who was runner-up in ’02 with Willie Hosey and in ’06 with Walker.
The recent Mudge/Berg run has landed them, at least for the time being, into the No. 1 ranking, the first time in ISDA history that as many as three teams have occupied that slot in the same season --- and this season is barely halfway over. Already the Price/Gould and Walker/Leach teams have clashed no fewer than seven times in 2007-08, with the former holding a slim 4-3 edge on the strength of the murderously competitive semi they had at the Greenwich Field Club while Mudge and Berg were out-playing Russell and Quick in more clear-cut fashion. It was known before the final that whoever won would thereby hold the No. 1 ranking, and there were a few “firsts” on the line as well, namely a chance for Mudge to join Waite as the only players to win the North American Open on each wall, as well as for Berg to garner what would clearly be a career highlight in terms of the magnitude of the title these two juggernauts were vying for.
For the second time in seven weeks, a Price/Gould vs. Mudge/Berg ISDA final would have as a defining moment an in-match injury: midway through the third game of a dead-even match (1-all, 7-all) in Vancouver, a Gould forehand follow-through smashed Berg in the face, requiring 20 stitches and necessitating a substantial play stoppage, after which Mudge and Berg were never the same; and with his team ahead 10-7 in the first game in Greenwich, Price badly sprained his ankle when he landed awkwardly on Mudge’s foot, following which (after a 15-minute hiatus and a tape job on the wounded joint) Mudge and Berg dropped only one point thereafter that game, garnered the second in a tiebreaker, lost a tight third game but grabbed a lead in the fourth that became too large for Price and Gould to overcome. There are likely to be many more battles between these top three (who, along with Russell/Quick, have gone a combined virtually upset-proof 36-1 against the rest of the field) as they jockey for supremacy.
That one exception in pre-semis play came when Russell and Quick fell victim to Scott Butcher and Hosey in a Big Apple Open quarterfinal in early November. For Butcher, twice an ISDA finalist last season (in Toronto and at Merion) when Leach was his partner, it was a praiseworthy swan song to a solid career, coming as it did shortly before he and his wife moved permanently back to their native Australia to await the birth of their first child later this winter. And for Hosey, it was just one more in an enormously multitudinous year-long demonstration of his ability, versatility and longevity. Now 46, and to all appearances as fit and fleet as ever, the record 10-time Irish National champion has, improbably, played with no fewer than ELEVEN partners in his past 12 ISDA events dating back to early-February ’07, nine of whom had never been his partner prior to this span. Playing both walls, he has reached at least the quarters throughout that period, combining with Mudge to attain the St. Louis final while Berg was sidelined with his hamstring injury. At a time when such longtime ISDA stars as Waite, Jamie Bentley and Butcher have departed the scene, Hosey, who is a half-decade or more older than all of them, is still going as strong as ever and in the process becoming a striking personification of the resolve and vitality that have so admirably characterized the ISDA, which celebrated the eight-year anniversary of its existence earlier this month.