Writen by Rob Dinerman
Date: February 27/08
By sweeping through both the January (Boston and Greenwich) and February (Cleveland and Brooklyn) portions of the 2007-08 ISDA schedule, first-year partners Damien Mudge and Viktor Berg are now 13-0 in calendar 2008 and 18-1 since Thanksgiving, having also won in Wilmington in early December and reached the final a week later in Vancouver, where they were dead-even at 1-all, 7-all against Paul Price and Ben Gould before a Gould follow-through to Berg’s face necessitated a lengthy play stoppage and several stitches to stop the bleeding, after which Berg and Mudge were never the same for the remainder of that match.
But Mudge and Berg have subsequently left that mid-match mishap (as well as some early-season travails caused largely by a hamstring injury to Berg’s left leg that lingered throughout most of the autumn months) far behind them with their recent surge, which enabled them to first displace Price and Gould from the No. 1 team ranking slot with the four-game Greenwich final and then expand their margin by winning in Cleveland (which a flu-ridden Price had to miss) and especially by defeating Price/Gould in straight sets in the Heights Casino final yesterday afternoon. That very convincing 15-12, 12 and 10 outcome marked the seventh consecutive triumph in this venerable Brooklyn Heights arena for Mudge (who had partnered Gary Waite to this title from 2002-2007, with their only win in their five 2006-07 meetings with Price/Gould having occurred in last year’s final) and a return to the winner’s circle in this event as well for Berg, whose rookie 2000-2001 season was highlighted by his and Pirnak’s final-round win over Waite and Mark Talbott in what proved to be the latter’s pro-doubles swan song.
Perhaps more important than the very tangible numerical margin that Mudge and Berg are continually building for themselves over their two main challengers (namely Price/Gould, followed by Chris Walker and Clive Leach, Mudge/Berg’s semifinal victims in Brooklyn) from one event to the next has been the psychological edge they seem to be solidifying with every passing tournament. This latter phenomenon was very evident in the Heights Casino final, as right from the very first point (a sharply-angled backhand reverse-corner from Mudge’s bat that Price had no chance of retrieving) Mudge and Berg exuded the aura of a team that KNOWS that it is playing at a higher level than any other rival and that fully expects every match to bear that superiority out --- Walker and Leach evinced the same attitude in their season-opening pair of October titles in St. Louis and Baltimore, as did Price and Gould through most of the 2006-07 campaign and during their four-titles-in-five-events November/December run this season as well.
But with Leach and Walker having gone a bit flat while injuries and illness have taken a toll on Price and Gould, for the past few months it has clearly been Mudge and Berg whose time it has been to assert themselves as not only the top team but a dominant team, to a degree that no one could have plausibly foreseen during the first third of the current season. Berg was brilliant all weekend, and Mudge’s adjustment to his “new” left-wall position, after so many record-shattering years on the right as Waite’s partner, has been nothing short of extraordinary, as he has demonstrated a front-court touch that he either didn’t have or didn’t need prior to this season. He soundly out-played Price in yesterday’s final not with the bludgeoning pace that had become his trademark but rather with left-wall rail lobs that chased his fearsomely-talented shot-making counterpart into the back corner, with straight drops and reverses that kept him on the run, thereby blunting his deadly counter-attacks, and with expertly-timed Philadelphia-boasts that confused both opponents and opened up the court.
Price’s magical touch still accounted for four or five breathtaking winners per game (of the 10 best shots of the match, he accounted for at least seven, one of the exceptions being a remarkable Berg cross-drop serve-return winner that rolled out of the front-left nick to get his team to championship-point) but he committed nearly an equal amount of costly tins, including on all three game-points-against, as well as on the opening points of both the second and third games. At times, especially during the stretches when Mudge/Berg were moving out to the substantial mid-game leads they attained in all three games, Price’s frequent frowns and sour facial expressions seemed those of someone who would have preferred to have been elsewhere. Gould competed as wholeheartedly as ever (the hard-serving tactic he adopted during the last two games was highly effective, and his powerful and penetrating drives had an impact as well) but both Australian stars (who had had to rally from 7-11 in the fifth game of their Saturday semi against Preston Quick and John Russell, who combined to contribute six errors to the Price/Gould 8-1 match-saving run) seemed to be laboring uphill. It wasn’t nearly enough against the hungrier, happier, more confident ascendant Mudge/Berg duo.
As noted Russell and Quick were the fourth pair of Brooklyn semifinalists, bringing to 42-1 the record these top four teams have compiled so far this season against the rest of the ISDA field. Joe Pentland and Mark Price continued their season-long pattern of reaching the quarterfinals (they also got to the Vancouver semis), but Mark Chaloner and Michael Pirnak, quarterfinalists throughout this their first season as partners, were stopped short of that stage in Brooklyn when Ayman Karim and Steve Scharff out-played them in four games. First-time partners Jeff Mulligan and James Hewitt got a walkover into the quarters over qualifiers Jamie Crombie and Michael Puertas when the former’s upper-calf muscle, injured in the late stages of the last qualifying match, tightened up too much for him to play, and Matt Jenson, a finalist for the first time in his career in Cleveland when he played with Quick while Russell was attending his father’s 60th birthday party that weekend in Cleveland, joined up with Willie Hosey to defeat Ben Howell and Tyler Millard before they lost to Russell and Quick in the quarters. The next ISDA tour stop will be in early March in Denver, followed by three April/May events, namely the Creek Challenge Cup in Long Island, the biennial Kellner Cup in New York and the season finale in Sea Island, Georgia, a new addition to the schedule.