ISDA Squash Tour 2008

Writen by Rob Dinerman
Date: April 09/08

By defeating Damien Mudge and Viktor Berg in a four-game Creek Challenge Cup final in Locust Valley this past weekend, dominating the match’s last three single-figure games in the process after dropping the opener, Paul Price and Ben Gould not only notched their fifth ISDA title (preceded by autumn wins in New York, Chicago, Toronto and Vancouver) of the current season, matching their 2006-07 total, they also ended a Mudge/Berg undefeated streak that had encompassed all five of the prior calendar 2008 ISDA tour stops (namely Greenwich, Boston, Cleveland, Brooklyn and Denver) and 19 consecutive matches, firmly ensconcing them in the No. 1 team ranking slot. In so doing, Price and Gould conveyed the cautionary message that, after struggling through a patchy and sometimes malady-plagued winter stretch, these Australian gunslingers are very much back on top of their formidable games just as the highest-purse and most coveted event on this season’s entire schedule, the late-April $ 70,000 Kellner Cup, is coming into view.

They also improved their head-to-head 2007-08 record to 3-2, all in finals, against their main rivals for the No. 1 end-of-season team ranking, which will likely be determined by what happens in the Kellner Cup, which due to its tour-high (by far) purse, bright-lights mid-town Manhattan location, burgeoning tradition and (importantly) late-season time slot on the schedule has devolved into a kind of postseason playoff competition, especially in a tour year like this one, when, for the first time in the eight-year history of the ISDA, no fewer than three teams (namely Price/Gould, Chris Walker/Clive Leach, whose pair of season-opening October triumphs in St. Louis and Baltimore enabled them to briefly seize the No. 1 ranking, and Mudge/Berg, who took over that standing when they annexed the North American Open crown in mid-January with their four-game final-round win over Price and Gould) have held the top position.

The other top-four team, John Russell and Preston Quick, stands equidistant between the top three tandems and the rest of the ISDA field, having gone a combined 2-8 against the top three (with semifinal wins in Wilmington, in a fifth-set tiebreaker, and Denver over Price and Gould, prior to dropping each subsequent final against Mudge and Berg) and 10-1 against everyone else, the one loss occurring in the early-November Big Apple Open against Scott Butcher and Willie Hosey on a weekend when Russell was also participating in (and completing, in a highly respectable time) the New York City Marathon. In fact, that Butcher/Hosey outcome represents the only setback sustained so far this entire season by any of the top four teams against the remainder of the field in 51 combined attempts. Only two players other than these eight have attained an ISDA final, namely Hosey in the St. Louis season opener, when he played with Mudge while Berg was recovering from a hamstring pull, and Matt Jenson, who pinch-hit for Russell in Cleveland, where he and Quick defeated first Michael Pirnak/Mark Chaloner and then Walker/Leach before Mudge and Berg out-played them in the final.

Whether any other team can puncture the aristocracy that has formed this season in an event of the Kellner Cup’s magnitude remains to be seen, though Joe Pentland and Mark Price, semifinalists in Vancouver (where they beat Jeff Mulligan and the now rarely-appearing superstar Gary Waite) and consistent quarterfinalists all season, have several times been on the cusp of a breakthrough win, especially in Boston, where they led Russell/Quick 2-1, 14-10 (quintuple-match-ball) before losing agonizingly in five. Pirnak and Chaloner, finalists in their lone foray prior to this season (the ’02 Cambridge Club tourney) who entered the year with high expectations, became increasingly frustrated at their inability to crack the quarterfinal barrier and have gone their separate ways. James Hewitt and Jenson have both reached numerous quarterfinals with multiple partners, as has Ayman Kerim, who had to miss thr recent Creek event (in which he and Steve Scharff were entered) with the flu. Unlike last season, which seemed to end in mid-air without the Kellner Cup (which switched from an annual to a biennial tournament after ’06 and therefore didn’t take place in ’07) to anchor the spring schedule, the current campaign will reach its culmination later this month, when the three host clubs (namely Racquet & Tennis, University and Union) will bear witness to what is likely to be a frenetic clash among the top few pairings for this coveted crown, the lucrative winner’s share that it will offer and the No. 1 ranking that it will likely ensure.