ISDA Squash Tour 2012

Tournament Results:

Price And Gould Grab Third Straight Big Apple Open By Rob Dinerman

  November 4 --- Trailing 12-8 in the pivotal second game of the final round of the sixth annual Big Apple Open, a $25,000 ISDA pro doubles event sponsored by Cushman Wakefield and hosted as always by the New York Athletic Club, two-time defending champs Ben Gould and Paul Price conjured up a 5-0 run that brought them to, and ultimately through, a best-of-five tiebreaker that became the defining moment of their eventual 15-9 16-14 15-11 victory over top seeds Damien Mudge and Viktor Berg. The outcome actually marked the fourth consecutive Big Apple Open title for Gould, who had teamed with Preston Quick to win in 2005 before joining up with Price the following season. Opposing Gould in each of those finals has been Mudge, who in fact has reached the final round of this tournament every year of its existence (the first four years with Gary Waite, the last two with Berg, with whom Mudge held an 11-9 lead in the fifth game a year ago before bowing to a 6-0 Price/Gould match-ending spurt) finishing on the winning end only once, however, a stunning development when one considers that Mudge has posted a winning final-round mark in every other stop on the ISDA circuit, usually by an overwhelming margin.

    Price and Gould clinched the opening game with a 10-1 burst that replaced a 5-3 early deficit with a commanding 13-6 lead. It was during this stretch that Berg, perhaps at least partially due to the enormous amount of energy he had expended in his (ultimately unsuccessful) five-game pro-am final that ended just minutes before the pro final began, appeared to have strained his shoulder, which was clearly affecting his swing and confidence level during the next game and a half. Mudge, sensing that his partner was in some trouble and consequently trying to make up the slack, committed several tins, and Price buried some precisely-hit front-court winners as well. But by midway through the second game, Berg seemed to have resolved his arm issues, at least for the most part, and he and Mudge were at their best in moving from 5-6 to that 12-8 advantage.

   Gould and Price, as noted, then got to 13-12 (on two Price nick-winners, a steaming Gould rail past Berg and a pair of Mudge errors), following which a crafty Berg roll-corner volley, possibly the most creative shot of the entire night, made it 13-all. Price hit a lob out of court on the first point, but his razor-sharp reverse-corner serve-return was too well angled for Mudge to return, whereupon Berg tinned a re-drop when drawn up front and a Mudge attempt to crush a backhand cross-court past Gould instead found the tin, eliciting a resounding metallic groan that seemed to announce the death knell for his team’s chances, at least for this evening; Mudge and Berg had put too much effort into coming away with this game and thereby evening the match to afford not to have done so.

   Not only were Price and Gould out-playing their vaunted top-ranked opponents, they appeared to be getting most of the lucky bounces as well, most notably at 4-all in the third game, when a Mudge backhand rail hugged the left wall so closely that Price could only get the edge of his racquet on it --- just enough to nudge the ball barely over the tin for a fluke winner that launched a five-point skein to 9-4. Dead game if visibly deflated by their mounting deficit, Berg and Mudge tenaciously climbed back to 9-11 when Mudge nicked a backhand three-wall, then to 10-12 when a Gould cross-court nick was nullified by a tinned Price reverse-corner. But Gould fenced Berg just enough out of position on the right wall to score with a forehand rail, after which a Price backhand drop shot was too tight for Mudge to steer back into play. On the 14-10 match-ball, Price tinned a backhand roll-corner volley, but Gould then ended the action with another low forehand cross-court blast that dead-rolled in front of Mudge.

   Both finalists won their respective semis (Price/Gould after dropping the first game to Clive Leach and Matt Jenson, Berg/Mudge with the aid of a tiebreaker second game against John Russell and Preston Quick, their Baltimore semifinal conquerors two weeks ago) in four games. Round of 16 action was highlighted by a pair of rallying five-game wins, one by Willie Hosey (winner with Leach of the inaugural Big Apple Open) and Mark Chaloner, who trailed 2-0 before sweeping through a best-of-nine third-game tiebreaker en route to defeating Yvain Badan and Eric Vlcek; and the other by Joe Pentland and Steve Scharff, who trailed qualifiers Whitten Morris and Addison West 11-7 in the fifth, yet wound up winning 15-12. Morris and West had trailed in both of their qualifying matches, down 2-1 against Eric Christiansen and Yasser Kamel, then down 2-0 vs. Raj Nanda and Bradley Ball.

    After coming up, as noted, barely short in their bid to defeat Pentland and Scharff, their third consecutive five-game match in barely 24 hours, Morris and West each then played four MORE matches in the concomitant Silver Racquets Invitational at the nearby Racquet & Tennis Club, ultimately opposing each other in the final, with Morris and Michael Ferreira prevailing over West and Greg Park. Fatigued by their respective comeback efforts, both the Pentland/Scharff and Hosey/Chaloner pairings lost in the quarters (to Berg/Mudge and Price/Gould respectively). In the remaining quarterfinal matches, Russell and Quick out-played James Hewitt and Jeff Mulligan, while Leach and Jenson did the same to Jonny Smith and Chris Walker, with both matches going four games.