ISDA Squash Tour 2012

Tournament Results:

Philly Racquet Club Challenger: Hewitt/Hosey Come Through In The Clutch by Rob Dinerman

February 17 --- Top seeds Willie Hosey and James Hewitt survived a series of taut, down-to-the-wire games en route to claiming the Philadelphia Racquet Club Challenger tournament this past weekend in an event that marked the return of the ISDA to this venue after a six-year hiatus. Hosey had been (along with Michael Pirnak) a finalist in that 2002 tourney, in which Blair Horler and Clive Leach claimed the first of their four ISDA titles in what was for them a break-out season. This time, however, Hosey made it all the way to the winner’s circle, though not before having to weather a number of predicaments, beginning in his and Hewitt’s very first game of the weekend, when they trailed Todd Harrity, the current U. S. under-19 singles champion, and Rob Dinerman 14-10 before eventually saving five game-points against them en route to 17-16.

That tense frame proved a harbinger both for the Friday-night quarterfinal action (which went until very late and culminated with a fifth-game overtime, of which more anon) and for the Hewitt/Hosey tournament-long experience, in which they had two one-point games in all three of their matches, bookended by this type of conclusion to both the first (as noted) and last of the 11 games that their path to the title consumed. They saved eight game-balls-against vs. Harrity/Dinerman (who led 14-12 in the second), then defeated Carl Baglio and Eric Christiansen (four-game first-round winners over Will Osnato and Michael Fensterstock) Saturday evening by a score of 16-17 15-10 17-16 15-3 in the semis, and the Cynwyd Club pairing of head pro Shane Coleman and his assistant Gavin Jones in a 15-16 15-12 15-10 17-16 final early Sunday afternoon.

Coleman and Jones, who first out-played Tom Harrity and Jacques Swanepoel in their opening round, then opposed another Philadelphia pairing, namely Rob Whitehouse, head pro of the host club, and his younger, power-hitting right-wall partner Greg Park. The latter pair, semifinalists last spring in the U. S. National Doubles (where they took Scott Stoneburgh and Morris Clothier to five games), entered their quarterfinal match against second seeds Andrew Merrill and Hamed Anvari with the momentum of having already won a Thursday-night qualifier over Todd Anderson and Tim Porter. Whitehouse and Park have historically played some of their best squash on their “home” Racquet Club courts (where they have won the last two editions of the Jimmy Dunn, including an 18-17 fifth-game ’07 final with Clothier and Trevor McGuinness) and this time they again rose to the fore in a fifth-game overtime, riding a quartet of consecutive and varied front-court winners from an exhausted-looking but still-dangerous Whitehouse in that best-of-nine session, which wound up with an 18-15 tally that was greeted with a roar of approval from the raucous throng of spectators that had steadily congregated throughout the evening.

After the Coleman/Jones and Whitehouse/Park duos had exchanged lopsided scores in the opening pair of games, the former tandem gradually were able to assert themselves in the 15-10, 15-12 backstretch. Whitehouse, just weeks short of his 40^th birthday, was having to contend with the much-bigger Coleman’s imposing presence and power along the left wall, and Jones, whose shot-making had accounted for many of his team’s points throughout the tournament, was frustrating both of his opponents by running many of their would-be winners down. Ultimately, the power they were consistently able to generate from both flanks enabled them to emerge with a hard-fought 3-1 ticket to the final, whose opening game they earned as well when a desperation Jones stab at a ball that was almost fully past him resulted in an unreachable double-boast that just made it to the front wall at simultaneous-game-ball.

But Hewitt and Hosey resiliently rebounded from that bit of misfortune by steadily proceeding to a two games to one lead. Jones (who had crashed into a side wall while diving for a ball late in the third game, injuring his hand in the process and necessitating a post-match trip to the hospital for X-rays) and Coleman had one more opportunity in the fourth game, which seesawed hair-raisingly to a last-possible-point conclusion, at which juncture Jones, who had played with such verve and energy throughout the event, went for a shallow drive that instead rang loudly off the tin. Though Hewitt and Hosey spent the entire tournament fighting off challenges from motivated younger contenders, it must be said that they did what they needed to fulfill their No. 1 seeding, and that whenever they had to come up with a winner (or a STRING of winners) at the end of a closely-contested game, they were able to do exactly that.