ISDA Squash Tour 2012

Tournament Results:

Mudge And Berg Survive Five-Game Heights Casino Final By Rob Dinerman

February 22 --- Just two points from a fourth game the winning of which would have ended several prolonged and significant streaks in the history of both the ISDA and this venerable Brooklyn Heights host venue, Preston Quick and John Russell fell barely short of closing the deal late this afternoon, giving defending champions Damien Mudge and Viktor Berg just the small opening they needed to wind up on the winning end of a highly entertaining 15-11 11-15 13-15 15-13 15-11 Heights Casino final that left both players and spectators alike equal parts exhausted and exhilarated by what they had been a part of during the wildly undulating two-hour epic drama. This 61^st edition of the"Johnson,” as the event is affectionately known, was one of the best-played ever, beginning right with a Thursday-night qualifying-round schedule that witnessed consecutive airtight five-game outcomes, and ending with one of the most memorable final rounds (and the only one during the decade of the 2000’s to require a fifth game) in the history of the tournament.

In rallying from 12-13 down in the fourth game (on a Berg forehand drive down the middle and a pair of blazing Mudge backhand cross-courts at “no-set,” the first of which passed Quick cleanly and the second of which the latter was unable to scoop up when it landed at his feet) and then prevailing in the fifth, Mudge extended his Heights Casino winning streak to a record-setting eight straight (from 2002-07 with Gary Waite and the last two years with Berg) and he and Berg have now won five of the last six ISDA tournaments, a run reminiscent of what happened last season, when they won five consecutive tourneys during the same late-autumn/mid-winter stretch in which they have similarly flourished this season as well. And by denying, however narrowly, the 2007 U. S. Nationals winners Russell and Quick their valiant bid for this title (whose $30,000 purse is tied with the Maryland Club Open for the largest of the season), Mudge and Berg, semifinal 3-0 winners over Matt Jenson and Clive Leach, extended to 23 the number of consecutive ISDA ranking-level tournaments that either they or the Ben Gould/Paul Price tandem has won; not since Leach and Chris Walker triumphed in Baltimore in October ’07 has any team outside of the Big Two been able to capture an ISDA crown.

Russell and Quick had been successfully wending their way through treacherous end-games, often on the strength of front-court Russell winners, throughout the weekend, which is why they seemed fated to close out the match in that final-round fourth game. In their quarterfinal against Steve Scharff and James Hewitt, they would have fallen behind two games to love had it not been for a razor-sharp Russell backhand reverse-corner winner at 14-all in the second, the key moment of an eventual four-game victory. Then in the semis against Mark Chaloner and Willie Hosey (who had followed a 3-1 round-of-16 win over Joe Pentland and Mark Price by rallying from two-love down to defeat Michael Pirnak, subbing for an injured Paul Price, and Gould), they let their first three match-balls at 2-1, 14-10 get away before a Russell front-right nick rolled out to complete that 15-13 tally. And in the potentially pivotal third game of the Mudge/Berg final with the match tied at a game apiece, Quick and Russell, trailing 7-0 and 9-2, chipped determinedly away at their deficit, benefiting from some opponents’ tins as well as a few of their own winners, until at 12-all, three tins --- one each by first Mudge on a cross-court, then Berg on an impatient reverse-corner following two spectacular Quick retrievals, and finally Quick on a cross-court drop-shot --- made it 14-13 for Russell/Quick, at which stage Russell ended a long point with another backhand cross-court volley that rolled out for a winner as a dismayed Mudge tossed his racquet skyward in frustration at having lost such a crucial point on such an audacious shot, one that appeared to be carrying the message that a Russell/Quick win on this occasion was simply meant to be.

This seemed even more likely when Russell, a highly popular figure at the host venue after the several early-2000’s years during which he gave lessons there, hit a shallow reverse-corner winner at 11-all that a diving Mudge couldn’t reach, followed by another nick-finding volley at 12-all with Berg stuck in back to make the score 13-12. But, as noted, the Mudge/Berg duo ran off three straight points to close out that game and broke permanently away in the fifth when at 3-4 they conjured up a 5-0 run to 8-4, with three of those points coming on winners off Berg’s racquet, including a hard serve that Russell didn’t volley that rolled back at him out of the back-wall nick. With their chances starting to slip away, Russell and Quick climbed to 6-10, at which stage they were denied a clearly-deserved (and badly needed) stroke call on a split-decision by the officials, in the immediate wake of which a disconsolate Russell tinned the ensuing serve-return, giving Berg and Mudge an 11-6 lead that essentially decided the eventual 15-11 outcome.