ISDA Squash Tour 2012

Tournament Results:

San Francisco Report: Price And Gould Earn PayPal World Doubles Title By Rob Dinerman

       May 12 --- The ISDA 2008-09 tour came to a close last night at the University Club of San Francisco, where top seeds Paul Price and Ben Gould of Australia won the final round of the $25,000 PayPal World Hardball Doubles --- an ISDA-sanctioned though non-ranking biennial event in which both players from any given team have to be from the same country --- by a score of 15-11 15-12 15-17 15-9 over England’s currently-Manhattan-based torch-bearers John Russell and Clive Leach. Price and Gould, the second-ranked ISDA tandem this past season, are the only top-four ISDA team to be left intact by the foregoing eligibility stipulation (the others, namely No. 1 Viktor Berg (Canada)/Damien Mudge (Australia), No. 3 Russell (England)/Preston Quick (USA) and No. 4 Leach (England)/Matt Jenson (Australia), all had to switch partners in deference to this requirement) and they took full advantage throughout this past weekend of the familiarity they have acquired during their past three highly successful seasons together. This “Worlds” title was their sixth of the season (preceded by Baltimore, New York, Toronto, the North American Open in Greenwich and the Player’s Championship in Long Island), equaling the Mudge/Berg 2008-09 total, and their 16^th overall, a figure exceeded in ISDA history only by the incredible 76 that Mudge and Gary Waite won during their glorious run from 1999-2000 through 2006-07.

   Waite, who had retired after that 2006-07 season, entered this tourney with his Canadian compatriot Berg, with whom he had gone five for five in their limited forays as partners, the last of which, three years back, took place in this same Nob Hill venue and was highlighted by an 18-16 fifth-game final over Leach and Chris Walker. But whatever buzz had risen in association with Waite’s return to the competitive fray brusquely fizzled out against the harsh reality of the one-sided quarterfinal thrashing that Americans Quick and Whitten Morris administered, mostly at the beleaguered Waite’s expense. Morris punished him with hard-hit cross-courts while Quick dominated their left-wall exchanges, often scoring with crisp drop shots and wonderfully angled Philadelphia-boasts that caught Waite leaning to the front wall and landed for winners behind him. Waite, 42, is now zero for two in his post-retirement ventures onto ISDA turf (he and Jeff Mulligan were handily defeated by Mark Price and Joe Pentland, neither of whom had ever reached an ISDA semi prior to this match in December ’07 in a Vancouver quarterfinal) and he no doubt will have to carefully consider whether a third such attempt would be a wise decision going forward.

    After dropping the first two fast-paced games the next day in their semifinal against Price and Gould, Morris (making his first career ISDA semifinal appearance) and Quick, first-round winners over Egyptians Ayman Kerim and Mustafa Essam, slowed the ball down enough and elicited enough errors from Price to take the third game 15-11, but Price regained his extraordinary touch in the early stages of the fourth, during which he and Gould forged their way to a substantial enough lead to pretty much clinch that close-out game 15-11. Price and Gould had reached the semifinal stage with a close (17-15 in the fourth) quarterfinal win over Canadians James Hewitt and Michael Pirnak, who after a 15-4 opening-round first-game rout of Irish flag-carriers Dan Roberts and Steve Richardson had actually trailed two games to one before tying the match with a solid fourth game and running away with a 15-5 fifth, the only route-going match of the entire tournament.

   Meanwhile, in the bottom half, Mudge, who moved back to the right wall for this tourney after his last two seasons on the left as Berg’s partner, and Jenson strode confidently into the semis with a pair of straight-set wins over first New Zealanders Glen Wilson and Dan Sharplin and then Americans Morris Clothier and Greg Park, who after dropping a one-point first game to recently-crowned Canadian Nationals champions Adrian Griffin and Tyler Millard had taken the next three in convincing fashion. Opposing Mudge and Jenson at that stage was the Leach/Russell pairing of New York Athletic Club pros who were teaming up for the first time and who had dispatched Ben Howell/Michael Puertas of England and Raj Nanda/Mark Price of Australia en route to this confrontation in a Sunday afternoon schedule that featured not only both of the men’s semis but also the final round of the $10,000 seven-team women’s competition, in which top seeded Canadians Steph Hewitt and Jessica DiMauro overcame British stand-outs Suzie Pierrepont and Fiona Geaves by a count of 15-6 6-15 15-13 15-12.

   As had been the case in the top-half semi (and as would also be the case in the ensuing final), the eventual winners Leach and Russell forged their way to a two games to love lead, faltered briefly in the third but regained control in the fourth game of their 15-12 15-10 15-17 15-12 ticket to the Monday-evening final. Leach attacked his season-long partner Jenson with an alternating regimen of three-walls, cross-courts and whirly-birds to open up the front-left part of the court, where Russell’s lethal short game accounted for many of his winners. His and Leach’s hot hand also gave them a 10-8 lead in the opening game of the final, at which point Price conjured up several winners keying a 7-1 game-closing run that carried them to a sizable second-game cushion and shortly thereafter a two/love lead.

    In the third, Leach and Russell did a better job of mixing up the pace (just as Morris and Quick had successfully done in their third game against the same opponents a day earlier) to lead late in the game, which they eventually won in a best-of-five tiebreaker. But in the fourth game, Gould and Price inexorably forged their way to an 11-3 advantage that was too large for the valiant Russell/Leach duo to overcome. Ultimately, Leach and Gould more or less neutralized each other on the right wall and Price was able to come up with just enough more winners than Russell to enable his team to prevail. This was the fourth straight ISDA event at this host site in which Leach, playing with different partners in each case, reached the final round only to come up short in each instance – he had done so with Willie Hosey in ’04, with Pirnak in ’05 (in both cases losing the final to Waite/Mudge) and, as noted, with Walker in ’06.