ISDA Squash Tour 2012

Tournament Results:

Price And Gould Triumph In Boston By Rob Dinerman

        Jan 12 --- Trailing two games to one and 6-2 in the fourth against their two-time defending-champion arch-rivals, second seeds Paul Price and Ben Gould exploded on a 13-3 game-ending run and made that reversal stick in a rallying 15-11 13-15 9-15 15-9 15-10 victory over top seeds Damien Mudge and Viktor Berg early Sunday afternoon in the final round of the Boston ISDA tour stop, hosted as always by the University Club of Boston. In so doing, Price and Gould, frustrated semifinalists in this event in each of the past two years (an illness-ridden Price had to default with his team way behind against Chris Walker and Clive Leach two years ago prior to their 16-15 fifth-game loss to Leach and Matt Jenson last year), reclaimed the title they had won in 2007, halted the undefeated standing that Mudge and Berg had attained throughout the autumn portion of the current campaign and announced themselves as a genuine threat to successfully defend their North American Open crown when the 2010 edition of that hallowed championship is held in Greenwich 10 days hence.

   After dispatching the newly formed team of Hamed Anvari and Willie Hosey in the quarterfinals (in the only one of the seven matches from the quarters onward not to extend to at least a fourth game in this highly competitive tournament), Berg and Mudge prevailed in four over John Russell and Preston Quick, who had reached that stage with a 3-1 tally over Joe Pentland and Raj Nanda. The draw’s third quadrant contained most of the pre-final drama, featuring some intriguing rematches from early-season, beginning with a provocative round-of-16 encounter in which Walker and Mark Chaloner faced Jonny Smith and Yvain Badan. Barely over a month ago, these two tandems had opposed each other in a riveting Wilmington Challenger final in which former early-2000’s Trinity College teammates Smith and Badan had led two games to love and then 10-6 in the fourth before eventually losing a 17-16 fifth game (on a Walker forehand reverse-corner winner on the ultimate point) which represented the only simultaneous-championship-point in the 10-year history of the ISDA. But this time Walker and Chaloner were able to take control in mid-match and proceed to a convincing four-game ticket to the quarterfinals.

   There they came up against another team with whom they had an “almost” in recent months in the form of fourth seeds and (as noted) ’09 Boston finalists Leach and Jenson, who had trailed Walker/Chaloner in a Big Apple Open quarter two games to love and barely escaped with a 15-13 third game when Walker tinned a would-be drop-shot winner at 13-14. Reprieved, Leach and Jenson had then seized the single-figure fourth and fifth games in New York, a trend that continued to a comfortable-looking 1-0, 8-1 Leach/Jenson advantage in Boston before the match turned completely around on a game-winning Walker/Chaloner surge that, aided by some damaging Leach/Jenson tinning patches, extended through the third and close-out fourth games as well. This outcome marked the first time in the 11 months since Smith and James Hewitt had straight-gamed Russell and Quick in February ’09 in Cleveland that one of the top-four teams has been stopped short of the semis in a ranking ISDA tournament.

   One extended streak, however, that would NOT be brought to an end this past weekend is the run of ISDA ranking tourneys (now standing at 29 after Boston) that has been won by either Price/Gould or Mudge/Berg. The former duo advanced to the final by following a hard-fought four-game quarter over Hewitt and Greg Park (who had out-played qualifiers Dan Roberts and Greg McArthur 3-0 and then taken the first game against Price/Gould) by dominating the first two games (15-3, 15-6) of their Walker/Chaloner semi. They then lost the third game but regained their edge in a fourth game that had many prolonged rallies but which ended 15-10 in their favor.

   Remarkably given the back-and-forth nature of the rivalry between the top two teams, of the eight (evenly divided) matches, all in finals, that they had played going back to the beginning of the 2008-09 tour, seven have been decided by three games to love scores and the one exception, in St. Louis in November ’08, went only four games. After squeaking through the close second game and asserting themselves throughout the third and the early part of the fourth game, Mudge and Berg seemed well on their way to continuing this pattern of not-close matches, but that all changed when Gould determinedly imposed his presence by aggressively covering the front-left and upping the pace with his crackling ground strokes, an adjustment that restored Price’s shot-making rhythm as well, which thrives when the pace is high.

  Mudge and Berg were never successfully able to adjust to this significant alteration, and the latter committed some anxious-looking errors in those closing laps as well, all of which restored Price and Gould to the winner’s circle they had occupied three years ago and thereby creates a dynamic backdrop to a possible showdown in Greenwich next week.