Written by Rob Dinerman
Date: October 21/09
It is virtually never the case that the outcome of the first tournament of a lengthy tour season is worthy of being interpreted as a substantial harbinger of what will follow --- on the contrary, it usually takes at least three or four tournaments for any reliably discernable patterns or changes from the preseason status quo to emerge. But when Opening Day is an event with the imposing stature of the biennial Briggs Cup, with its (by far) season-highest $100,000 main-draw purse, and when some of the results are as decisive and/or unexpected as was the case at the newly-renovated host Apawamis Club, with its magnificent new glass-back-wall exhibition doubles court and passionate fans hanging on every point, the imprint on the dynamics of the entire tour can be powerful and enduring.
Most noteworthy among the latter has to have been (1) the advance this early to the winner’s circle of the previously comparatively slow-starting Damien Mudge and Viktor Berg (who went title-less in their first five events two years ago and their first three events last season), and (2) the dramatic performance by fourth seeds Matt Jenson and Clive Leach, who after an 18-17 first game vs. defending ’07 Briggs Cup champs Paul Price and Ben Gould routed their fearsome Australian opponents in a pair of close-out 15-7 games, following which they led 15-10, 6-2 against Mudge/Berg in the final before eventually being edged out in four extremely high-quality games. Finalists only once in a 2008-09 tour year in which they were stopped short of the semis several times by lower-ranking opponents, Leach and Jenson have clearly experienced a significant upgrade, aided both by the increased familiarity that comes with now having had a full season together under their belts, and, more tangibly, by the 15 pounds that Jenson has shed during the intervening summer, which has led to a commensurate improvement in his mobility, conditioning and shot preparation.
Throughout the last two games of their semifinal and the first third of the final, Leach and Jenson controlled the play against this pair of fearsome opponents (who have now won all 27 of the full-ranking ISDA tournaments that have taken place since October 2007) with a decisiveness that made it appear almost routine. Indeed, even after being overtaken in the close 15-12 second game and dropping the third as well, they took an 8-5 fourth-game lead that would have been 9-5 (as opposed to 8-6, a big swing) had Jenson’s would-be drop-shot winner not barely caught the top of the tin. Though they didn’t get to hoist the coveted Briggs Cup trophy (three of the four editions of which Mudge has now won with three different partners, namely Michael Pirnak in ’03, Gary Waite in ’05 and now Berg in ’09), Leach and Jenson did come out of the weekend as a true and genuine threat to break that 27-tournament streak, just as Leach and Blair Horler had done nearly seven years ago when their 3-1 final-round victory in Toronto at the ’03 Canadian Pro tourney put an end to a Waite/Mudge undefeated skein that had swollen to 24 tournaments and 72 matches.
Other Briggs Cup matches that have the potential to impact the 2009-10 ISDA tour (which resumes with the Big Apple Open in New York next week) were a trio of round-of-16 tallies, namely the comeback five-game win by qualifiers Tim Porter and Greg Park over Mark Chaloner and Willie Hosey (two-time semifinalists last season) and the 3-0 scores by which Joe Pentland and Whitten Morris out-played Chris Walker and Jonny Smith and by which Raj Nanda and Mark Price did the same to Eric Vlcek and Yvain Badan. It has historically been quite rare for as many as three of the top eight seeded teams to be eliminated in the round of 16, and the implicitly enhanced depth that the tour is currently experiencing is further pointed up both by how hard a time Porter and Park had in getting through their qualifying bracket (a close four over former Intercollegiates singles champion Bernardo Samper and five-time U. S. National singles champion Julian Illingworth followed by a 3-2 marathon against world hard-racquets champion James Stout and Yasser Kamel) and by the return to the ISDA scene of the pairing of ’06 San Francisco semifinalists Pirnak and former PSA No. 4 Martin Heath after a several years’ hiatus.