Written by Rob Dinerman
Date: November 04/09
Even at this extremely early juncture just two tournaments (namely the fourth biennial Briggs Cup and the seventh annual Big Apple Open) into a 2009-10 ISDA tour schedule that will include approximately 20 events over the next seven months, it has already become clear that there are more good teams and more good players than at any time in recent years, and that the potential for exciting qualifying- and early-round matches with unexpected results has played and will continue to play a substantial role as the season progresses.
No fewer than five different players – namely Chris Walker, Jonny Smith, Raj Nanda, Mark Price and Mark Chaloner – have both lost and won a first-round main-draw match (it wasn’t until well into the winter that that was the case for five different players last season), in addition to which two players ranked inside the top fifteen haven’t advanced past the first round, contrasting with four players outside the top fifteen who have reached the quarterfinals of both events so far. Two of the latter group, partners Tim Porter and Greg Park, have gone 4-0 in five-game matches, having had to weather nerve-fraying fifth games (in one of which they trailed 6-0) in the last round of qualifying play before then pulling off five-game wins over much higher-ranked opponents (Willie Hosey/Chaloner in Rye and Eric Vlcek/Yvain Badan in Manhattan) in the round of 16. Neither Park, a three-time reigning U. S. Father & Son champion with his father Steve, nor Porter was ranked in the ISDA top 30 entering the current campaign, though they certainly will move way up the next time the standings are revised.
In each of their two prior years as partners, Viktor Berg and Damien Mudge had started the season relatively slowly before winning their first tournament right around Thanksgiving and catching fire en route to No. 1 end-of-season team rankings both seasons from there. This year they have exploded from the gates in going two for two to this point, though they did have to overcome a 2-1, 9-2 deficit in their Big Apple Open semifinal against John Russell and Preston Quick. The latter tandem, three-time finalists in 2008-09 and now in their fourth season as teammates, has reached both semis, as have the Paul Price/Ben Gould and Matt Jenson/Clive Leach pairings, who have split their pair of bottom-half semis so far this autumn.
Though the above Fearsome Foursome has continued their recent-years trend of occupying all of the available semifinal slots (and though the Mudge/Berg pair of titles has extended to 28 the streak of ISDA full-ranking events that in the end has landed in either their or the Price/Gould column), the closeness of the Big Apple quarterfinal match-ups in the middle quadrants of the draw graphically depicts how capable the teams in the tier just behind them are of elbowing one or more of the top-four seeds out of their way. James Hewitt and Steve Scharff, semifinalists in Wilmington last December by virtue of their convincing upset win over Leach and Jenson, nearly beat Quick and Russell in an undulating clash before falling barely short 15-12 in the fifth, while Walker and his British compatriot and first-time partner Chaloner earned a two games to love lead over Leach and Jenson and were an open Walker backhand drop-shot (which he tinned at 13-14) away from forcing the third game into a tiebreaker before eventually bowing in five.