Written by Rob Dinerman
Date: February 02/10
An ISDA schedule that had settled into what seemed like a steady rhythm was turned topsy-turvy by the pair of January 2010 tour stops in Boston and Greenwich, leaving plenty to the imagination as the important February events in Cleveland, Philadelphia and Brooklyn come into view. Particularly noteworthy game-changers were the comeback final-round victory in Boston (from a 2-1, 6-2 deficit) through which Paul Price and Ben Gould were able to puncture the hopes of Briggs Cup and Big Apple Open champs Damien Mudge and Viktor Berg for an undefeated 2009-10 season; the late-match reversal that Price/Gould themselves would suffer in Greenwich, when their attempted defense of their ’09 North American Open crown crumbled in a fifth-set semifinal tiebreaker against John Russell and Preston Quick; and the pair of consecutive rallying quarterfinal wins, Phyrric in the case of Greenwich, that Chris Walker and Mark Chaloner, buoyed by their simultaneous-championship-point early-December win over Jonny Smith and Yvain Badan in the Wilmington Challenger, were able to earn over Briggs Cup finalists Matt Jenson and Clive Leach. By the time the month was over and just over one hundred days since the current campaign began, all of the top-tier teams, as well as several of the tandems right below them, have had at least one moment in the sun, while also sustaining at least one wrenching reversal from the seeming safety of a substantial lead in an important match. For Mudge and Berg, who have now won three of the four ISDA full-ranking tournaments that have taken place on 2009-10 in the wake of their five-game win this past Sunday at the Greenwich Country Club over Quick and a heroic but exhausted Russell in a final that had had vastly differing semifinal backdrops (the Russell/Quick riveting marathon being in stark contrast to the walkover awarded Mudge and Berg, of which more anon), their one stumble came, as noted, when they surrendered a 13-3 run in that fourth game at the University Club of Boston to Price and Gould, who then went on to regain the title they had won in ’07 by taking a 15-10 fifth game. Either outcome to that final would have extended the streak of consecutive ISDA full-ranking tourneys won by either Mudge/Berg or Price/Gould to 29, with a 30th to follow two weeks later in Greenwich when Berg and Mudge were able to go from 8-7 to 13-7 en route to 15-8 in the fifth game after Russell and Quick (who a day earlier had spotted Price/Gould a 2-0 lead in the best-of-nine ultimate-set tiebreaker before running off the last five points, mostly on Russell’s dynamic shot-making) had come away with both the third and fourth. Berg and Mudge have now gone four for four so far this season against Russell and Quick, who are 7-0 against the rest of the ISDA field and who had led Berg and Mudge 2-1, 9-2 at the New York Athletic Club in early November before being overtaken. Walker and his newly-acquired (November ’09) partner, British compatriot and fellow PSA top-seven Chaloner, have lived dangerously but for the most part highly successfully throughout their three-month collaboration. After narrowly falling short against Jenson and Leach (who trailed two games to love and barely survived a 15-13 third) in a Big Apple Open quarterfinal, Walker and Chaloner rallied from two-love down and 6-10 in the fourth in winning the Wilmington final 17-16 in the fifth on a tin-defying Walker reverse-corner winner; rallied from a 1-0, 8-1 deficit against Jenson/Leach in Boston; and rallied from 1-2 down in the rubber match (a quarterfinal like the prior pair) against Jenson/Leach in a 13-15 15-13 16-18 15-13 15-11 thriller that was dead-even at 11-all in the fifth before the normally reliable Leach, a historically at his best at crunch-time, contributed three errors to that match-ending four-point Walker/Chaloner run in an end-game sequence that exacted a serious price in the form of a knee injury to Chaloner during those last few climactic points that swelled up overnight, leaving him in such severe pain by the following morning that he and Walker were forced to default their scheduled semi against Mudge and Berg. The irony about Chaloner’s injury (which occurred when he dove headlong and landed on that joint while making a noteworthy retrieval that kept that crucial point alive) is that it was his partner, the former British Open finalist Walker, now 42, who had chosen that week/weekend to do his iron-man rendition by playing in both the North American Open Doubles and the concomitant Tournament Of Champions pro singles tourney in Manhattan, where he won his first qualifying match (in five long games) on Wednesday night; played and won his Greenwich round-of-sixteen Thursday afternoon before hurrying back to New York, where he lost his final-round qualifying match that evening to full-time PSA pro (and recent PSA tournament winner) Ryan Cuskelly; and returned the next day (i.e. Friday) to Greenwich, where, as noted, he and Chaloner out-lasted Jenson and Leach in five games the first four of which were decided by airtight two-point margins. The ISDA’s other top-level 40-something, Willie Hosey, was largely responsible for a major mid-match tactical adjustment that helped rescue his team from first-round oblivion in Greenwich. After he and new partner Hamed Anvari had dropped the first two games against Briggs Cup quarterfinalists Joe Pentland and Whitten Morris, Hosey insisted that they switched walls, a move that placed him back on the left and returned Anvari to the right-wall position where he had spent most of his career. They still had to save a total of five match-balls-against in the fourth game, but when Hosey hit a misdirection winner down the middle of the court (which flustered both of his opponents, neither of whom attempted to swing at the ball as it veered in between them) at simultaneous-game-ball, he and Anvari were home free in the 15-10 fifth game. The highly-decorated Hosey, a multiple-time North American Open finalist with several different partners who will turn 49 in a few months, thereby proved yet again that he is still capable of pulling off some magic at exactly the most important and unexpected time.