ISDA Squash Tour 2012

Tournament Results:

Mudge And Gould Soar To Big Apple Open Crown By Rob Dinerman

      November 9^th --- In a ferocious display of pace, perseverance and athleticism, top seeds Damien Mudge and Ben Gould overwhelmed third seeds Clive Leach and Matt Jenson last night 15-8, 5 and 11 in the final round of the 2010 Big Apple Open, hosted as always by the New York Athletic Club at the southern edge of Central Park. Final-round opponents in each of the previous five editions of this tournament, Mudge and Gould teamed up this time to earn their third tournament win in as many attempts this season. It was the Gould’s fifth Big Apple Open title with his third different partner (Preston Quick in 2005 and Paul Price in 2006-08) and the third, also with three partners (Gary Waite in 2004 and Viktor Berg a year ago) for Mudge, who has appeared in the final round of all eight renditions of this event that have now been held.

   After dropping a game to Willie Hosey and Hamed Anvari in their quarterfinal round, Mudge and Gould then had each of the first two games of their semi with Quick and John Russell go to a tiebreaker. The latter tandem have given Mudge/Gould more trouble than any other team on the circuit, having reached the final of the season-opening Maryland Club Open in mid-October and having held four fourth-game match-balls (2-1, 14-11) against Mudge/Gould in a St. Louis semi one week ago. Quick and Russell themselves had had their hands full in their Big Apple Open first-rounder, which they won 15-14 in the fourth (on a perfectly clipped Russell backhand reverse-corner winner on the final point) over Manek Mathur and Yvain Badan, finalists in St. Louis, who had survived 3-2  against Joe Pentland and Steve Scharff in the final round of a brutally strong qualifying draw that required 13 teams to vie for the two available slots in this eight-team main-draw field.

  After edging out Mathur and Badan, Quick and Russell led Mudge/Gould 13-12 in the first game and took two of the first three points of the second game’s best-of-five tiebreaker. But, as had happened eight days earlier in Missouri, Quick and Russell were again unable to convert a multiple-game-ball when on simultaneous game-ball, Mudge was able to slash a forehand cross-court drop from a tight angle directly into the front-left nick, after which he and his Australian compatriot Gould ran off and hid in the anticlimactic third game to close out their 16-13 17-16 15-4 ticket to the final.

  Waiting for them there, as noted, were Leach (who won the inaugural version of this event in April 2004 with Hosey) and Jenson, finalists last season both in the Briggs Cup and the Kellner Cup and pre-final winners this weekend over first James Hewitt and Greg Park and then qualifiers Raj Nanda and Jonny Smith, who had ousted the second-seeded Price brothers, Paul and Mark, three games to one in the quarters. After falling behind, one game to love, in their Jenson/Leach semi, Nanda and Smith then led 12-3 in the second. Though they wound up taking that game 15-11, by the time the game ended Leach and Jenson were on a rallying run that carried over to 9-0, 15-3 in the third game and to a convincing close-out fourth as well.

  It must be said that they played at a praiseworthy level during most of the Monday-night final as well, hitting with pace and depth, moving beautifully and shooting admirably when the opportunity to do so arose: that they nevertheless lost not only in three games but by those decisive scores was totally a result of the relentlessly pressuring brilliance of their opponents’ play, especially during the five-point spurt from 7-6 to 12-6 that broke the first game open and the match’s closing stretch, when from 11-10 Mudge and Gould won the next three points to seal that 15-11 tally. They are capable of creating so much heat, both with the pace of their blasts (in each case off either flank) and the constancy of their volleying, that it can stifle the offense of even the most resolute opposition.

   And, though sometimes overlooked, they are both wondrous DEFENSIVE players as well, which can have a deflating impact and breed immaturity into their opponents’ game, causing them to go for too much when an opening arrives, all too often with metallic results. Mudge in particular made a number of reflex defensive stabs (at least twice when the ball was already two feet behind him and seemingly destined to rocket untouched to the back recesses of the court) off Leach drives down the middle that defied comprehension, and Gould’s deceptively loping strides blanketed the front-right portion of the court.

   Disheartened by the way the first game had ended, Leach and Jenson sagged at the outset of the second, which began with two Leach tins (on a backhand roll-corner from the back wall, followed by a tinned forehand reverse-corner serve-return) and continued to 0-5 when Jenson failed to return a Gould lob serve and Mudge hit first a backhand cross-court that Leach couldn’t handle and then a backhand Philadelphia-boast that died in back behind Jenson. Though Leach and Jenson were never able to get back into that game, they played their best squash of the entire match during the first two-thirds of the third, shooting more aggressively and effectively than heretofore, lobbing their opponents to the back wall (instead of trying to drive the ball through them), covering beautifully for each other and forcing a few racquet errors from Gould for the only time all night.

   A well-disguised and delicately-struck Leach backhand cross-drop that nicked in front of Gould drew his team to 10-11, but then Mudge hit two winners after grueling high-octane exchanges --- the first on a shallow wall-clinging rail and the second when he cleanly passed Leach with a cross-court --- and Gould pulled off a tight forehand reverse-corner winner to make the score 14-10. Gould then tinned a drive but on the ensuing point Jenson tinned an attempted backhand reverse-corner to conclude the action just short of an hour after it began. This match marked the sixth of the eight Big Apple Open finals to go the three-game minimum, and the third in a row; only once (when Price/Gould won the last six points from 9-all against Mudge/Berg in 2007) has a final gone to a fifth game. It also was the third final-round opponent that Mudge and Gould have faced in as many full-ranking events so far this season. The ISDA tour now moves to Vancouver this coming weekend, with two events (a Challenger in Buffalo and a special-event round-robin in Toronto) one week later leading into Thanksgiving.