ISDA Squash Tour 2012

Tournament Results:

Mudge And Gould Capture North American Open Championship By Rob Dinerman

Jan 24th --- Blanked for the first 10 points of the match against an aroused opponent that has emerged as the Number One threat to their dominance and that roared out of the gate to the one-sided tune of 15-4, top seeds Damien Mudge and Ben Gould resolutely weathered that early barrage and asserted themselves throughout the remainder of a 4-15 15-10 15-12 (from 8-11) 15-4 final-round victory over Matt Jenson and Clive Leach Sunday afternoon at the Greenwich Country Club to win the 27^th annual North American Doubles Championship. In so doing, they kept alive the possibility of an undefeated wire-to-wire 2010-11 ISDA season and consolidated their standing as indisputably the best team in professional doubles squash. It was Gould’s third North American Open Doubles title (previously in 2007 and 2009 with Paul Price) and Mudge’s 10^th, just one behind the 11 that Gary Waite won, seven of which came as Mudge’s partner from 2000-2006. The match also marked the third appearance in the final of this tournament for Leach (previously in ’04 with Blair Horler and in ’05 with Willie Hosey), who twice (in ’03 with Horler and ’07 with Scott Butcher) had lost in the semis on simultaneous-match-ball.

The final capped off a lively weekend that witnessed a larger-than-normal number of airtight matches, powerful upset bids and unexpected results, a process that began right from the tournament-opening Wednesday night qualifying competition, in which Liam Kenny and Ahmed Hamza, the pros at the co-host Field Club of Greenwich, trailing Eric Christiansen and Carl Baglio 2-1, 14-10, saved those five consecutive match-balls-against en route to a 15-13 fifth-game victory. Kenny and Hamza then lost to Josh Schwartz and Tim Wyant, who proceeded to accentuate their arrival in the main draw with a 15-14 win over Greg Park and James Hewitt when the latter tinned a backhand reverse-corner on that 14-all point.

The winner of the other qualifying bracket, Imran Khan and Greg McArthur, also triumphed in their round of 16 match, in four convincing games over Chris Walker and Mark Chaloner, who had been finalists just two weeks ago in Wilmington. This pair of results marked the first time not only in this season but in SEVERAL seasons, in which both qualifying teams would win their respective first-round main-draw matches. Both teams then acquitted  themselves admirably in the quarterfinal matches as well, with Schwartz and Wyant pushing 2010 North American Open finalists John Russell and Preston Quick to a fourth game and Khan/McArthur actually standing at 1-1, 14-11 against Mudge and Gould, who, however, powered their way through the final four points of that game on their way to a 3-1 advance to the semis.

Waiting for them there were local favorites (by virtue of their home base being at the Apawamis Club in nearby Rye) Manek Mathur and Yvain Badan, who in consecutive straight-game fashion had conquered the Price brothers, Mark (partnering Steve Scharff in the round of 16) and Paul, who with James Stout (currently the world hard rackets champion and U. S. Open court-tennis champion) had been seeded fourth. Mathur and Badan evenly divided the first 28 points of their first game with Mudge/Gould, leading to an automatic simultaneous-game-ball (in this event, the third and final one of an experiment that also involved Wilmington and Boston earlier this month, all games were played to a “no-set” mandatory 15 points) which ended on a blasted forehand winner by Gould that carried his team through the well-played but somewhat preordained 15-6, 15-11 tallies that followed.

Meanwhile, in the draw’s bottom half, Jenson and Leach first weathered a five-game quarterfinal challenge from Raj Nanda and Jonny Smith (first-round victors over Hosey, a four-time North American Open finalist during the early 2000’s, and Hamed Anvari) and then, for the second week in a row, earned a semifinal triumph over Russell and Quick. Their tilt in Boston seven days earlier had gone to a fifth game, and all three games of this one were closely contested as well (with Russell/Quick leading late in both the second and third), but Leach and Jenson persevered to a 15-12, 12 and 11 tally that ushered them to their second ISDA final in a row and their third overall (also at the early-November Big Apple Open) this season. That none of the other teams chasing Mudge and Gould has reached more than one 2010-11 ISDA final would seem to make Jenson and Leach deserving of the top-contender label, as does the fact that they haven’t lost to any team other than Mudge/Gould since October.

For quite a while, and certainly throughout the thrashing they administered in sweeping to that fully earned 10-0 lead in the opening game, it appeared that Leach and Jenson wouldn’t lose to Mudge and Gould either. Certainly the lopsided 15-6, 6 and 5 Mudge/Gould rout of Jenson/Leach last week in Boston seemed a distant memory, not only in the first game of this Greenwich rematch but also in the extremely competitive pair of mid-match games that followed. The relatively slow Country Club front wall was blunting, at least to some extent, the power game that Mudge and Gould often rely on to batter their opponents into submission, instead allowing Jenson and Leach room and time to fend off the Mudge/Gould thrusts, pin them into the back court and shoot (which they were doing with exceptional accuracy) when an opening presented itself.

But, after being stunned in that first game and pressed right to the end in the second and third (by the end of which SEVEN balls had broken, several of them just as Jenson/Leach seemed to be establishing some momentum), Mudge and Gould moved out to an early lead in the fourth, at which 6-2 juncture Jenson fell headlong in a dash to the front wall, landing on his arm and head. Though play resumed after a brief recuperative stoppage, Jenson was never able to regain the verve and flair that had previously defined his effort, and Gould and Mudge raced unimpeded to this coveted title. Still, it should be noted that --- with one-point wins keying their advances in the quarters and semis and a final that was up for grabs through three games, in the first of which they sustained their biggest-margin loss ever --- they had been pressed match-to-match this weekend more strenuously than at any time so far this season, which could potentially affect the dynamics of the tour when the full-ranking schedule resumes in two weeks at the Tavern Club in Cleveland.