ISDA Squash Tour 2012

Tournament Results:

Mudge And Gould Earn Tavern Club Invitational Crown By Rob Dinerman

     Feb 7^th --- Tied at a game apiece against an underdog but inspired opponent composed one star player from yesteryear and another from the immediate present that had seized both the momentum and the allegiance of a packed gallery, top seeds Damien Mudge and Ben Gould emphatically regained command with a devastating 22-4 run that effectively sealed their eventual 15-13 11-15 15-3 15-6 victory over Willie Hosey and Matt Jenson Saturday evening in the final round of the Tavern Club Invitational in downtown Cleveland. The result represented Mudge’s third Tavern Club title (previously with Viktor Berg in 2008 and 2009) and Gould’s second (with Paul Price a year ago), and it enabled them to maintain their hopes for an undefeated 2010-11 season. With nine of the 11 scheduled full-ranking tour stops now safely in their column, Mudge and Gould need only to prevail in Brooklyn in three weeks and at the Players Championship in mid-April to complete what would be a truly amazing feat, given the depth and talent that characterizes the current ISDA tour in this the 11^th full year of its existence.

   After taking the measure of qualifiers Mike Puertas and Nathan Dugan in their opening round, Mudge and Gould were strongly tested in the semis of this decidedly top-heavy draw by Chris Walker and Mark Chaloner, who had been finalists in Wilmington early last month and who in the only truly competitive quarterfinal match had survived the loss of a 15-13 first game to win in four over Manek Mathur (whose torrid shot-making had accounted for that first game) and Yvain Badan, a match whose defining moment occurred late in the third game, which Mathur/Badan had led 13-10 only to lose the game’s final five points. Walker and Chaloner, who during their PSA singles heyday in the 1990’s had been teammates on several English squads that had won the prestigious biennial World Team Championships, played beautifully in earning 14-13 leads in each of the first two games against Mudge/Gould. But Mudge accounted for all four of those saved game-ball-against points (a cross-court past Chaloner and a cross-court drive into the nick in front of Chaloner in the first game, and a rail winner past Walker followed by a look-away backhand roll-corner that froze both British stars to end the second), to give his team a two games to love lead, presaging a well played but preordained third-game close-out to a 15-14, 14 and 11 ticket to the final.

   Waiting for them there, as noted, were Hosey and Jenson, who were teaming up for the first time in three years and who, after opening with a 3-0 win over Scott Denne and Tournament Chairman Ian Sly (the head pro at the host club) broke a 12-12 first-game deadlock with James Hewitt and Greg Park (first-round straight-set winners over Ian Power and Rob Dinerman) with a three-point run that carried them through the subsequent two games as well. It was the first full-ranking tournament final-round advance in 40 months for Hosey (with Mudge in St. Louis in the 2007-08 season-opener), who during the early-2000’s partnered first Jamie Bentley, then Berg and then Michael Pirnak to the No. 2 team ranking, and the fourth this season for Jenson, who had gotten that far in New York, Boston and Greenwich with his regular 2010-11 partner Clive Leach as they have inexorably ascended during the past few months to the consensus No. 2 team behind only Mudge and Gould.

   As had happened seven hours earlier in their Walker/Chaloner semi, Mudge and Gould were given all they could handle by Hosey, who was playing with a crispness and swiftness that belied his upcoming 50^th birthday less than three months hence, and Jenson, whose powerful blasts off both flanks were pressuring his opponents into defensive responses and occasional errors. They fell barely short at the very end of the first game (when Gould broke a 13-all tie with a well-disguised reverse-corner winner up front followed by a sizzling forehand blast past Hosey down the right wall) but fully merited their 15-11 tally in the second. By that juncture, they had long since become the sentimental favorites, and at the conclusion of that second game (on a Mudge backhand blast that loudly rang off the tin) was greeted by an appreciative roar from the standing-room crowd, many of whose members massed behind the glass back wall high-fived each of them as they headed to the water fountain for the between-games break.

   Little did anyone in that suddenly upset-sensing gallery realize that any aspirations that may have been harbored along those lines would be squelched with ruthless efficiency and celerity by the chastened top seeds, who almost immediately moved to 7-0 in the third game and completely dominated the last half of that game and the entire close-out fourth with a massive display of pace, court coverage, teamwork and unrelenting pressure that overwhelmed the valiant but out-gunned Jenson/Hosey tandem and sent an intimidating message to everyone present of how daunting an undertaking it will be for any team hoping to deny them the undefeated season-long slate that now seems well within reach.

   After the fourth game was over, all of the players and spectators were invited onto the court for the trophy presentations and speeches in what became a well deserved celebration of what a major success the tournament had been, a tribute to Sly and his dedicated band of Committee members and other officers of the club. The event has grown tremendously over the past few years (there was a well-subscribed Pro-Am tournament, which was won by Mathur and Jack Batt, and this year there was even an official charity, namely Urban Squash Cleveland, a recently-established inner-city youth-enrichment organization along the lines of the more than half-dozen counterpart programs that have been so successful around the country during the past decade.