ISDA Squash Tour 2012

Tournament Results:

Schwartz And Anvari Win The Graham Cup By Rob Dinerman

Mar 22^nd --- Trailing one game to love in their final against a No. 1 seed that to that point had rampaged through seven consecutive games, four of them in single figures, second seeds Josh Schwartz and Hamed Anvari emphatically reversed the momentum with a 9-1 second-game-opening spurt, then eked out the third and fourth to record a 9-15 15-5 15-14 15-13 victory over James Hewitt and Greg Park this past Sunday afternoon in the final round of the Graham Cup, hosted as always by the Germantown Cricket Club in suburban Philadelphia. It marked the second tournament win in three months for the Schwartz/Anvari tandem, which had previously prevailed in the Gold Racquets, a venerable Open/Amateur Invitational in Long Island in early December.

Hewitt and Park, finalists last month in the Challenger tournament at the Philadelphia Racquet Club, had, as noted, been in dominant form in their pair of straight-game pre-final wins over first Ian Power and Rob Dinerman and then Eric Christiansen and Shaun Johnstone, first-round 3-2 winners over qualifiers Ben Howell and Adam Hamil of the host club. Park , winner with Imran Khan of the 2010 edition of this event, was setting a torrid pace with his forehand blasts and blistering hard serves, while Hewitt complemented his partner’s power with alternating lobs and well-angled front-court winners. By contrast, Schwartz and Anvari, after an opening 3-0 win over Tom Harrity and his recently-crowned Intercollegiate Individual champ nephew Todd Harrity, had been pushed right to the brink in a murderous 15-8 15-13 11-15 12-15 15-13 semi against Khan and Graham Bassett.

The latter was pinch-hitting for Khan’s brother Asad, who had to withdraw earlier in the week when a lingering case of tennis elbow did not respond to a cortisone injection. These first-time partners became embroiled in two matches in a row that seesawed to 13-all in the fifth, winning the first over qualifiers Shane Coleman and Sunny Hunt on a pair of match-ending shallow Khan winners and losing the second when a Schwartz serve at 14-13 was hit into the floor by Bassett, a lapse of concentration that belied the series of pulsating all-court points that preceded it.

As referenced, Hewitt and Park seemed in complete command throughout the first game of the final and eager to wipe out any bad memories from their 3-0 final-round loss at the Racquet Club five weeks ago to Manek Mathur and Yvain Badan. Park, who learned the game as a youngster on the Germantown courts, was executing with the confidence befitting a defending champion, Hewitt was scoring on his cross-drops and reverse-corners and their opponents were having trouble generating any offensive rhythm. At the outset of the second, however, they made a tactical adjustment, slowing the pace down, lobbing effectively, drawing some errors and coming up with enough winners as well to take that game in lopsided fashion and permanently alter the dynamics of the match. Hewitt and Park were never thereafter able to regain the proper mix of power and precision that had characterized their prior play, and a match situation they had previously controlled changed into a crap-shoot in which both succeeding games came down to a defining exchange at the end.

At 14-all in the third, the referee called a stroke against Hewitt, who had hit a wayward backhand rail, and at 14-13 in the fourth, Anvari surprised everyone with a deft drop shot from the back wall that landed for a clear winner to seal his team’s unexpected but fully deserved win. The last seven ISDA Challenger tournaments have now been won by six different teams (and 12 different players), with Mathur/Badan (champions in Buffalo this past November as well as in Philadelphia last month) the only repeat winners, a tribute to the Challenger concept and often – as with Mathur/Badan, who have now ascended to the No. 4 team ranking slot --- a harbinger of impending success in full-ranking stops on the ISDA schedule as well.