ISDA Squash Tour 2012

Tournament Results:

Mudge And Gould Take World Doubles, Complete Undefeated 2010-11 Season By Rob Dinerman

May 11^th – Trailing two games to one and in genuine danger of seeing their season-long bid for an undefeated season ripped away from them at the last possible moment a la New England Patriots 2007, Australian superstars Damien Mudge and Ben Gould responded to this crisis like the champions they are by surging through the last two conclusive and convincing games to overtake their upset-minded British rivals Clive Leach and John Russell 15-8 11-15 13-15 15-5 15-7 this past Monday night in the finals of the biennial World Doubles before a packed gallery at the Toronto Cricket Club. By virtue of their compelling rally, all the more noteworthy for the 9-4 third-game lead that got away and thereby energized both the crowd and their opponents, Mudge and Gould wound up the 2010-11 ISDA tour with a perfect 38-0 record, the first time that a team has gone undefeated throughout an entire ISDA schedule since Mudge and Gary Waite (who also surmounted a severe last-match challenge when Leach and Michael Pirnak got to 12-all in the fifth game of the season-ending tour stop in San Francisco) accomplished the feat for the third and last time in 2004-05. For Gould, the comeback win represented a successful defense of the World Doubles title that he and Paul Price had earned (also at the final-round expense of Leach and Russell) at the University Club of San Francsisco in 2009; for Mudge, who turns 35 later this week, it constituted a much-appreciated milestone birthday present and confirmed his status as the only player in ISDA history ever to go undefeated as both a right- and a left-waller.

In the women’s final, Canadians Seanna Keating and Steph Hewitt, to the decidedly vocal though always sportsmanlike delight of their hometown supporters (all the more so with Hewitt being a member of the host club) staged their second come-from-behind win in as many rounds with a 6-15 11-15 15-10 15-8 15-12 tally over Aussies Narelle Krizek and her sister Latarsha McElhinny. Hewitt and Keating, who trailed Philadelphians Amy Milanek and Dawn Gray 14-11 in the fifth in Saturday’s semifinal before staging a match-saving four-point run, had lost in four airtight games to Krizek/McElhinny six weeks back in the U. S. National Doubles final in Chicago, which made this reversal on their home turf that much sweeter. It was the third World Doubles title for Hewitt (previously in ’06 with Krizek and in ’09 with Jessica DiMauro), who turned 40 last week and who, like Mudge, has now won this event playing each wall.

No fewer than SIX Toronto clubs --- namely the Cricket Club, as noted, the Badminton & Racquet Club, the Cambridge Club, the Mayfair Club, the Toronto Lawn Club and the Toronto Racquet Club --- served as host venues at one time or another during the hugely successful five-day event, which was expertly Chaired by ISDA Executive Director James Hewitt and featured men’s purse of $30,000, a women’s purse of $10,000 and an additional $10,000 for the various pro-am tourneys. Every round in both the men’s and women’s pro draws featured either an upset or a near-upset. No fewer than eight of the 11 pre-semis matches (eight of nine if one factors out the two Mudge/Gould 3-0 wins over first Jamie Macaulay and Lyall Paterson of Scotland and then Imran and Khayal Khan of Pakistan) went to at least a fourth game. Notable aspects of the round of 16 were (1) the absence of James Hewitt’s scheduled partner Viktor Berg, whose last-day and unexplained withdrawal forced Fred Reid Jr. to pinch hit, which he did admirably well; (2) the default of the Irish entry of Dan Roberts and his younger brother John due to a hamstring pull incurred a few weeks ago by the former that didn’t heal in time; and (3) the emphatic exit at that early juncture of Americans Trevor McGuinness, who tinned heavily, and Steve Scharff, at the hands of the Khans.

In the quarterfinals Friday evening, Hewitt and Reid seemed well positioned at 11-9 in the fourth to force a fifth game against second seeds Russell and Leach when the ball broke, and when play resumed five minutes later, a series of swift points nearly all landed in the Russell/Leach column as they escaped with that game, then rallied from a 9-10 deficit in the fifth game of their ensuing all-England semi against Jonny Smith and Mark Chaloner (four-game conquerors of third seeds Price and Matt Jenson one round earlier) to 15-12 and their ticket to their second consecutive World Doubles final. The top-half semifinal had gone, by a 3-1 count, to Mudge and Gould after a strong challenge by Americans Greg Park (who by all accounts played the best squash of his career this weekend) and Preston Quick, quarterfinal victors over reigning Canadian National Doubles champs Willie Hosey and Michael Pirnak, an undesired result among the denizens of that night's host Mayfair Club, where the wildly popular Hosey, who turned 50 (!) late last month, has been based for more than a decade. The fact that the Hewitt/Reid, Quick/Park, Price/Jenson and Smith/Chaloner pairings were all first-time shows both how swiftly and effectively these players, nearly all of whom are in the ISDA top-12 (as of course is true as well of the two final-round tandems), adapted to each other’s styles, and how dominant the ISDA membership showed itself to be in this world competition.

It must be said of the final (1) that Leach and Russell fully deserved the second- and third-game wins they recorded against their daunting opponents (with Russell’s tremendous shot-making solidly complemented by Leach’s creativity, court coverage and cunning); (2) that the crowd, still buzzing with the additional adrenaline provided by the Canadian women’s comeback win immediately prior to the men’s final, played a major role in what became an electric atmosphere as the titanic five-game struggle unfolded; and (3) that, with seven months of perfection in real peril of being tarnished in this season-culminating moment in perhaps the greatest squash-doubles city in North America, The Champs were able to rise superior to both their highly talented opponents and the highly-pressurized crucible of the moment by running away with the fourth game and seizing a small lead early in the fifth which they never relinquished in their charge to the finish line of what will now go down as a truly historic season in the annals of the ISDA.