ISDA Squash Tour 2012

Written by Rob Dinerman
Date: October 25/11

The ISDA Tour that will kick off in October will have something for everyone --- a number of marquee events (with some overseas travel tossed in for the first time as well), a reigning juggernaut that is coming off the first wire-to-wire undefeated season in a half-dozen years, and an intriguing mixture among the contending teams of established pairings and new alignments in the wake of a hectic offseason on both the athletic and administrative fronts.

That latter aspect is a compelling offshoot of the unprecedented depth that characterized the 2010-11 tour, in which Damien Mudge and Ben Gould, en route to an eventual 12 for 12 slate and a won-lost record of 38-0, faced different final-round opponents in each of the first SIX tournaments (John Russell/Preston Quick in Baltimore, Manek Mathur/Yvain Badan in St. Louis, Matt Jenson/Clive Leach in New York, Paul Price/Viktor Berg in Vancouver, Price/Leach in Philadelphia and Chris Walker/Mark Chaloner in Wilmington, 10 different players out of a theoretical maximum of 12), every one of which would experience at least one OPENING-round loss before the season had come to an end, the first time that either of those phenomena (much less both) had occurred in the history of the Association. Indeed, all of those teams had lost at least once in the first round by Christmas, other than Russell and Quick, whose only such elimination took place in the very last tournament of the season, the Players Championship, in straight games no less, at the hands of first-time partners James Stout and Greg McArthur.

That result, such an aberration from the upset-free consistency that Quick and Russell demonstrated not only for (almost) all of last season but effectively throughout their five seasons (and 15 ISDA final-round appearances) together, would ultimately be their last, as this pair amicably decided over the summer to go separate ways. Quick will be playing with Jonny Smith this coming season, while Russell will be partnering up with Greg Park. Those two just-formed tandems will be part of a six-team lead group headed of course, and until proven otherwise, by Mudge/Gould, and also comprised of Jenson/Leach, whose three prior years as partners, highlighted by eight final-round advances, now make them the longest-lasting of any of the top-tier teams; Walker/Chaloner, finalists last winter in Brooklyn as well as Wilmington, and undefeated against any team other than Mudge/Gould from late January onwards; and Mathur/Badan, who won both Challenger tourneys they entered (in Buffalo and Philadelphia) and got to the final in their debut performance in St. Louis and the semis in both Greenwich and Brooklyn.

Mudge and Gould were at their most vulnerable both at the very start of last season --- they fell behind Walker and Chaloner 1-0, 7-4 in their debut match, a Maryland Club Open quarterfinal, then were forced to the very brink (1-2, 11-14) by Russell and Quick in the semis of the second tournament, St. Louis --- and at the very end, when in early May in Toronto in the season-concluding biennial World Doubles, during which Mudge had been plagued by a steadily-worsening back injury all weekend, they trailed Leach and Russell, two games to one, in the final before overtaking their two talented first-time-partnering British opponents in games four and five to finish off their undefeated slate. The grueling nature of the ISDA circuit, which features more than a dozen stops from one end of North America to the other, makes one wonder how close Mudge and Gould can come this season to duplicating their 2010-11 perfection, especially in light of their advancing vintage (Mudge turned 35 this past spring, as Gould will do before Thanksgiving) and the increasing threats posed by both the returning established elite teams, the “new look” that some of the realigned teams will present and the youthful challenge that Badan and especially his 23-year-old partner (and former Trinity College mid-2000’s teammate Mathur) were posing to The Champs even last season, during which both the Greenwich and Brooklyn matches might have gone differently had Mudge/Gould not prevailed 15-14 in a key early-match game in each case. Indeed, Mathur/Badan led 14-9 in the second game at Heights Casino, and at 14-all Mathur hit a forehand roll-corner winner, only to have it nullified when the ball was found by the referee to have broken, preceding a tinned Mathur serve-return on the ensuing point.

The 2011-12 ISDA schedule will have an element of adventure right from its opening act, the Scottish Cup, which will be hosted in late September by the Edinburgh Sports Club as part of its 75^th-anniversary celebration and will represent the first-ever ISDA tournament held outside of North America. The event will be organized by former World No. 1 Peter Nicol, who along with other former PSA stars competing at the Maryland Club in a Legends singles tournament, found themselves spending so much of their between-matches time fascinated by the concomitant ISDA doubles that he realized what a hit an overseas ISDA doubles tournament would be. This emphatic launch-pad will be followed by a chock-full schedule that will feature both of the major biennial ISDA tournaments, namely the Briggs Cup and the Kellner Cup, as well as such important annual tournaments like the North American Open, the U. S. Pro, the Big Apple Open, the 64^th annual David Johnson Invitational in Brooklyn Heights (the longest continually running doubles tournament in the United States), Boston, Baltimore, St. Louis and a number of Challenger tournaments in various cities in Pennsylvania.

Wherever the tour goes, of course, the overriding theme, until proven otherwise, will be whether Mudge and Gould will be able to extend their heretofore unblemished record or whether one or more of the very talented pack baying increasingly noisily at their heels will be able to pick them off and thereby change the dynamics of both that particular weekend and the tournaments that follow. Last season saw a number of early-round upsets (in Greenwich, for one, BOTH qualifying teams went on to win their first-round main-draw match) and there were more than a half-dozen pre-semis matches, including some in the qualifying rounds, that were decided by a simultaneous-match-point, a testament to how deep the ISDA field has become (more than 80 players are listed in the ISDA rankings) and how capable any number of teams now are to exerting a powerful impact upon the upcoming season.