ISDA Squash Tour 2008

Writen by Rob Dinerman
Date: April 19/07

After dealing with a combination of physical maladies and a 1-4 record this season against their emergent nemesis Paul Price and Ben Gould, Gary Waite and Damien Mudge finally restored some sense of order at the season-ending Creek Challenge Cup in Long Island in mid-April, where they won only their fourth ranking-tournament title of the 11-stop 2006-07 ISDA tour. To give some perspective to how different this past campaign has been from the seven that preceded it since the ISDA was formed in the fall of 1999, Waite and Mudge had lost only seven total matches in those seven seasons (never more than two in a single tour), a figure that was almost equaled by the six they sustained during this season alone.

In fact, there have been plenty of indicia of how transformed the competitive landscape has become in the past six months, during which a record four teams (Price/Gould five times, Waite/Mudge, as noted, four times, as well as Chris Walker and Viktor Berg in Denver and John Russell and Preston Quick at the U. S. Nationals in Philadelphia), all of whom were first-round losers at least once as well, made it to the winners circle. There was one late-season eight-week stretch beginning in early February in which four consecutive ISDA tour stops were won by four different teams (Price/Gould in Rye and Waite/Mudge in Brooklyn preceding the Denver and Philadelphia tourneys), which had never happened before; neither in ISDA history prior to the U. S. Nationals (where Waite and Mudge lost in the first round for the first time in more than six years and only the second time ever) had it been the case that the semifinal round match-ups (Michael Pirnak/Tyler Millard vs. Russell/Quick and Butcher/Leach vs. Gould and Willie Hosey, standing in for an injured Price) consisted of four teams NONE of whom had ever previously won an ISDA tournament as a unit.

As would also be the case at the Creek Club two weeks later, Hosey and Gould let multiple-match-balls get away and wound up losing fifth-set tiebreakers to opponents (Butcher/Leach in Philadelphia by a 17-15 count after trailing 4-2 in the best-of-nine tiebreaker, then Walker/Berg in Locust Valley, who trailed 14-12 before rallying to 17-15) who however were too drained by these successful comeback efforts to have anything left for the next-day final. For three of the top four ranked teams (No. 1 Price/Gould, No. 3 Butcher/Leach and No. 4 Russell/Quick), the 2006-07 season was their first full campaign as partners, as was also true for frequent quarterfinalists Matt Jensen and Jeff Mulligan, though most of these units aligned themselves late in the 2005-06 season and hence were able to build this season on the bonds they formed the prior spring.

Certainly there can be no disputing the ascent to the top team spot of Gould and Price in light of their 4-1 mark against Waite and Mudge, their tour-leading five tournament titles (in addition to which Price also won the U. S. Mixed with Narelle Krizek and the Cambridge Club event with Jamie Bentley) and their triumphs in the two most important events, namely the $ 40,000 North American Open and the $ 100,000 biennial Briggs Cup. However, it must be noted as well (a) that they didn’t win any of the last four events of the season, (b) that the last time they played Waite and Mudge, in late February in Brooklyn, they were soundly defeated, and (c) that Price’s proneness to injury (which resulted in his retiring both against Walker/Berg in a Wilmington semi and against Jensen/Mulligan in a Denver quarter, in each case with his team trailing badly in what would have been the match-ending game), especially the back problem that sidelined him from the last events this spring, makes both himself and his team much more of a question mark coming into next season than is normally the case for a No. 1 team.

Indeed, injuries were a definite factor this season, beginning with the shoulder damage Mudge incurred while surfboarding during the summer and aggravated when her crashed into the side wall while playing at a member/guest event in late January, right around when Waite hurt his ribs and causing this normally power-hitting duo to have to lob their way into the Briggs Cup final. Prior to that event Bentley, who had already torn knee ligaments a few months earlier, submitted to a cortisone shot for a balky elbow, a maneuver that allowed him to partner Hosey to the semis but exacted a cost in the form of enough additional damage to cause him to miss the spring events. In addition to these ailments and a severe head cold that felled Waite in late March and may have played at least some role in the shocking 3-0 defeat he that and Mudge absorbed in Philadelphia at the hands of Pirnak and Millard, the normally amazingly durable Butcher sprained his ankle in the Creek semis badly enough to be unable to continue against Waite and Mudge.

In light of this backdrop, the ending of the current season (which was moved up a few weeks when the San Francisco tournament, scheduled for late April, was abruptly cancelled with very little advance warning early this month) and the opportunity it provides the top players to recuperate and reload, might be a good thing after all. This has been a grueling though exciting 2006-07 tour, one that has certainly redefined the pecking order among the top teams and that creates some intriguing possible scenarios for the 2007-08 circuit next autumn.