ISDA Squash Tour 2008

Writen by Rob Dinerman
Date: September 06/07

The forthcoming 2007-08 International Squash Doubles Association (ISDA) pro doubles tour figures to be more wide open than it has ever been since the tour was formed in January 2000 in the wake of an amicable separation from the Professional Squash Association (PSA) that stemmed from a mutual recognition that the PSA was and would remain totally focused on singles and that pro doubles players therefore needed an organization of their own in order for their form of the sport to flourish going forward. After seven years as the overwhelmingly predominant tandem in the game (indeed, in the HISTORY of the game), Gary Waite and Damien Mudge were firmly displaced last season by Paul Price and Ben Gould, who won the tour’s most coveted titles while earning the No. 1 team ranking and compiling a 4-1 head-to-head record against Waite/Mudge that included final-round outcomes in both the North American Open and Briggs Cup, in both of which high-profile, high-purse competitions Waite and Mudge were defending champions.

In the wake of such a significant development, the main theme heading into the following season would have been whether Price and Gould could retain this standing or whether Waite and Mudge could regain it; this would especially have been the case in light of both the markedly enhanced strength of the autumn schedule (which features an all-time high seven ranking events prior to Christmas, most of which have expanded to the $25,000 - $30,000 range) and the way Price and Gould faltered down the stretch last spring (the last event they won was in early February, and Price was injured by season’s-end as well), losing badly the last time they faced Waite and Mudge (in late February in Brooklyn), who capped off the season by winning the final tournament in Long Island in April. But the foregoing alluring theme will, perhaps unfortunately, never see daylight, since Waite decided during the summer to retire from ISDA competition, having along with Mudge set records which, barring an absolute miracle, will never even be approached, must less equaled, foremost of which being their 76-ranking tournament collection, more than ten times the total of their closest pursuer.

With the departure of his long-time partner from the ISDA scene, Mudge has added to the intrigue of the impending competitive scenario by switching not only partners, as of course he was forced to do, but also walls, which comes as a substantial surprise given what he has accomplished on the right wall and given also the fact that his forehand power, especially the fearsome volleys that he delivers from way up in front of the red line, using his extraordinary reflexes and imposing wing span to ram the ball down his opponents’ throats, has been a devastating weapon that is unlikely to be readily transferable to the left wall. Mudge’s other “switch,” to Victor Berg, set forth something of a “domino effect” by putting Berg’s 2006-07 partner Chris Walker in the position of himself needing a new partner, who turns out to be Clive Leach, thereby breaking up the Leach/Scott Butcher partnership that has been so successful for the past season and a half, and so on.

The only two top-tier pairings that seem to be intact from last year appear to be the Price/Gould all-Australian alliance and that of John Russell and Preston Quick. When the latter duo, which had been turned away in each of their four prior 2006-07 finals (in Baltimore, Vancouver, Boston and Denver), finally broke through early this past April in the final round of the U. S. National Doubles in suburban Philadelphia, each of them reached a career milestone, with Russell thereby winning his first ISDA ranking title and his right-wall partner Quick, all three of whose previous career ISDA crowns (in New York, Wilmington and Boston) had been as Gould’s 2005-06 left-wall partner, thus becoming the only person in ISDA history (pending of course what Mudge can accomplish in his new role) ever to win ISDA ranking tournaments on each wall.

In addition to this pair of continuing tandems, the Mudge/Berg pairing is of course likely to be a contending team, as is the new all-British Walker/Leach alliance, which gave notice of its potential in its only prior ISDA foray in the season-ending San Francisco tour stop in May ’06, when these two former PSA standouts advanced all the way to the finals, where they pressed Waite and Berg to 3-all, set-five in the match-deciding fifth-game best-of-nine tiebreaker, before first Walker and then Leach committed a semi-forced tin to allow Waite and Berg to escape with a shaky 18-16 tally.

Other teams are lurking as well. Willie Hosey and Jamie Bentley, the No. 2-ranked team behind Waite and Mudge for several of the ISDA’s first few years, re-united last season and played their way into the semifinals of the Briggs Cup with a convincing quarterfinal upset win over Russell and Quick. Bentley also teamed with Price to capture the Cambridge Club Doubles, while Hosey endured several hard-luck setbacks during the last few months when Bentley was sidelined with an arm injury, including three one-point-in-the-fifth losses --- with Mark Chaloner against Russell/Quick in a Brooklyn quarter and with Gould in the semis first against Butcher/Leach in Philadelphia and then against Walker/Berg a few weeks later in Long Island.

Matt Jensen and Jeff Mulligan combined to reach nine quarterfinals in their 11 attempts, consistently wending their way through tough qualifying draws and or testing round-of-16 matches, several of each of which went to five games. Chaloner and Michael Pirnak have each won ISDA-sanctioned tournaments and figure to be a formidable pairing in their first season together as well, as do returning tandems Doug Lifford/Pat Malloy, Jonny Smith/Bernardo Samper, Joe Pentland/Steve Scharff, Tim Porter/Andrew Cordova (all of whom had their moments at various times this past season) and the new partnerships of Michael Puertas/Jamie Crombie and ISDA Executive Director James Hewitt with former PSA No. 4 Martin Heath, both of which latter pair have been multiple ISDA semifinalists with several partners in recent years.

Ironically, the very success that Price and Gould realized in all the “clutch” categories --- including going undefeated in five-game matches (6-0), in tiebreaker sessions against Waite/Mudge (4-0) and in games that went down to the final point (4-0) --- also can be viewed as a sign of their potential vulnerability this season, given the narrowness of many of their crucial 2006-07 victories; so too do Price’s quite possibly chronic injury-proneness (to his knee early on and to his back last spring) and the fact that they won fewer than half of last season’s ranking events, and none of the final four tourneys on the schedule. Certainly, their tour-leading five-titles total and 21-3 overall record make Price and Gould eminently deserving of their current No. 1 team ranking, and no matter what happens in the future, they will always be remembered as the team that finally succeeded where so many other teams had tried and failed in dethroning Waite and Mudge from the status they held so proudly for so long.

But it must be said that their record last year, while compellingly impressive, especially early on, was not nearly as dominant as any of the seven Waite/Mudge marks that preceded it, and there are a number of talent-laden partnerships that will be challenging Price and Gould this season for ISDA supremacy during the six-month ISDA 2007-08 tour that lies ahead.