By Rob Dinerman, the official writer for the 2001-2002 ISDA pro doubles tour
|
| |
Gary Waite and Damien Mudge picked up right where they had left off in the post-Easter portion of the ISDA pro doubles tour schedule by adding three April titles (Denver, the Creek Cup in Long Island and the Kellner Cup in Manhattan) to the dozen they had already notched in the fall and winter. They have now won the last 16 ranking events going back to the season-ending Kellner Cup last April, and as of this late-April writing, with only the Worlds in Toronto and an early-May tour stop in St. Louis remaining, they have won 51 consecutive matches and have already stamped their 2001-2002 season as the greatest in the history of professional doubles. With every important seasonal record now lying in splintered shards at their feet, the only significant question left is whether they will be able to go undefeated wire to wire for the entire season. Their victorious march through three different final-round opponents so far this month has only added to the aura of invincibility their week-in, week-out exploits have enabled them to firmly establish. For Waite, who also won his record-tying fifth Cambridge with Mark Chaloner in November, the USSRA National Singles in February and National Doubles with Morris Clothier in March, and all three pro hardball events that were piggybacked onto ISDA stops in Denver, Baltimore and Long Island, his season-long performance in hardball singles and doubles must go down as the greatest single-season mark in the history of pro doubles squash.
The lone dangerous moment in their trio of recent tournament victories came in the semifinals in Denver, where they let a two games to none lead turn into a 9-6 fifth-game deficit at the hands of Blair Horler and Clive Leach, the team that has met them twice in finals and has probably given them the harshest battles of any on the ISDA tour this year. The loud clanging of a Waite backhand reverse-corner at 6-8 off the Denver Athletic Club’s noisy telltale had seemed to be sounding the death knell for his and Mudge’s aspirations for a perfect season, but a Mudge crosscourt that sped by Horler preceded a subsequent Horler tin, following which a let request voiced by Leach on a ball his partner was preparing to hit was denied on the basis of violating the rule allowing only the prospective ball striker to ask for the let.
This trio of developments evened the game at 9-all and undid the momentum that Leach’s career-best performance had generated, and at 11-all Horler ended two straight points by hitting balls that the altitude-aided atmosphere carried out of court to pretty much seal the eventual 15-12 outcome. The ensuing 15-13, 12 and 13 final against third seeds David Kay and Michael Pirnak was the fourth such final-round match-up in the last five tournaments, and would not have happened had Kay/Pirnak not survived a pre-final scare of their own in their five-game quarterfinal over qualifiers Eric Vlcek and Preston Quick, who one week later in Long Island would similarly follow a successful qualifying effort with a five-game quarterfinal defeat, this one coming at the hands of Viktor Berg and Todd Binns.
All three April events shared the happy quality not only of featuring, as noted, three different runners-up, but also of differing from their four predecessors (in Brooklyn, Chicago, Baltimore and Buffalo) in having at least one team other than the top four (Waite/Mudge, Willie Hosey/Berg, Pirnak/Kay and Horler/Leach) crack the semis. A severe and extended lapse in Berg’s occasionally wander-prone concentration contributed to a rally by James Hewitt and Josh McDonald from 1-2, 8-13 and double-match-point against in the tiebreaker to an eventual 15-13 fifth-game win on the last of many unforced Berg tins in Denver. Pirnak and Kay had their run of silver medal finishes terminated in the first round at the Creek Cup one week later by Jamie Bentley and McDonald, who then beat Berg and Binns to reach the final there. And in the quarters of the Kellner Cup, Binns and his usual partner, Jeff Mulligan, rode a career performance by the latter against Horler and Leach, who saved three match points from 10-14 in the fifth only to fall to a Mulligan crosscourt that nicked behind Horler for 15-13 and a slot in the semis. There, they lost in four to Hosey and a chastened Berg, who made up for his sub-par play in Colorado two weeks earlier.
Berg and Hosey won 18-16 in the fifth in their Kellner quarter with Anders Wahlstedt and Scott Stoneburgh, then subdued Binns and Mulligan and played perhaps their best match of the season in what was their sixth 2001-2002 final against the two-time defending Kellner Cup champs Waite and Mudge. That Berg’s athleticism, Hosey’s swiftness and savvy and the extraordinary communication they maintained throughout was not enough to win even one game was totally due to the magnificence that Waite and Mudge created all night, especially in a match-ending 11-0 and 13-1 run from 2-6 to 15-7 in the final third game. They will be hard-pressed to prevent the undefeated season that they are now so close to achieving.
|
| |
|
