Jim Bentley Cup Withdraws On Short Notice From The SDA Pro Doubles Schedule by Rob Dinerman Dateline October 21, 2019
--- In a stunning development that could have significant ramifications
going forward, the Tournament Committee of the Jim Bentley Cup, a
longtime fixture on the North American pro doubles circuit that has
been held at the Cambridge Club in Toronto every year since its
inception in 1973, decided late last week to remove this year’s edition
from the Squash Doubles Association (SDA) schedule. Since the
tournament was slated to be held from November 15-18, this decision was
conveyed with less than a month’s notice and at a time when the entry
deadline had passed and a number of players may have already both
committed the time and booked flights to Toronto in anticipation of
competing in the Bentley Cup, whose 46 prior holdings make it the
longest continuously running stop of the doubles schedule, other than
the Dave Johnson Memorial Invitational at the Heights Casino Club in
Brooklyn, which has been held in each of the last 71 years. There will
be a 47th Bentley Cup as well, just not one involving the SDA.
On the evening of October 18th, SDA Tour Director Graham
Bassett informed the tour’s Player Membership of the Bentley Cup
Committee’s decision, which was subsequently confirmed by Clive
Caldwell, the President and CEO of the Cambridge Group Of Clubs.
Although there were plenty of entries for the $25,000 event ($20,000
prize money plus a $5,000 hotel bonus) event ---- 15 teams entered, six
of which would have been “straight in” to the eight-team main draw,
leaving nine teams to vie in qualifying rounds for the two remaining
spots ---- the Committee was disappointed both by what it
perceived to be the quality of the turnout (only four players currently
ranked in the SDA top 20 had entered) and by what it felt was a lack of
sufficient effort on the part of the SDA to maximize the strength of
the entries. In light of the foregoing, the Committee members concluded
that they would be able to get a stronger draw by running a non-SDA
event and inviting top players from the greater Toronto area, which has
more good squash clubs and quality squash doubles players than any other
metropolitan region on the continent, to participate.
Ironically,this somewhat embarrassing and most unwelcome
development comes closely on the heels of a recent declaration by one
of the SDA Board members that the 2019-20 SDA season “is shaping up to
be a season of superlatives. The largest number of members in the
history of the tour will be competing for the largest aggregate prize
money in the history of the tour.” More pertinently, and as was
discussed in an emergency SDA Board conference call yesterday afternoon
and will no doubt be a prime topic of concern in the days and months to
come, this entire incident, for better or worse, shines a light on a
number of important and somewhat challenging questions that need to be
addressed and hopefully resolved. Among these issues are how binding,
on both a legal and practical level, are the commitments that a site
makes to the SDA in exchange for being awarded a spot on the official
tour schedule; how binding are the commitments the SDA makes to its
player group when it lists a tour stop on the schedule in exchange for
collecting annual membership dues; what if any are the obligations of
either the Association or a given site in ensuring the quality of the
tournament draw; and which if either of these entities should be
responsible for recompensing players who incur financial expenses when
they make good-faith preparations to attend the events that are
subsequently canceled.
