Seven Combined Match Balls Saved In Riveting SDA Big Apple Open
Semis
By Rob Dinerman
Dateline October 29, 2023 --- On a day in which the two winning
teams --- and top two seeds --- fended off a total of seven match
balls against them, James Stout and Scott Arnold defeated John Russell
and Chris Callis 11-15, 15-6, 9-15, 15-14, 15-5, following which Zac
Alexander and James Bamber, trailing Adam Bews and Matthew Henderson
two games to one 14-12 in the fourth game and 14-13 in the fifth,
managed to win both of those games 15-14. In each case it was the
left-wall players who struck the winning blows for the victors. At
14-all in the fourth game of the top-half semi, Stout hit the single
most perfectly placed shot of the day, a laser serve-return (the only
serve-return winner of the entire match) that passed Callis and
dead-nicked just behind him on the right wall for a clean winner.
Buoyed by the way they had rescued that game, Stout and Arnold ---
whose quarterfinal against former top-15 PSA pros Ryan Cuskelly and
Cameron Pilley had also gone the five-game limit --- raced off to a 4-0
lead in the fifth (their combined-games 6-0 run representing the
longest string of consecutive points that either team scored throughout
the match) and never looked back en route to a 15-6 close-out against
their understandably deflated opponents, who had played so well in
winning two of the first three games and came within an eyelash of
taking the fourth as well.
Then, on simultaneous-match-ball in the semifinal that followed,
Alexander nailed a shallow backhand drive that died in front of Bews on
the final exchange of the hectic and exciting day. The
Stout/Arnold and Alexander/Bamber pairings both won major tournaments
last season. This was the first time in a number of years in which both
final-round teams had to save multiple-match-balls against them in
their respective semis, and those two matches came upon the heels of a
trio of highly competitive quarterfinal matches --- Stout/Arnold let a
fourth-game match ball get away against Cuskelly/Pilley; Alexander and
Bamber would have similarly been in a fifth game if they hadn’t won the
fourth-game 14-all point against Osama Khalifa and Kyle Martino; and
Russell and Callis won both the third and close-out fourth games
against “home” NYAC pros Clinton Leeuw and Jaymis Haycocks by 15-13
scores. After all this weekend’s close matches, it will be interesting
to see which team can bring their A game in the Monday-night final.
