Coleman And White Capture Jimmy Dunn Invitational
By Rob Dinerman, for DailySquashReport.com
Dateline November 21st --- Top seeds Shane Coleman and John White took full advantage of their “accidental” partnership this past weekend by winning the Jimmy Dunn Invitational, held as always at the Racquet Club of Philadelphia. Coleman’s original partner, Rich Sheppard, came down with the flu late last week and White, recently ensconced as head squash coach at Drexel University and hence based right in town, successfully stepped in as the pair of transplanted Australians out-played first Charlie Ehlinger and Barney Tanfield, then Dent Wilkens and Rich Repetto (15-12 fifth-game quarterfinal winners over the Pearson brothers, Eric and Duncan) and finally second seeds Trevor McGuinness and Nigel Thain in an exciting five-game marathon. This marked the second time in as many months that a team formed in this type of pinch-hitting fashion wound up winning a Pennsylvania doubles tournament – the Pittsburgh Cup, a mid-October Challenger event on the ISDA circuit, was won by Jonny Smith and Imran Khan, who became teammates just a few days earlier when Khan’s younger brother Asad injured his elbow and Smith’s scheduled partner, Graham Bassett, opted to play in the Pan American Games that weekend in Mexico when a spot on the U. S. squad opened up.
McGuinness, the current Penn co-captain and slugging southpaw who has won the U. S. National Doubles three of the past four years (with Whitten Morris in 2008 and 2009 and with Addison West this past spring) and Thain had been forced to rally from two games to love down in the bottom-half semifinal, in which they painstakingly (15-13 in the fifth, on a disguised McGuinness roll-corner winner at 14-13) overtook Rob Whitehouse, the host club’s longtime head pro, and Todd Ruth, McGuinness’s frequent partner and co-winner of a host of U. S. Junior championships during the early 2000’s. McGuinness and Whitehouse have battled on the left wall through tight late-round Jimmy Dunn matches in the past, as five years ago in the final, when McGuinness and Morris Clothier held triple-match-point (4-2, set-five) in the fifth only to lose those last three points to Whitehouse and Greg Park.
After running a bit hot and cold throughout the Saturday-afternoon semi, McGuinness then raised his game in the final, firing a number of lasers directly into the nick and engaging in a high-octane cross-court battle with the equally-minded White, who with partner Coleman managed to amass a small mid-game lead in the fifth and carry it home.
It was a draining weekend for nearly everyone involved. Whitehouse played in THREE different draws (indeed he proceeded directly from a lengthy court-tennis match into his doubles semi, which may have affected his energy level in the latter stages of that 3-2 loss to McGuinness/Thain); Wilkens and Ruth became enmeshed in a five-game Open singles final, which Wilkens rallied to win after dropping the first two games; and Geordie Lemmon, who with Rob Dinerman had lost to McGuinness/Thain in the Open quarters, partnered Jamie Heldring to victory in the 40’s event, defeating Peter Shreiber and Garrett Goggin 3-0 in the final. The B Doubles was won by Gary Yeager and Joseph Purrazella, who won their final in four games over Mark Pagon and Ken Pollock in the final.
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