Tough Draw For Gould And Mudge In Upcoming Big Apple Open
By Rob Dinerman, for DailySquashReport.com
Dateline November 30th --- If Damien Mudge and Ben Gould are to add a 14th consecutive ISDA title to their undefeated ledger when the tour picks up this weekend with the ninth annual Big Apple Open at the New York Athletic Club, they will have to do it the hard way. Their quarterfinal opening round Saturday afternoon is against Preston Quick and Jonny Smith, regarded as the best non-top-four-seeded team, and if Mudge and Gould win that match, they would then likely have a Sunday-afternoon semifinal against Manek Mathur and Yvain Badan, their final-round opponents in St. Louis in late October, whose first-round assignment is against a qualifier.
In the bottom half of this $20,000 tournament's main draw, Mark Chaloner, fresh off combining with Paul Price to win the non-ranking invitational Cambridge Club Doubles just before Thanksgiving, and his partner Chris Walker are also slated to play a qualifier, with the winner to then play whichever team wins between second seeds Matt Jenson/Clive Leach, finalists in this event last year, and the John Russell/Greg Park duo.
So far this season, St. Louis has been the only full-ranking ISDA event, so the early-December pair of tour stops, namely the Big Apple Open followed one week later by the $100,000 biennial Briggs Cup at the Apawamis Club in Rye, NY, constitute an important part of the 2011-12 schedule leading into the holiday break and the several busy winter months that lie ahead. Prior to their teaming up to win the 2010 Big Apple Open, Gould captured this event with Quick in 2005 and with Price throughout the three-year stretch from 2006-08, while Mudge did the same with Gary Waite in 2004 and with Viktor Berg in 2009.
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