Top Two Seeds Barely Survive Riveting Big Apple Open Semis
by Rob Dinerman, for DailySquashReport.com
Dateline December 4th --- The top two seeded teams, defending champions Ben Gould and Damien Mudge and 2010 finalists Matt Jenson and Clive Leach, made it to their Monday-evening Big Apple Open final-round rematch, but they both sure had a tough time getting past a pair of thrilling consecutive semifinals that enlivened the gallery of the host New York Athletic Club throughout a riveting Sunday afternoon of action. Mudge and Gould, after losing the second game to Manek Mathur and Yvain Badan (their final-round opponents in St. Louis six weeks ago in the only prior full-ranking ISDA tournament so far this season) saw leads of 14-9 in the third and 12-4 (and later 14-11) in the fourth completely evaporate before in each case Mudge came up with the winning point at 14-all, while Jenson and Leach trailed qualifiers Imran Khan and Raj Nanda two games to one in the nightcap before finally pulling away in a 15-7 fifth game.
Mathur and Badan in a half-dozen previous match-ups against Mudge and Gould had frequently battled them to close end-games without ever actually finishing a game off, and that psychological backdrop may have played a role in the five consecutive points they lost from 14-7 up in the second before Badan managed to catch a fortuitous forehand reverse-three-wall nick to finally finish off that 15-12 game. The young recent Trinity College stars actually made The Champs appear more vulnerable than ever before in a savage five-point third-game run from 9-14 to 14-all, with the pace picking up markedly during that frenzied quintet of points, the most noteworthy of which was a Mudge cross-court blast that hit his partner Gould in the lower-leg to make the score 12-14 and a Mathur front-left nick from a nearly impossible angle that knotted the game at 14-all. It really appeared that had Mathur/Badan won the ensuing point (which ended when Mudge surprised everyone with a daring drop shot from the back wall), they would have had too much momentum to have been denied.
And it also really appeared when Mudge/Gould, reprieved by Mudge's successful third-game-ending salvo, were completely in the saddle when they jumped out to 4-0, 10-3 and 12-4 in the fourth, and that Mathur and Badan, having shot their bolt in a praiseworthy but ultimately unsuccessful bid for that third game, had resigned themselves to the defeat that, at 12-4 down, loomed as a virtual certainty. That they were nevertheless able to storm back all the way to 14-all against a pair as renowned as Mudge and Gould are for mercilessly finishing opponents off, is a tribute to how fully Mathur (who was on fire throughout the match with his slashing attack and sweet short game) and Badan have already come in establishing themselves as one of the elite teams on the ISDA circuit.
It would have been truly intriguing to have seen how Mudge and Gould would have dealt with having to play a fifth game had all four of the match-balls they held at 14-11 slipped away, but Mudge was able to render the question moot when at 14-all he pounced on a ball near the front wall and, instead of blasting away, he delicately steered a cross-court drop into the front-right nick, a maneuver that was so unforeseen and so contrary to everything that preceded it, that neither Mathur nor Badan could do anything but watch in dismay as it landed for a winner by 10 feet.
The bottom-half semifinal, while lacking the thunderbolts and simultaneous-game-ball hair-pin turns of its predecessor, had plenty of drama in its own right, as Leach and Jenson had to call upon all their accumulated teamwork (this is the fourth year of their partnership) and considerable individual skills before finally asserting themselves in that fifth game. Both teams were pressed to the limit in their respective semifinals, and it will be interesting to see what influence these Sunday-afternoon travails exert upon tomorrow night's final.
Semis Recap:
Damien Mudge/Ben Gould d. Manek Mathur/Yvain Badan, 3-1
Matt Jenson/Clive Leach d. Imran Khan/Raj Nanda, 3-2.
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