North American Open Doubles Semis Recap: Jenson/Badan Upset Mathur/Leach, Will Face Mudge/Gould In Final
By Rob Dinerman, for DailySquashReport.com
Dateline January 22nd, 2012 --- Defending North American Open Doubles champions Damien Mudge and Ben Gould roared into the Monday-night final with a straight-set semifinal win this afternoon at the Field Club of Greenwich over Preston Quick and Jonny Smith, quarterfinal 3-0 victors over fourth seeds Chris Walker and Mark Chaloner. Incredibly, this marked Mudge’s 13th consecutive advance to the final of this tournament, which he and Gary Waite captured seven straight years from 2000-2006 before barely (up two-love and led 13-12 in both the third and fourth games) dropping the 2007 final to Gould and Paul Price. Mudge and Viktor Berg then wrapped titles in 2008 and 2010 around a final-round loss to Price/Gould in 2009 before Mudge and Gould triumphed a year ago. They have now won five straight matches without losing a game in calendar 2012, having swept to victory in Boston last week before a Saturday quarterfinal win over Bernardo Samper and Mark Price, who had qualified into the main draw and then out-played John Russell and Greg Park in the round of 16.
The bottom-half semifinal involved the same four players who had competed in the Briggs Cup final last month just two MetroNorth stops south in Rye --- where Manek Mathur and Yvain Badan had first handed Mudge/Gould their first-ever defeat in the semis and then prevailed over Matt Jenson and Clive Leach --- but in this time in changed alignments, with Mathur and Leach, fresh off their final-round advance in their debut appearance as partners in Boston, opposing Badan and Jenson. The latter pairing, quarterfinal winners over Imran Khan and Raj Nanda, shot the lights out in an opening pair of single-figure games (15-8, 15-9), had a terrible third-game letdown in which they were held to only three points, and faced a fourth-game 13-11 deficit, but managed to force that game to 14-all, at which crossroads moment the normally reliable Mathur misplayed a ball down the middle for an error to usher Jenson and Badan into the final, making it two weeks in a row in which first-time partners have advanced to the final.
Semis Recap:
Damien Mudge (AUS)/ Ben Gould (AUS) def Jonny Smith (ENG) / Preston Quick (USA)
15-8, 15-11, 15-7
Matt Jenson (AUS) / Yvain Badan (SUI) def Manek Mathur (IND)/ Clive Leach (ENG)
15-8, 15-9, 3-15, 15-14
Pro Am Results
RED DIVISION
GREER/BADAN def MUDGE/GEORGE
BLUE DIVISION
ROBBIN/RUSSELL def HAYDEN/MATHUR
WHITE DIVISION
HOPKINS/WYANT def BARRETT/BASSETT
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