Mudge And Gould Rally To Retain North American Open Doubles Crown
by Rob Dinerman, for DailySquashReport.com
Dateline January 24th, 2012 --- Flummoxed by a novel opposition strategy that swiftly put them at an imposing early deficit, top-seeded defending champions Damien Mudge and Ben Gould were able to make the required adjustment, winning a crucial mid-match simultaneous-game-ball that sprung them to an eventual 7-15 15-10 15-14 15-11 victory over Matt Jenson and Yvain Badan at the Greenwich Country Club last night in the final round of the North American Doubles championship. In so doing, Mudge and Gould successfully defended the title they had won last season, in which they had similarly rallied from a final-round first-game setback, that time at the hands of Jenson and Clive Leach. Monday evening’s match marked the 13th straight time that Mudge has reached the final round of this flagship tournament and the 11th time that he has won it --- from 2000-2006 with Gary Waite, in 2008 and 2010 with Viktor Berg and the last two years with Gould, who also won this event with Paul Price in 2007 and 2009 and hence is now a four-time winner of this championship.
Jenson and Badan, partners for the first time this past weekend and coming off a 15-14 fourth-game semifinal triumph over Leach and Manek Mathur, caught their vaunted opponents off guard with their tactic of constantly lobbing Gould, with Jenson alternating skid-boasts and crosscourt lobs (which he was angling to wonderful effect, taking full advantage of the host court’s high ceilings and slow-playing walls) and Badan lofting the ball high along the right wall. This approach stymied Gould, who likes to commandeer the play and attack from mid-court with his scorching salvos but was instead forced to retreat to the back wall and excavate the ball from there, often in a defensive mode, while his partner Mudge grew increasingly antsy from being largely frozen out of the action. Jenson and Badan would then pounce on whatever openings their moon-balls elicited, displaying a degree of patience and willingness to play long points that earned them the opening single-figure game and brought them to near-parity (9-10) through the two-thirds of the second as well before Mudge and Gould, who by that time had cut out the unforced errors that had cost them early on, were able to end that game with a 5-1 run.
Even at that, the pivotal third game seesawed slowly but tensely along to 14-all. A two games to one lead truly would have put Jenson/Badan in a strong position to win the match, and with it this prestigious title, now in its 28th edition. But, on a ball hit down the middle, Mudge, who has a history of coming up with winners of matches’ defining exchanges, was able to feather a forehand straight-drop to the front-right that barely eluded Badan’s desperate attempt to flag it down. Mudge and Gould were never able to break away in the fourth, but they nursed small mid-game advantages (7-4, 9-8 and 12-9) to 13-11, whereupon a Gould cross-court lob that could have been volleyed instead was allowed to drop into the extreme back of the court at too severe an angle for Jenson to steer it back into play. At 14-11, and a full two hours after play had begun, Gould nicked a forehand three-wall to give his team its fourth tournament victory (preceded by St. Louis, the Big Apple Open and Boston) of the season and consolidate the Mudge/Gould hold on the No. 1 ranking.
Finals Recap:
Damien Mudge (AUS) / Ben Gould (AUS) def Matt Jenson (AUS) / Yvain Badan (SUI)
7-15 15-10 15-14 15-11 (120min)
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