Suzie Pierrepont And Narelle Krizek Capture 2015 Turner Cup
by Rob Dinerman






Dateline January 25th --- Faced with a surging Cinderella opponent midway through a fourth game that had grown very close and somewhat contentious, top seeds Suzie Pierrepont and Narelle Krizek responded to the exigencies of the moment like the champions they are by engineering an unstoppable 9-1 match-closing run to clinch a 15-11 10-15 15-10 15-8 victory over qualifiers Natalie Grainger and Kayley Leonard this afternoon in the final round of the $20,000 Turner Cup benefiting Squash Haven, held this year at the Westchester Country Club in Rye, NY. Pierrepont and Krizek thus won this title for the third time and second in a row, in the process extending their consecutive-tournaments-won streak to 10, their last loss having come 32 months ago at the hands of Steph Hewitt and Meredeth Quick in the final round of the 2012 edition of this championship.

   Krizek and Pierrepont, who have played together for the past six years, had dominated their pair of pre-final opponents (namely qualifiers Jenny Duncalf and Rachael Grinham, followed by Vic Simmonds and Amanda Sobhy), while by contrast first-time partners Grainger, a Turner Cup winner with Sobhy in 2009 (when they straight-gamed Pierrepont/Krizek in the final) and 2013, and the Harvard-bound Greenwich Academy senior Leonard had weathered a pair of five-gamers (including their quarterfinal upset of Quick and Hewitt) on Friday as well as two other close 3-1 en route to this Sunday summit. These differing pathways aside, Grainger and her young southpaw teammate rebounded from an early 6-2 first-game deficit and crept to 11-12 before Krizek, courageously ignoring the three tins she had hit in the previous four points, successfully went for broke first on a forehand roll-corner from the back wall that Leonard wasn’t looking for, and then on a razor-sharp reverse-corner that made the score 14-11, following which an emboldened Pierrepont nestled a backhand drop shot from deep in the court that died in front of Leonard.

   Undeterred by the disappointing ending to that game --- as they had been all weekend whenever adversity confronted them --- Grainger and Leonard responded with a much more efficient second game in which Grainger, looking much swifter than she had in the Saturday-afternoon four-game semi vs. Carrie Hastings and Tarsh McElhinny, made the most of her opportunities, Leonard got better width on her cross-courts and surprised Krizek several times (including at game-ball) with cross-drops into the front-right corner, and both of them benefited by a slight downturn in the Pierrepont/Krizek quality of play. Pierrepont is great at holding optimum position with her reach and power, but she sometimes lays back a bit, making her vulnerable to front-left salvos, especially when they are coming from someone as capable as Grainger, and Krizek clipped the top of the tin three times in the last eight points of that 15-10 equalizing game.

   But in both the first half of the third game (when they charged from 0-2 to 7-3) and, as noted, the last half of the fourth, Krizek and Pierrepont simply imposed their superior firepower and teamwork to a degree that commandeered the on-court dynamics and enabled them to inexorably build up their advantage, both territorially and statistically. Though she coped remarkably well throughout the match and indeed throughout the weekend with the pressure that her two far-more-experienced opponents relentlessly exerted, Leonard increasingly found her self under siege and driven further and further back in the court (at least two-thirds of the Pierrepont/Krizek attack was directed her way during those last two games), leaving the front-left open for Krizek’s nick-finding three-walls and severe cross-drops, while Grainger, forced to “push the envelope,” committed a few errors and twice was driven so far into the middle that Krizek was thereby able to whistle forehand drives down the vacated right wall.

   That the match’s fourth and final game was the 22nd of the tournament for Leonard and Grainger (actually, the 26th for Grainger, who had also played in the Greenwich Open singles, where she had lost in four hard-fought games to just-crowned Tournament of Champions winner Raneem El Welily) and only the 10th for Pierrepont/Krizek may have played a role as well. But ultimately the Pierrepont/Krizek sprint to the tape --- which concluded with a scrambled point at the end of which Krizek, finding herself less than three feet from the front wall near the right corner with no one anywhere near her, nudged a little drop shot that neither Leonard nor Grainger even moved for --- was more a matter of the best team in the WDSA field compellingly asserting itself at crunch-time over an opponent that nevertheless had a tremendously praiseworthy five-match performance in its own right and fully deserved the plaudits it received afterwards for making this tournament a truly memorable occasion.
 

Pro Finals recap:

Suzie Pierrepont/Narelle Krizek d. Kayley Leonard/Natalie Grainger 15-11, 10-15, 15-10, 15-8