Tierney And Scharff Capture U. S. Century Doubles Open Crown
by Rob Dinerman


Dateline February 23rd --- Nearly 90 teams competed this past weekend in New York City in the eighth annual U. S. Century Doubles, a record turnout for this tournament, and the total would have been even higher were it not for several weather-related defaults caused by severe foggy conditions on Friday that imperiled air travel enough to shut LaGuardia Airport down for several hours and divert a number of flights to neighboring states. The tournament was sponsored by Jefferson’s Very Small Batch Bourbon and headquartered at the University Club, with the CityView Racquet Club, the New York Athletic Club, the Racquet & Tennis Club and the Union Club all co-hosting matches throughout the three-day event.

   In the nine-team Open division, first-time partners Sandy Tierney and Steve Scharff staged a series of late-game rallies in both the semifinal and final rounds to emerge victorious, thereby perpetuating this flight’s history of no team ever successfully defending their title. In fact, both finalists from 2013 were eliminated in their first-round quarterfinal matches, with last year’s winners, Atlantans Eben Hardie and Bill Villari, falling in four games to Bill Mangan and Bill Ullman, while 2013 runners-up Charlie Parkhurst and Morris Clothier (who won this event with Mike Pierce in 2008) led Eric Christiansen and Rob Dinerman two games to love only to lose the fourth and fifth games 15-14, with Dinerman nicking a three-wall on the weekend’s only main-draw simultaneous-match-ball.

   In the semis, Chris Spahr and Andrew Slater, who had opened with a straight-game win over 2012 Open winners Eric Vlcek and Jamie Heldring, then eked out a 15-14-in-the-fourth victory over Mangan and Ullman, following which Christiansen and Dinerman let late-game leads slip away in both the first and second games (12-11 in the first and 14-13 in the second), with Scharff scoring on a pair of forehand reverse-corner winners that rescued that second game preceding the anticlimactic 15-9 third.

  The final featured highly capable and savvy players whose thorough familiarity with each other’s games was doubtless abetted by the fact that three of the four are based at the University Club of Boston --- where Slater and Tierney are members and Spahr is the head pro --- and practice with each other several times per week; indeed Tierney/Scharff’s quarterfinal match was with yet ANOTHER pair from that same club, namely John Nimick and Scott Poirier. The one exception in the final-round quartet, the Greenwich-based Scharff, has in recent years won the U. S. National Doubles and the U. S. National Mixed Doubles a combined three times, and in this match, as throughout the tournament, he was the best player on the court, gliding smoothly to wherever he had to be, knifing front-court winners of all types (particularly on his reverse corner), keeping Spahr (who was remarkably error-free the entire match) and Slater off balance by varying his choice of shots, and hitting several demoralizing serve-return winners. Tierney’s tin and winner counts were both high, but for the most part he held his front-court position well and engaged Slater in a number of evenly contested cross-court battles.

  As they had done in their Christiansen/Dinerman semifinal the day before, Scharff and Tierney came from behind in all three of the games they won en route to the eventual 15-13 12-15 15-14 15-12 tally. They trailed 13-11 in the first, 14-13 in the third and 10-6 in the fourth. The third game was by far the most important, with Tierney keeping the game alive on the 14-13 point with his best retrieval of the day, leading to a frantic mid-court scramble that ended when Spahr made a diving get but lifted the ball just above the front-wall boundary line to make the score 14-all. Four lets later, a fierce exchange terminated when Slater was jammed by a ball and his attempted response just caught the top of the tin. A series of mid-game Spahr backhand reverse-corner winners (the only time in the match that he went to this shot) earned his team a 10-6 lead, but a combination of Tierney nick winners and Slater errors led to a 7-1 run to 13-11. Tierney then tinned a drive but Scharff, who as the match wore on became increasingly able to push Slater deep and then exploit the open front-right sector, scored in this fashion on a well-disguised backhand roll-corner, and on match-point Spahr committed a rare tin on a mid-court volley.

   In the A Division, Ed Chilton, the longtime Wilmington Country Club pro, and his brother Court fended off two fourth-game match-balls-against in their semi with 2010 A champs Alex Dean and Jim Marver, won the fifth 15-13 and then swept to a 3-0 final-round win over Michael Koep and Gary Yeager. The Mixed Doubles tourney was won by top seeds Tom Boldt and Steph Hewitt, who lost the first game of their final with 2011 Century Mixed Doubles winners Kip Gould and Karen Jerome, with the latter hitting a number of drop-shot winners. Chastened by that temporary setback, Boldt and Hewitt then softened the pace, kept Jerome deep enough to mitigate her shot-making, and reeled off three single-figure games, a solid companion-piece to the Canadian Century Cup title they had annexed in Toronto 12 weeks ago. The Women’s draw was won by Kathy Tuckwell and Ann McGowan in a four-game final with top seeds Sue Rose and Sue Greene.

   There were also three age-group events, the Legends 70-plus, in which Tom Poor and Jonathan Hyett won a five-game final over top seeds Bart McGuire and Mark Price; the Masters 60-plus, in which Baltimoreans Dave Rosen and Scooter Dorney first dethroned three-time defending champions, Canadians Scott Stoneburgh and Tony Ross 3-1 in the semis (with both the third and fourth games 15-14) and then out-played  Doug Lifford and John Brazilian in four games in the final; and the Grand Champions 80-plus, in which Drewe Williams and Dave Matthews of Santa Fe won out over two-time defending champs Mike McBean and Will Simonton 15-10, 6 and 11. Former WPSA singles and doubles champion Clive Caldwell had entered with his 92-year-old father Brian, but the elder Caldwell caught bronchitis late last week and was unable to participate. All told, no fewer than seven University Club of Boston representatives (Tierney, Spahr, Slater, Poor, Hyett, Brazilian and Lifford) made it to the final round this weekend.

   For the second straight year, Randy Goodleaf served as Tournament Chairman, and he and U. S. Squash Director of Doubles Preston Quick did an admirable job of administering the event and responding to the various travel exigencies that arose on Friday – but the most heroic role, in this Century Doubles weekend as in all of its predecessors, was played by the tournament’s  foremost advocate Kit Tatum, who right from the event’s inception has embraced and promoted it, recruiting players and matching up partners with an enthusiasm and fervor that more than anything else is responsible for its continuing growth and this year’s all-time high entry level. At a time when some events are struggling to maintain their prior attendance levels, the U. S. Century Doubles remains flourishing and vibrant.

DRAWS







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