James Stout and Scott Arnold Capture David C. Johnson Memorial Championship by Rob Dinerman
Heights Casino Head Squash Pro Jim Bamber, Master of Ceremonies
Will Carlin, Club President Justin Lungstrum, Champions James Stout and
Scott Arnold, Finalists Chris Callis and Osama Khalifa, General Manager
Cristian Petrina, Tournament Co-Chair James Roberts and Assistant
Pro Lockie Munro.
Dateline February 25, 2024
--- Trailing 12-8 and later 14-13 in what had clearly become the
pivotal game against the recently-crowned North American Open Doubles
champions, second seeds James Stout and Scott Arnold, as they have done
so often in recent years, salvaged that game en route to a 15-8, 10-15,
15-14, 15-11 victory over Osama Khalifa and Chris Callis this afternoon
in the final round of the 2024 David C. Johnson Memorial Championship,
held as always at the Heights Casino Club in Brooklyn Heights. In so
doing Stout and Arnold --- who had been on the brink of elimination in
their very opening match against Elroy Leong and Chris Sachvie, who led
14-12 in the fifth game (triple-match-point) before Stout and Arnold
prevailed 15-14 --- won this tournament for the second time in the past
three years (previously in 2022 over Michael Ferreira and the host
club’s head pro James Bamber) and became the only team to win two
tournaments this season (having previously taken the Big Apple Open
final in October over Bamber and Zac Alexander). In both of their
2023-24 tournament wins they have had to survive multiple-match-balls
against them, having rescued the fourth game of their Big Apple Open
semi against Callis and John Russell from 13-14. There have been
more close matches this season than any in recent memory, as indicated
by the fact that during this past weekend in Brooklyn there were five
games (including, as mentioned the fifth game of the Stout/Arnold vs.
Leong/Sachvie match) in which the winning team won the game’s last
three points from 12-14.
After barely eking out that latter match, Stout and Arnold earned
hard-fought four-game victories over Ashley Davies/Tor Christoffersen
and Adam Bews/Greg McArthur. Meanwhile, in the draw’s bottom half,
Khalifa and Callis, still riding the momentum of their recent North
American Open triumph, barged their way into the final without losing a
game. Their quarterfinal opponents, 2022 Diamond State Open champions
Clinton Leeuw and Jaymie Haycocks, were expected to pose a substantial
challenge, but Khalifa and Callis surged through that match 15-6, 12
and 4, then pulled off one of those five wins from 12-14 in the second
game of their 15-6, 14 and 11 semi over Bamber and Alexander. The two
finalists then split the opening pair of games, leading up to a titanic
third game in which a late Stout/Arnold rally led to a 14-all point
which had the feel even before it began --- and certainly by the time
it ended a full 10 minutes later --- of being outcome-determinative,
even though whichever team won that point would thereby only be ahead
two games to one.
A fierce exchange seemingly ended when Callis, whose laser drive past
Arnold down the right wall had accounted for his team’s 14th point,
buried a shallow --- very shallow --- forehand reverse-corner for an
apparent winner. Yet, even as Callis pumped his first in exultation,
Stout was pointing out to the ref that the ball had ticked the top of
the tin. One official called the ball up, another called the ball down
and the third said he just couldn’t make a call either way. This led to
the point being replayed as a let --- as were the five-straight
exchanges that followed, as all four players were blasting away,
playing each other at close quarters and understandably unwilling to
play a ball in which their swing or access to the ball had been
impeded. Finally, on the seventh try, Stout nailed a forehand
reverse-corner winner.
He and Arnold were then able to pull away to 12-5 in the fourth game,
seemingly securely in control. Arnold scored three straight winners ---
all of a different variety --- during that stretch, while Khalifa and
Callis appeared a little emotionally spent from the disheartening way
the third game had ended. To their enduring credit, even against a
Stout/Arnold pairing that has a well-deserved reputation for decisively
closing out their matches (including a 15-2 tally in the fifth game of
their Big Apple Open final), Khalifa and Callis somehow bootstrapped
their way almost completely out of that large hole by conjuring up a
6-1 run to 11-13. But the next point --- which had to be replayed a few
times as well --- ended with an Arnold forehand drive winner, following
which Khalifa tinned a backhand volley cross-drop. The fact that Stout
and Arnold are a veteran team that has been through the wars ---
compared to the fact that Khalifa and Callis had never teamed up prior
to their extraordinarily successful North American Open partnership
debut --- may have played a role in this ferociously contested outcome.
Either way, Stout won this tournament for the fourth consecutive time,
having become the only player to ever win it three straight times with
three different partners in his prior successful collaborations with
Yvain Badan in 2020, Arnold in 2022 (after the Covid-caused 2021
cancellation) and Bamber in 2023.
Rob Dinerman has been covering the SDA pro doubles tour for the past 24 years.
