Record Low Turnout As Zac Alexander and Kelsey Engman Win US Hardball Nationals by Rob Dinerman Dateline February 26, 2019
--- Zac Alexander, a former PSA top-40 now based in Greenwich,
demonstrated an exceedingly high level of hardball-squash stamina and
versatility this past Sunday when he accomplished a rare
singles/doubles “double" that was all the more noteworthy for occurring
in an extremely compressed time frame. He began the day by out-playing
Hamed Anvari 15-11, 10 and 13 in the late-morning (11:30 am start time)
deciding match of the three-player round-robin Men’s Open flight of the
U. S. Hardball Nationals at the Harvard Club of New York in mid-town
Manhattan, in a rematch --- and repeat --- of last year’s final.
Alexander then swiftly traveled to the Heights Casino Club in Brooklyn
for the early-afternoon (2 pm start time) final round of the David C.
Johnson Jr. Memorial Doubles, a major stop on the SDA pro doubles tour,
where he and partner Chris Callis defeated James Stout and Greg
McArthur, 15-14 in the fourth. It was the third SDA tournament victory
this season (with three different partners) for Alexander, preceded by
his exploits with Manek Mathur in Denver in October and with Robin
Clarke at the North American Open Doubles in Greenwich last month. This
two-borough, two-sport achievement has happened only once before, when
Gary Waite similarly defeated Marty Clark in the Hardball Nationals
final, also at the Harvard Club, and then partnered Damien Mudge to a
final-round Johnson victory (also in a tight four games) over David Kay
and Michael Pirnak 17 years ago in 2002.
Back then the turnout for the Hardball Nationals, though
already considerably reduced from its banner years in the 1970’s and
1980’s, when as many as 64 quality players were entered in the Men’s
Open category alone, was still at a respectable level. There has been a
steady decline in the interceding years, to the point where the numbers
this past weekend were more sobering than ever before. A total of 25
players entered the tournament and a majority of the nine offered
competitive flights had three entries or fewer. There were no age-group
draws at all below the 60-and-over level (as compared to
well-subscribed age-group flights every five years beginning with the
30-and-over as recently as the early 1990’s). US Squash decreed that
the 2016 National Hardball event would be the last in which the Men’s
Open winner would be recognized as an official national champion, and
there is also a US Squash rule in place under whose aegis an age-group
winner has to play a minimum of three matches in order to qualify for
recognition as having won an official national title. As noted, there
were three entrants in the Men’s Open (Alexander, Anvari and Dylan
Ward, a recent Princeton co-captain, who pushed both Alexander and
Anvari to four games), and (for the second straight year) two in the
Women’s Open, where Kelsey Engman won 3-0 against Mary Fung-A-Fat. Both
winners received a $1,000 check and the two runners-up earned $500 due
to the generosity of the Hardball Committee, which also during the
course of the weekend paid tribute to Richard Chin, the longtime pro at
the host venue, and bestowed the Charlie Baker Award “For Outstanding
Contributions To The Game Of Hardball Singles” on Rick Taft.
In the age-group categories, Doug Rice (60’s), Tefft Smith
(70’s) and Richard Tanfield (75’s) emerged victorious from their
respective round-robin competitions and there were two other age-group
flights in which the two entries squared off in a “final,” namely the
65’s, in which 2018 champion Paul Chan won 3-0 over Charlie Kimball,
and the 80’s, in which Andy Packard (who also competed in the 75’s
division) prevailed in straight games over Hoyt “Pete” Spelman. Despite
the dwindling number of existing regulation-sized hardball courts and a
consequent reduction in the number of active hardball players, the
dedicated Hardball Committee members seem determined to keep the
hardball game alive as long as possible, with the current plan being to
work with US Squash and Dunlop to develop a prototype ball suitable for
play on the 80 square-feet-bigger softball courts. The ball is expected
to be available for testing late this coming spring. Stay tuned.
