ISDA Stars Preston Quick And Greg Park Head Strong US National Doubles Field
by Rob Dinerman, for DailySquashReport.com
Dateline March 30th, 2012 --- Newly eligible to participate in the wake of a noteworthy and much-discussed U. S. Squash rules change this past summer, ISDA stand-outs Preston Quick and Greg Park are the top-seeded team in the 24-team Open division of the 77th edition of the U. S. National Doubles Championships, which begin this morning and are being headquartered for the first time at the Apawamis Club in Rye, NY, with several other clubs in Westchester and southern Connecticut also serving as host venues. There is also a 13-team women’s Open tournament, in which Narelle Krizek and her sister Natarsha McElhinny are the defending champions and top seeds, as well as nine men’s and two women’s age-group flights, with 140 total team entries.
Quick, currently the U. S. Squash Director Of Doubles, won this tournament with Eric Vlcek in 2003 and 2004 (in a fifth-game overtime against Morris Clothier and Damien Mudge) and with John Russell in 2007, the second (and, as it turned out, last) year of the U.S. National Doubles being a prize-money stop on the ISDA pro tour. That summer the U. S. Squash doubles committee decided to institute what became known as “the 50% rule,” under which no player who had competed in at least 50% of the ISDA events during the 12-month period prior to a U. S. Squash National Doubles event (including the U. S. Mixed Doubles, which ISDA top-five Paul Price had won in February 2007 with Krizek, and the U. S. Century Doubles) could play in that National Doubles tournament, a policy designed at least in part in accordance with what had become a prevailing sense that those who chose to be full-time ISDA touring pros should not be dominating these national doubles championships. The 50% rule remained in force through the end of last season, following which the doubles committee made the decision this past summer to discontinue it and to open the event back up to everyone.
Any concerns that arose about top ISDA teams like Mudge and Ben Gould (who have won 19 of the 20 ISDA events they have entered during their two seasons as partners) availing themselves of this opportunity and laying waste to the event’s competitive dynamic like NBA players let loose on a neighborhood playground, have not been borne out, as only one of the ISDA pros currently ranked in the top eight is entered in the Open tournament this weekend, namely Manek Mathur, who is a teaching pro at the host club and who, along with fellow Apawamis pro and former Trinity College teammate Travis Judson, is seeded seventh. The eight seeded teams, in order, are Quick/Park, who in their only prior foray as partners reached the semifinals of the World Doubles in Toronto last May with a win over just-ensconced Canadian National Doubles champs Willie Hosey and Michael Pirnak; Trevor McGuinness and Whitten Morris, who captured this tourney in 2008 and 2009, with McGuinness also winning with Addison West in 2011, when Morris was sidelined by a torn calf muscle; reigning U. S. Under-30 Doubles champs Graham Bassett and Greg McArthur; Josh Schwartz and Hamed Anvari, who notched the Gold Racquets last season and the New York Athletic Club Invitational earlier this month; Steve Scharff, who earned this title two years ago with Dylan Patterson, and his current ISDA partner Phil Barker; Russell and Patterson, partnering up for the first time; Mathur, who won the Briggs Cup this past December with Yvain Badan, and Judson; and West and his first-time teammate Tim Wyant.
There are so many exceptional and fully upset-capable teams right behind this octet that fully half of the seeded teams could quite plausibly be stopped short of the quarterfinals. The list of dangerous “floaters” includes Clothier, a nine-time winner of this tourney, and James Stout; Baset Chaudhry and Gustav Detter, who in a Silver Racquets semifinal in November barely lost in five games to eventual tournament winners Morris and West; former ISDA partners Mark Price and Joe Pentland, semifinalists in a pro tour stop in Vancouver several years back; California state champions Peter Karlen and three-time (2008-2010) U. S. National Hardball champ Eric Pearson; Dent Wilkens and Jacques Swanepoel, semifinalists in last year’s Championships in Chicago by virtue of their win over 2002 and 2005 U. S. National Doubles titlists Clothier and Gary Waite; three-time (2009-2011) S. L. Green finalist Gilly Lane and former Princeton captain Peter Kelly; early-2000’s Trinity College teammates Pat Malloy and Noah Wimmer, each a winner of a recent high-end doubles invitational event with different partners; and the “oldies but goodies” team of Vlcek, a six-time winner of this tournament (four times with Clothier and, as noted, twice with Quick) and 1995 North American Open Doubles winner (with Peter Briggs, currently the head pro at Apawamis) Jeff Stanley.
The top four seeded teams in the women’s tournament are Krizek and McElhinny, who last year in Chicago became the only “sister” team ever to win this crown; Dana Betts and Emily Lungstrum, winners this past winter of the William White and the New York Athletic Club events; Meredeth Quick and Steph Hewitt, who won the WDSA pro women’s tour stop at the Philadelphia Country Club this past October; and the longtime veteran Philadelphia pairing of Dawn Gray and Amy Milanek, who will face a stiff challenge in what appears to be an impending quarterfinal match-up against the formidable Natalie Grainger, who with Jess DiMauro won this championship in 2008 and 2009, and her talented 17-year-old partner Maria Elena Ubina.
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