Krizek And McElhinny Rally To St. Louis Open Crown  
by Rob Dinerman

L-R: Winners Natarsha McElhinny/Narelle Krizek,
Head Pro Missouri Athletic Club/WDSA player Heidi Mather,
Finalists Meredeth Quick/Steph Hewitt


Dateline March 2nd --- Trailing two games to love, the Tippett sisters, Narelle Krizek and Tarsh McElhinny, made a mid-match tactical adjustment and successfully rallied to an 11-15 14-15 15-8 15-13 15-10 victory over Meredeth Quick and Steph Hewitt Sunday afternoon in the final round of the inaugural $10,000 St. Louis Open, held at the Missouri Athletic Club. Top seeds Krizek and McElhinny had won a tough four-game semifinal over Fernanda Rocha and Karen Jerome (who were two points from taking a two games to love lead), while Quick and Hewitt, who had defeated Krizek/McElhinny in the final of the 2012 U. S National Doubles in suburban New York the last time these two teams met 23 months ago, had straight-gamed first Larissa Stephenson and Joyce Davenport and then Tournament Chairman Heidi Mather (the head pro at the host club) and Vic SImmonds en route to the final round of the six-team draw.

   In the opening portion of the final, Krizek and McElhinny committed too many tins (especially in losing six of the match’s first seven points) and went for shots too soon, frequently leaving open balls in front for Hewitt and Quick to exploit. McElhinny spent much of those games positioned behind Quick, who for the most part was winning their exchange of rails along the left wall and scoring on her reverse-corner. Hewitt, fresh off teaming with Tom Boldt one week earlier to win the Mixed Doubles flight in the U. S. National Century Doubles, was dictating the play with a variety of shots that kept her opponents on the defensive. Even at that, the second game seesawed through 28 evenly-divided points before a McElhinny lob sailed above the front-wall boundary line to complete the two-game deficit.

  Starting at the outset of the third, however, the Australian-born eventual winners made two important strategic changes that altered the match’s pattern, as McElhinny began both to cross-court lob Hewitt, pushing her deep and out of her comfort zone, and to let Hewitt’s responding lobs go over her head, where Krizek could play them with her backhand at the back wall. Both decisions allowed Krizek to play a much more significant role, also forcing Hewitt to the back and enabling McElhinny to better establish position and to produce a slew of drop-shot winners during the remaining three games.  Hewitt’s best shot is usually her reverse-corner, but she tried very few in the last three games, seemingly fearing Krizek’s responding counters, especially after the latter had answered one Hewitt reverse with an even more sharply-angled reverse-corner winner of her own. After losing the third game convincingly, Quick and Hewitt had a real shot at the fourth, but at 13-all Quick tinned a drop shot and Hewitt did the same on a three-wall. By mid-fifth Krizek was pounding her patented shallow nick-finding rail for winners and her team was amassing too big a lead to be overcome. Throughout the five games, the quality of the play, and especially of the retrieving, was admirable, with McElhinny turning in one of the best overall performances of her career.

   The tour resumes in two weeks’ time with the Hashim Khan Invitational at the Denver Athletic Club, where Quick learned the game as a youngster during the mid-1990’s.









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