Krizek
And Pierrepont Capture Players Championship
By Rob Dinerman for DailySquashReport.com
Dateline April 21st --- Deadlocked at 5-all in the fifth game of a titanic struggle for supremacy against a top-seeded opponent that had thrashed them in the same University Club Of New York venue the last time these two teams had met four months ago, second seeds Narelle Krizek and Suzie Pierrepont engineered a stunningly dramatic 10-0 match-closing run that clinched a 15-10 17-18 15-8 9-15 15-5 victory over top seeds Natalie Grainger and Amanda Sobhy this past Monday night in the final round of the Players Championship. In so doing, Krizek and Pierrepont successfully defended their 2010 Players Championship title, spectacularly avenged their straight-set early-December loss to Sobhy/Grainger in the Turner Cup final and reclaimed, at least for now, their standing as the top team on the WDSA women’s pro doubles tour.
In that Turner Cup match four months back, Krizek and Pierrepont, undefeated to that point after wins in the Turner Cup, U. S. National Doubles, Players Championship and Canadian Pro events in 2009-10, had led Sobhy and Grainger 14-9 in the first game, only to surrender an eight-point game-ending rally that catapulted their first-time-partnering opponents to a 17-14 15-9 15-10 victory. This time it was Krizek and Pierrepont who closed out the opening frame with a no-nonsense three-point flurry that carried through the first four points of the second as well. Some daring shot-making by Grainger got that game to 7-all, after which neither team was able to acquire more than a one-point advantage all the grinding way through a harrowing best-of-nine tiebreaker that wasn’t decided until, on simultaneous-game-point, Grainger nursed an inside-out backhand drop shot from the back wall that gently --- and barely --- cleared the tin and nicked on the front-left for a clean winner that evened the match at a game apiece.
However, Krizek and Pierrepont showed a resiliency in the face of this potentially deflating turn of events that had been absent under similar circumstances in the Turner Cup and was perhaps borne of their rally one day earlier in the face of the two games to one deficit they had survived in their semifinal against Meredeth Quick (who had been shooting exceptionally well) and Steph Hewitt, who had fallen just short in the 15-12 fourth game before Pierrepont/Krizek made off with an anticlimactic 15-7 fifth. Grainger and Sobhy, by contrast, had had a far easier time of it in their straight-game semi over Emily Lungstrum and Dana Betts, winners of a three-team qualifier draw. It had been an action-packed weekend for everyone involved, especially for Sobhy, the first American woman ever to win the World Junior Singles championship, who had flown home on Saturday evening from Dallas, where she had played in a WISPA pro women’s singles tournament, and for Krizek, who earlier in the weekend had been in Baltimore for her induction into the Maryland Squash Hall Of Fame.
Notwithstanding the Players Championship multi-front backdrop, Pierrepont and Krizek responded to that one-point second-game loss by moving from 7-6 to 14-6 in the third, a game-clinching surge that was promptly counterbalanced when Grainger and Sobhy jumped out to an 8-2 lead that effectively sealed the outcome of that game as well. By the time the fifth game began, the packed gallery was buzzing with anticipation, and when the first 10 points were evenly divided (with Grainger contributing four drop-shot winners to her team’s cause), with the teams to that point, 80 minutes in, having played each other to an absolute statistical and territorial standstill, there was every reason to expect that game to seesaw in hair-raising point-for-point fashion all the way to the very end, just as the second game had done.
Instead, and with a compelling swiftness that belied the lengthy exchanges that had heretofore characterized the action, Pierrepont and Krizek proceeded with merciless efficiency to seize complete control in winning all 10 remaining points. A tightly-angled Pierrepont backhand reverse-corner winner (after a Krizek lob had forced a backpedaling Sobhy to the deep-left) was followed by a Sobhy forehand roll-corner that caught the top of the tin, after which a nick-finding Krizek forehand three-wall preceded two Pierrepont winners, the first a cross-drop and the second a volley straight drop that put her team ahead 10-5. Krizek then nursed a forehand cross-drop winner for 11-5 and a rattled-appearing Sobhy tinned a drop shot. The disarray that by this time had taken possession of the Sobhy/Grainger tandem was best symbolized by what occurred on the ensuing 12-5 point, when after a prolonged all-court series of exchanges, Grainger, with an open ball at the back wall and seeing that both of her opponents were stuck at their respective side walls, lashed a blast down the middle of the court which went only five feet before hitting the back of her partner Sobhy’s head with a resounding thwack that elicited a horrified gasp from the spectators as the ball caromed nearly over the back wall.
After a brief stoppage to assure that the precocious but beleaguered Harvard-bound teenager was all right, play resumed, but only long enough for Pierrepont to hit a pair of consecutive backhand straight-drop winners that made official what by then had become a foregone conclusion. This match was preceded by a men’s open hardball final (played on an international-sized court), in which 2001 British Open finalist Chris Walker edged out reigning U. S. National Hardball champion Preston Quick, 15-12 in the fifth, and would be succeeded by the Players Championship men’s final, in which Damien Mudge and Ben Gould would complete an undefeated 2010-11 ISDA season by rising superior to Clive Leach and Matt Jenson in a highly-competitive though straight-set clash between the tour’s top two teams. All in all a memorable evening of squash at the University Club, with the WDSA final clearly the highlight in terms of drama and entertainment value.
The next event on the women’s pro doubles schedule is the biennial Harrow Sports World Doubles May 6-9 in Toronto, followed one week later by the season-ending Crescent Capital LA Open, which will be held at the Jonathan Club in Los Angeles.
Copyright © 2011 Rob Dinerman
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By Rob Dinerman for DailySquashReport.com
Dateline April 21st --- Deadlocked at 5-all in the fifth game of a titanic struggle for supremacy against a top-seeded opponent that had thrashed them in the same University Club Of New York venue the last time these two teams had met four months ago, second seeds Narelle Krizek and Suzie Pierrepont engineered a stunningly dramatic 10-0 match-closing run that clinched a 15-10 17-18 15-8 9-15 15-5 victory over top seeds Natalie Grainger and Amanda Sobhy this past Monday night in the final round of the Players Championship. In so doing, Krizek and Pierrepont successfully defended their 2010 Players Championship title, spectacularly avenged their straight-set early-December loss to Sobhy/Grainger in the Turner Cup final and reclaimed, at least for now, their standing as the top team on the WDSA women’s pro doubles tour.
In that Turner Cup match four months back, Krizek and Pierrepont, undefeated to that point after wins in the Turner Cup, U. S. National Doubles, Players Championship and Canadian Pro events in 2009-10, had led Sobhy and Grainger 14-9 in the first game, only to surrender an eight-point game-ending rally that catapulted their first-time-partnering opponents to a 17-14 15-9 15-10 victory. This time it was Krizek and Pierrepont who closed out the opening frame with a no-nonsense three-point flurry that carried through the first four points of the second as well. Some daring shot-making by Grainger got that game to 7-all, after which neither team was able to acquire more than a one-point advantage all the grinding way through a harrowing best-of-nine tiebreaker that wasn’t decided until, on simultaneous-game-point, Grainger nursed an inside-out backhand drop shot from the back wall that gently --- and barely --- cleared the tin and nicked on the front-left for a clean winner that evened the match at a game apiece.
However, Krizek and Pierrepont showed a resiliency in the face of this potentially deflating turn of events that had been absent under similar circumstances in the Turner Cup and was perhaps borne of their rally one day earlier in the face of the two games to one deficit they had survived in their semifinal against Meredeth Quick (who had been shooting exceptionally well) and Steph Hewitt, who had fallen just short in the 15-12 fourth game before Pierrepont/Krizek made off with an anticlimactic 15-7 fifth. Grainger and Sobhy, by contrast, had had a far easier time of it in their straight-game semi over Emily Lungstrum and Dana Betts, winners of a three-team qualifier draw. It had been an action-packed weekend for everyone involved, especially for Sobhy, the first American woman ever to win the World Junior Singles championship, who had flown home on Saturday evening from Dallas, where she had played in a WISPA pro women’s singles tournament, and for Krizek, who earlier in the weekend had been in Baltimore for her induction into the Maryland Squash Hall Of Fame.
Notwithstanding the Players Championship multi-front backdrop, Pierrepont and Krizek responded to that one-point second-game loss by moving from 7-6 to 14-6 in the third, a game-clinching surge that was promptly counterbalanced when Grainger and Sobhy jumped out to an 8-2 lead that effectively sealed the outcome of that game as well. By the time the fifth game began, the packed gallery was buzzing with anticipation, and when the first 10 points were evenly divided (with Grainger contributing four drop-shot winners to her team’s cause), with the teams to that point, 80 minutes in, having played each other to an absolute statistical and territorial standstill, there was every reason to expect that game to seesaw in hair-raising point-for-point fashion all the way to the very end, just as the second game had done.
Instead, and with a compelling swiftness that belied the lengthy exchanges that had heretofore characterized the action, Pierrepont and Krizek proceeded with merciless efficiency to seize complete control in winning all 10 remaining points. A tightly-angled Pierrepont backhand reverse-corner winner (after a Krizek lob had forced a backpedaling Sobhy to the deep-left) was followed by a Sobhy forehand roll-corner that caught the top of the tin, after which a nick-finding Krizek forehand three-wall preceded two Pierrepont winners, the first a cross-drop and the second a volley straight drop that put her team ahead 10-5. Krizek then nursed a forehand cross-drop winner for 11-5 and a rattled-appearing Sobhy tinned a drop shot. The disarray that by this time had taken possession of the Sobhy/Grainger tandem was best symbolized by what occurred on the ensuing 12-5 point, when after a prolonged all-court series of exchanges, Grainger, with an open ball at the back wall and seeing that both of her opponents were stuck at their respective side walls, lashed a blast down the middle of the court which went only five feet before hitting the back of her partner Sobhy’s head with a resounding thwack that elicited a horrified gasp from the spectators as the ball caromed nearly over the back wall.
After a brief stoppage to assure that the precocious but beleaguered Harvard-bound teenager was all right, play resumed, but only long enough for Pierrepont to hit a pair of consecutive backhand straight-drop winners that made official what by then had become a foregone conclusion. This match was preceded by a men’s open hardball final (played on an international-sized court), in which 2001 British Open finalist Chris Walker edged out reigning U. S. National Hardball champion Preston Quick, 15-12 in the fifth, and would be succeeded by the Players Championship men’s final, in which Damien Mudge and Ben Gould would complete an undefeated 2010-11 ISDA season by rising superior to Clive Leach and Matt Jenson in a highly-competitive though straight-set clash between the tour’s top two teams. All in all a memorable evening of squash at the University Club, with the WDSA final clearly the highlight in terms of drama and entertainment value.
The next event on the women’s pro doubles schedule is the biennial Harrow Sports World Doubles May 6-9 in Toronto, followed one week later by the season-ending Crescent Capital LA Open, which will be held at the Jonathan Club in Los Angeles.
Copyright © 2011 Rob Dinerman
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