Massachusetts State Doubles Recap: Lifford/Spahr (Barely) Retain Their Crown In Thrilling Final
by Rob Dinerman, for DailySquashReport.com
2012 State A Doubles: Finalists - Sandy Tierney & Pat Malloy; Champions - Chris Spahr & Doug Lifford
Dateline May 10th, 2012 ---- Trailing late in the fourth game, their early-match advantage a distant memory, against a pair of fired-up opponents eager to redeem close losses each had sustained earlier in the evening, top seeds Doug Lifford and Chris Spahr were nevertheless able to conjure up a four-point match-closing run that averted a looming fifth game and sealed a 15-9 15-13 15-17 15-12 victory Monday night in the Massachusetts State Men’s A Doubles final against 2007 and 2008 champions Sandy Tierney and Pat Malloy. In so doing in this last, best and longest (100 minutes) match of the night, Lifford and Spahr successfully defended the title they had won in 2011and finished off in memorable fashion a hectic “Finals Night” during which nine championship teams were crowned (for the most part after closely contested battles) over a seven-hour period on the two superb glass-back-wall doubles court of the University Club Of Boston.
The evening’s competition proved particularly rewarding for the host venue’s three squash professionals, namely Spahr (and his two precocious offspring), the club’s longtime head pro, Dan Roberts, an ISDA pro doubles tour top-25, and 2011 U. S. Hardball singles women’s champion Fernanda Rocha, who played in five of the day’s eight finals (a ninth, the C Division, had to be awarded by default to Dean Williams and Matt Gibbs, whose scheduled final with Sharon Bradey and Mac Caplan was prevented from happening when Bradey was forced to undergo knee surgery in late April) and went undefeated. In addition to Spahr’s A Doubles win with Lifford, he and son Carson, Milton Academy’s No. 1 player this past winter as a freshman, defeated Tom Poor and his son Morgan, three games to one, in the Parent/Child final; Roberts and Rocha teamed up to win the Mixed Doubles final in a thrilling five games against 2011 champs Malloy and Rocha’s mid-2000’s Trinity College teammate Margot Kearney; Rocha and Hope Crosier took a straight-set Women’s final at the expense of Harvard senior Nirasha Guruge and Robbin Silver-Grace; and Carson Spahr and his sister Caroline, won a four-game Siblings final over Morgan Poor and Maddie Chai. The remaining three finals saw John Nimick and Andrew Slater add the Massachusetts 50’s title to the Canadian Doubles 50’s they had earned last month in Toronto with a 3-1 triumph over Tierney and Jamie Fagan, while Poor and Malcolm Davidson prevailed three-love over John Brazilian (coming off recent knee surgery) and Len Bernheimer in the 60’s final and Harvard Club President Nick Iselin and his fellow Harvard alumnus John Palfrey took top honors in the B draw by rallying from two games to one down and overtaking Charlie Humber and Amrit Kanwal.
Malloy, who as Trinity College captain in 2004 won the deciding match in a 5-4 Potter Cup final-round win over Harvard before several solid years on the ISDA tour (often with Lifford as his partner), became embroiled in the two most exciting matches of the night. In the Mixed Doubles final, he and Kearney were overpowered in the early going by Roberts’s pace and Rocha’s athleticism and a series of tight forehand reverse-corners, the last of which finished off the 15-8 opening game. But by mid-second, Malloy, who usually plays the right wall but adapted well to being on the left, had forced his way into the action, doing a lot more roaming to the back right to protect his partner, who for her part proved increasingly able to withstand the balls that Roberts was rocketing in her direction and battling Rocha to a standstill in their frequent rail exchanges along the right wall.
In winning the airtight second and fourth games, Malloy and especially Kearney were the steadier and more opportunistic team down the stretch, while by contrast Roberts became too eager to hit winners when he got to hit the ball and Rocha committed some end-game errors, most damagingly when she tinned a reverse-corner at 14-all, simultaneous-game-ball to knot the match at a game apiece. But in all three of the games that Roberts/Rocha won, they erupted on swift but substantial surges (to 9-2 in the first game, from 2-all to 11-4 in the third and from 2-all to 8-3 in the fifth) during which their superior firepower created deficits too great for Malloy and Kearney to overcome, though they made a valiant bid to rescue the fifth game, even in the face of some agonizing reversals (one a mis-hit by Rocha that trickled over the tin, another a Malloy forehand drop at 8-12 that would have been a winner had it not caught the very top of the tin), even saving two match-balls-against before Rocha slashed a forehand to perfect length down the right wall to clinch her team’s hard-won 15-8 14-15 15-8 13-15 15-11 tally.
Less than two hours later, Malloy was back on court for the Men’s A final and the opportunity that it represented for himself and Tierney to avenge last year’s straight-game final-round loss to Lifford and Spahr in this event. The latter pairing, displaying a confidence perhaps borne of their triumph in the U. S. National Doubles 45-and-over flight six weeks ago (while Tierney was partnering Sean McDonough to the 55’s title), roared out of the gate to first-game margins of 5-1, 10-3 and eventually 15-9, but the following three games were terrific, marked predominantly by lengthy all-court exchanges featuring a greater need for teamwork than doubles usually entails and liberally sprinkled as well by daring shot-making, especially off Tierney’s racquet (beginning with the reverse-corner serve-return winner he hit at the immediate outset of the second game, followed by a cross-drop winner on the ensuing point) but occasionally from each of the others as well. An imaginative nick-finding mid-court three-wall from Spahr earned his team a 13-9 advantage and a Tierney tin at 11-13 gave Lifford/Spahr a triple-game-ball, but Lifford then tinned a serve-return and Malloy hit a winning drop shot for 13-14 before a long crosscourt duel between Tierney and Spahr ended with Tierney tinning a perhaps overly ambitious reverse-corner attempt that gave his opponents a two games to love lead.
The third game seesawed evenly along from 8-all, with neither team able to break away until two straight Tierney winners at 12-all made the score 14-12. He then was passed by a Lifford rail and tinned another reverse, necessitating a best-of-five tiebreaker the tone for which was set when Malloy hit a rail too tight to the right wall for Spahr to return. A Lifford tin gave Tierney/Malloy a triple-game-ball, the second point of which they were able to convert when Spahr tried to play a ball into the back wall but was unable to get enough on his swing for his attempt to reach the front.
Buoyed by this turn, Tierney and Malloy jumped out to a 7-3 lead in the fourth game. By this time they appeared to have found a winning game plan, with Tierney letting over-hit Spahr cross-courts go for Malloy to handle off the back wall, thereby enabling Tierney to hold favorable mid-court position, conserve his energy and shoot when the opening arose, including when loose serves were hit in his sector. Four times that game Lifford and Spahr won long and enervating points, only to see their efforts nullified by a single swing of Tierney’s racquet on the serve-return. The last two of those instances evened the score first at 10-all and then at 11-all, and when Tierney then knifed another forehand reverse-corner to make the score 12-11, he and Malloy appeared poised to take both that game and a possible-impending fifth as well.
But Lifford began the last rally with a clever shot down the middle, following which Malloy barely tinned a drop shot with his right-wall counterpart Spahr stuck in back. On the 13-12 point that followed, a Lifford cross-court unexpectedly semi-nicked off the back wall and died prematurely before Malloy could react and on match-ball, Malloy tinned a drop shot off the back wall on a play in which he seemed to change his mind in mid-swing, an anticlimactic conclusion to what was nevertheless a pulsating match in which all four participants (three of whom, it should be remembered, had already played final-round matches earlier that night) performed at a highly praiseworthy level.
There were other notable aspects of Finals Night as well, particularly in the B final, where Iselin and Palfrey showed great resiliency after their deflating overtime losses in both the second and third games, and in the Siblings match, where Maddie Chai and Caroline Spahr matched each other in length and accuracy in their numerous exchanges along the right wall, where Carson Spahr demonstrated the athleticism that has future stardom written all over it, and where Morgan Poor, playing his second match barely an hour after the end of his first, courageously coped with leg cramps that became increasingly immobilizing as that match wore on. His father, Tom Poor, who has won the Massachusetts State A’s a record 16 times, expertly ran the entire evening schedule and the record 192 players who entered this year’s tournament had the 2011-12 Massachusetts doubles season end on a very high note.
Finals Recap
Men’s A: Doug Lifford/Chris Spahr d. Sandy Tierney/Pat Malloy, 15-9 15-13 15-17 15-12
Women’s: Hope Crosier/Fernanda Rocha d. Robbin Silver-Grace/Nirasha Guruge, 15-10 15-12 18-15
Mixed: Dan Roberts/Fernanda Rocha d. Pat Malloy/Margot Kearney, 15-16 14-15 15-8 13-15 15-11
50-and-over: John Nimick/Andrew Slater d. Sandy Tierney/Jamie Fagan, 15-6 12-15 15-12 15-11
60-and-over: Tom Poor/Malcolm Davidson d. John Brazilian/Len Bernheimer, 15-8, 7 and 13
Parent/Child: Chris Spahr/Carson Spahr d. Tom Poor/Morgan Poor, 15-3 15-8 12-15 15-6
Siblings: Carson Spahr/Caroline Spahr d. Morgan Poor/Maddie Chai, 11-15 15-11 15-10 15-12
B Division: Nick Iselin/John Palfrey d. Charlie Humber/Amrit Kanwal, 15-6 13-16 13-18 15-8 15-11
C Division: Dean Williams/Matt Gibbs d. Sharon Bradey/Mac Caplan, default (Bradey injury)
2012 State 60's Doubles: Champions - Malcolm Davidson & Tom Poor; Finalists - John Brazilian & Lenny Bernheimer
2012 State 50's Doubles: Champions - John Nimick & Andrew Slater; Finalists - Sandy Tierney & Jamie Fagan
2012 State B Doubles: Finalists - Charlie Humber & Amrit Kanwal; Champions - Nick Iselin & John Palfrey
2012 State Mixed Doubles: Champions - Dan Roberts & Fernanda Rocha; Finalists - Margot Kearney & Pat Malloy
2012 State Parent-Chi
2012 State Siblings Doubles: Finalists - Morgan Poor & Maddie Chai; Champions - Caroline & Carson Spahr
2012 State Womens Doubles: Champions - Hope Crosier & Fernanda Rocha; Finalists - Robin Silver Grace & Nirasha Guruge
2012 State Siblings Doubles: Finalists - Morgan Poor & Maddie Chai
2012 State Siblings Champions: Carson & Caroline Spahr
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