Mudge
And Gould Capture Players
Championship
By Rob Dinerman for DailySquashReport.com
Dateline April 21st ---- In an overwhelming display of firepower and athleticism, top seeds Damien Mudge and Ben Gould rampaged through the field in the 10th annual Players Championship this past weekend, displaying a brutal efficiency (four matches, the minimum 12 games) that culminated in a Monday-night final at the University Club of New York with a compelling 15-12, 8 and 5 tally over their valiant but out-classed opponents Matt Jenson and Clive Leach. Mudge and Gould, fierce rivals for the three prior years before their summer 2010 decision to partner up, thereby completed an undefeated (34-0) wire-to-wire 2010-11 ISDA campaign in which they swept all 11 full-ranking tournaments, in the process leaving little doubt of their status as the best team in the history of professional doubles squash.
This was the first time that an ISDA team has gone undefeated over the course of an entire season since 2004-05, when Mudge and Gary Waite accomplished this feat for the third (also 1999-2000 and 2001-02) and final time. Gould, a Players Championship winner with Paul Price in 2009 and 2010 (beating Mudge/Viktor Berg and John Russell/Preston Quick in those respective finals), thus earned this title for the third straight year, while Mudge, who played the right wall during his years with Waite before moving over to the left when Waite retired a few years ago, became the only player in ISDA history to have an undefeated season playing each wall.
The dominance with which Mudge and Gould surged through the draw (including their quarterfinal with Willie Hosey and Hamed Anvari and their semi against Wilmington and Brooklyn runners-up Chris Walker and Mark Chaloner, 3-2 quarterfinal winners over Yvain Badan and Joe Pentland) should not obscure either what Leach and Jenson accomplished in achieving their fourth final this season (no other team besides Mudge/Gould had more than two) or the several unexpected outcomes that transformed the draw’s third quadrant into a veritable no-man’s-land of upsets that were even more surprising for the peremptory fashion in which they occurred. Third seeds Russell and Quick, who had never been stopped short of the semis all season, were eliminated, in straight sets no less, in the round of 16 by first-time-ever partners Greg McArthur and James Stout, who then defeated Imran Khan and Steve Scharff (first-round 3-0 upset winners themselves at the expense of Jonny Smith and Raj Nanda) to reach the semis. Stout, who successfully defended his World Rackets title this past autumn, had not even entered the Players Championship, and was only summoned to step in when McArthur’s regular partner, Dan Roberts, incurred a severe hamstring injury earlier this month while playing in the final of a singles tournament in Boston.
While these disorderly doings were evolving in the quadrant above theirs, second seeds Jenson and Leach, finalists this past fall/winter in New York, Boston and Greenwich, were out-playing first former Trinity teammates Jacques Swanepoel and Shaun Johnstone and then Greg Park and James Hewitt, first-round winners over the Canadian pair of Ian Power and Will Mariani. Leach and Jenson have had a few missteps along the way to compiling their otherwise stellar 2010-11 season --- they were first-round knockouts both in St. Louis, where they were caught off guard by Manek Mathur and Badan, and in Brooklyn, where Leach sagged in the last two games of their 3-2 loss to Walker and Chaloner ---- but they were fully engaged and effective in the four-game semifinal that both put an end to the Stout/McArthur Cinderella story and clinched the No. 2 2010-11 end-of-season team ranking for Leach and Jenson.
It must be said of the latter tandem that they performed at a praiseworthy level in their Mudge/Gould final as well, which started nearly an hour later than expected due to the length of both the men’s hardball single final (played on an international-sized court, with Walker edging out Quick, 15-12 in the fifth) and the WDSA women’s doubles final, in which Narelle Krizek and Suzie Pierrepont avenged their Turner Cup final-round loss in December with a five-game victory over Natalie Grainger and Amanda Sobhy. Once the men’s final did begin, Leach and Jenson determinedly stood their ground in the face of the constant heat directed their way and nearly matched their opponents’ torrid pace in the white-hot cauldron of this seasonably warm April evening, where the low-ceilinged host venue rendered effective lobbing near-impossible and where violent all-court exchanges defined the high-octane action. That they nevertheless lost in three games, only the first of which was competitive on the scoreboard, was totally due to the absolute brilliance that characterized the Mudge/Gould output all night --- indeed, all SEASON --- and sent an intimidating message of how daunting a task awaits any team that aspires to conquer them going forward.
The pressure that they put on an opposing team is intense and unrelenting --- and it is even greater defensively than it is offensively. They both can blast the ball off either flank, but perhaps the scariest part of their game is their court coverage, which puts any opponent who has what would qualify against any other team as a good shot-making opportunity in the unenviable position of knowing that he will have to go for broke, risk hitting the tin --- and that even if he executes the shot perfectly the ball will STILL be retrieved, as likely as not with some real action behind it that will reverse the hard-won positional advantage and put Mudge and Gould back in control of the point. Eventually, and inevitably, the attritional effects of having to deal with what Mudge and Gould continuously threw at them took a toll, as first Jenson and then Leach surrendered a few tins, especially in a 10-1 Mudge/Gould run from 10-7 in the second game to 5-0 in the third.
Now fully in command, Mudge and Gould raced exuberantly away, with Gould firing off several spectacular on-the-run forehand reverse-corner winners as he and Mudge blazed triumphantly across the finish line. These Australian superstars will be prohibitive favorites three weeks hence in the biennial World Doubles in Toronto, where teams are required to be composed of players from the same country, and where the British-born Leach will team up with Russell while Jenson will be matched with his Aussie compatriot Price.
Copyright © 2011 Rob Dinerman
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By Rob Dinerman for DailySquashReport.com
Dateline April 21st ---- In an overwhelming display of firepower and athleticism, top seeds Damien Mudge and Ben Gould rampaged through the field in the 10th annual Players Championship this past weekend, displaying a brutal efficiency (four matches, the minimum 12 games) that culminated in a Monday-night final at the University Club of New York with a compelling 15-12, 8 and 5 tally over their valiant but out-classed opponents Matt Jenson and Clive Leach. Mudge and Gould, fierce rivals for the three prior years before their summer 2010 decision to partner up, thereby completed an undefeated (34-0) wire-to-wire 2010-11 ISDA campaign in which they swept all 11 full-ranking tournaments, in the process leaving little doubt of their status as the best team in the history of professional doubles squash.
This was the first time that an ISDA team has gone undefeated over the course of an entire season since 2004-05, when Mudge and Gary Waite accomplished this feat for the third (also 1999-2000 and 2001-02) and final time. Gould, a Players Championship winner with Paul Price in 2009 and 2010 (beating Mudge/Viktor Berg and John Russell/Preston Quick in those respective finals), thus earned this title for the third straight year, while Mudge, who played the right wall during his years with Waite before moving over to the left when Waite retired a few years ago, became the only player in ISDA history to have an undefeated season playing each wall.
The dominance with which Mudge and Gould surged through the draw (including their quarterfinal with Willie Hosey and Hamed Anvari and their semi against Wilmington and Brooklyn runners-up Chris Walker and Mark Chaloner, 3-2 quarterfinal winners over Yvain Badan and Joe Pentland) should not obscure either what Leach and Jenson accomplished in achieving their fourth final this season (no other team besides Mudge/Gould had more than two) or the several unexpected outcomes that transformed the draw’s third quadrant into a veritable no-man’s-land of upsets that were even more surprising for the peremptory fashion in which they occurred. Third seeds Russell and Quick, who had never been stopped short of the semis all season, were eliminated, in straight sets no less, in the round of 16 by first-time-ever partners Greg McArthur and James Stout, who then defeated Imran Khan and Steve Scharff (first-round 3-0 upset winners themselves at the expense of Jonny Smith and Raj Nanda) to reach the semis. Stout, who successfully defended his World Rackets title this past autumn, had not even entered the Players Championship, and was only summoned to step in when McArthur’s regular partner, Dan Roberts, incurred a severe hamstring injury earlier this month while playing in the final of a singles tournament in Boston.
While these disorderly doings were evolving in the quadrant above theirs, second seeds Jenson and Leach, finalists this past fall/winter in New York, Boston and Greenwich, were out-playing first former Trinity teammates Jacques Swanepoel and Shaun Johnstone and then Greg Park and James Hewitt, first-round winners over the Canadian pair of Ian Power and Will Mariani. Leach and Jenson have had a few missteps along the way to compiling their otherwise stellar 2010-11 season --- they were first-round knockouts both in St. Louis, where they were caught off guard by Manek Mathur and Badan, and in Brooklyn, where Leach sagged in the last two games of their 3-2 loss to Walker and Chaloner ---- but they were fully engaged and effective in the four-game semifinal that both put an end to the Stout/McArthur Cinderella story and clinched the No. 2 2010-11 end-of-season team ranking for Leach and Jenson.
It must be said of the latter tandem that they performed at a praiseworthy level in their Mudge/Gould final as well, which started nearly an hour later than expected due to the length of both the men’s hardball single final (played on an international-sized court, with Walker edging out Quick, 15-12 in the fifth) and the WDSA women’s doubles final, in which Narelle Krizek and Suzie Pierrepont avenged their Turner Cup final-round loss in December with a five-game victory over Natalie Grainger and Amanda Sobhy. Once the men’s final did begin, Leach and Jenson determinedly stood their ground in the face of the constant heat directed their way and nearly matched their opponents’ torrid pace in the white-hot cauldron of this seasonably warm April evening, where the low-ceilinged host venue rendered effective lobbing near-impossible and where violent all-court exchanges defined the high-octane action. That they nevertheless lost in three games, only the first of which was competitive on the scoreboard, was totally due to the absolute brilliance that characterized the Mudge/Gould output all night --- indeed, all SEASON --- and sent an intimidating message of how daunting a task awaits any team that aspires to conquer them going forward.
The pressure that they put on an opposing team is intense and unrelenting --- and it is even greater defensively than it is offensively. They both can blast the ball off either flank, but perhaps the scariest part of their game is their court coverage, which puts any opponent who has what would qualify against any other team as a good shot-making opportunity in the unenviable position of knowing that he will have to go for broke, risk hitting the tin --- and that even if he executes the shot perfectly the ball will STILL be retrieved, as likely as not with some real action behind it that will reverse the hard-won positional advantage and put Mudge and Gould back in control of the point. Eventually, and inevitably, the attritional effects of having to deal with what Mudge and Gould continuously threw at them took a toll, as first Jenson and then Leach surrendered a few tins, especially in a 10-1 Mudge/Gould run from 10-7 in the second game to 5-0 in the third.
Now fully in command, Mudge and Gould raced exuberantly away, with Gould firing off several spectacular on-the-run forehand reverse-corner winners as he and Mudge blazed triumphantly across the finish line. These Australian superstars will be prohibitive favorites three weeks hence in the biennial World Doubles in Toronto, where teams are required to be composed of players from the same country, and where the British-born Leach will team up with Russell while Jenson will be matched with his Aussie compatriot Price.
Copyright © 2011 Rob Dinerman
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