Manek Mathur And Chris Callis Capture Kellner Cup Crown by Rob Dinerman
Action from the Kellner Cup final--Chris Callis, Scott Arnold, Manek Mathur and James Stout photo James Stout
Dateline May 3, 2022
--- Trailing two games to one after failing to convert a
triple-game-ball opportunity in the third game, and having been taken
to the brink, just two points from defeat, in the fourth, Manek Mathur
and Chris Callis responded like the champions they are by escaping with
that game and then bootstrapping themselves through the fifth as well
to cap off a fiercely-contested 15-8, 11-15, 14-15, 15-13, 15-11
comeback victory over No. 1 seeds James Stout and Scott Arnold Monday
evening in the final round of the Kellner Cup before a packed and
raucous gallery at the Racquet & Tennis Club in midtown Manhattan.
It marked an SDA pro doubles tour-leading fourth tournament win this
season, and third in a row, for Mathur and Callis, who now have a
tremendous amount of positive momentum coming into the season-ending
North American Open Doubles Championship two weeks hence.
Both teams had advanced through their respective halves of the
draw in decisive fashion. Stout and Arnold, recently-crowned champs at
the Johnson Memorial event at the Heights Casino Club in Brooklyn in
early March, won their trio of pre-final matches without dropping a
single game (although the score of the first game of their semi with
Adam Bews and Colin West, quarterfinal winners over Chris Walker and
Jamie Haycocks, was 15-14), while Mathur and Callis, who in recent
weeks triumphed at SDA tour stops in both Boston and Cleveland, lost
the third game of their balancing semi with Zac Alexander and Greg
McArthur but dominated the 15-6 close-out fourth. Walker and Haycocks
had pulled off the biggest upset of the tournament with their
first-round win over Michael Ferreira and James Bamber, who had won the
Sleepy Hollow Open this past November and been finalists in Brooklyn.
There was great anticipation ahead of this final-round match-up
between a pair of opponents who by this late juncture of the 2021-22
season had established themselves as the two best doubles teams in the
world. Mathur and Callis were in command through the first game, but
Stout and Arnold, who throughout the late rounds of their Johnson run
had shown an uncanny ability to reverse an opponent’s early-match
advantage --- having rallied from love-two against Ryan Cuskelly and
Cameron Pilley in the semis and defeated Ferreira/Bamber in the final
after losing the first game 15-6 --- seemed well on their way to
duplicating that achievement as the match wore on. This seemed to
especially be the case when, after falling behind 14-12 in the
third game, they came up with two winners and gratefully accepted a bad
Callis tin on simultaneous-game-ball. They similarly made a late-game
run to tie the fourth at 13, but at this stage Stout, whose error count
for the match was the lowest of any of the four players and whose
ability to “stay in the moment” at crunch-time has defined his
racquet-sports career --- which includes long runs as the World
Champion in both singles and doubles in Rackets for well over a decade,
as well as his triumph in the 2008 U. S. Open in court tennis ---
unaccountably tinned on each of the ensuing pair of points.
The first half of the climactic fifth game seesawed
hair-raisingly along on even terms until Mathur and Callis were able to
wedge open just enough of a cushion to get them across the finish line.
Mathur, whose passion about winning this match seemed to be markedly
more visible than in any match he has ever played in his sparkling SDA
career, was his usual intimidating self, cat-quick, ready to pounce on
and punish any loose ball and extremely creative in his shot selection
and precise in its execution. But it was Callis’s ability to both
withstand (and then some) the unrelenting pressure that the
Stout/Arnold pairing directed his way and conjure up a trio of
front-left nicks sprinkled among the last dozen points that may have
spelled the difference. For sheer drama and competitive intensity, this
match was right up there near the top in the two-decade history of this
tournament, and the crowd --- which was already amped up even before
the final began after witnessing an extremely high-quality pro-am final
in which Matthew Henderson and his amateur partner Bart Mackey won in
five games over Josh Hughes, a pro at the host club, and Mitch Truwit
--- responded with great enthusiasm and energy. Throughout the two-hour
pro final the points were long and all-court, featuring a kaleidoscope
of smashes, lobs, nicks and astonishing retrievals. Stout is the best
defensive player in the game, completely unflappable, and has a fine
array of front-court shots as well, while Arnold --- who won the last
edition of this tournament in 2019 with John Russell, defeating Callis
and Robin Clarke in the final --- is deservedly the No. 1 ranked player
on the SDA tour by a substantial points margin. But in the end,
this night belonged to Callis and Mathur who persevered against an
incredibly fearsome pair of opponents and who will be looking to
consolidate this accomplishment when the tour gathers for the final
time this season in Greenwich later this month.
