Preview of the World Doubles Championships
By Rob Dinerman for DailySquashReport.com
Dateline May 5th, 2011 --- Top seeds Damien Mudge and Ben Gould enter this weekend in Toronto as strong favorites to cap off their undefeated 2010-11 ISDA season by claiming this coveted biennial competition as well. In going 11 for 11 during the recently completed six-month ISDA tour schedule and compiling a 34-0 record in the process, this pair of Manhattan-based Australian superstars have consistently melded a combination of overwhelming athleticism and power with subtler skills like shot-making and a level of teamwork that belies their half-dozen preceding years of fierce rivalry prior to their decision this past summer to join forces and thereby create a juggernaut that has battered the strongest field in North American doubles history into submission. All that still remains between them and pure perfection is this tournament, which is fittingly being held in the most doubles-active city on the entire continent.
Gould is a defending World Doubles champion, having teamed with Paul Price to win this tourney in San Francisco in 2009, when Mudge and his compatriot Matt Jenson were edged out in a four-game semifinal by the British pairing of Leach and Russell, who are the only team of the 16 entered this coming weekend who also were partners in this event two years ago. Indeed, only eight of the 16 teams have ever previously partnered up --- namely Russell/Leach, the four Canadian entries (Viktor Berg and James Hewitt, recently-ensconced Canadian National Doubles champions and the early-2000’s ISDA No. 2 tandem of Michael Pirnak and Willie Hosey, Chris Deratnay and Scott Stoneburgh, and Will Mariani and Ian Power), Americans Graham Bassett and Dylan Patterson, the Khan brothers, Imran and Asad, of Pakistan, and, of course, Gould and Mudge --- and the two first-named pairings have only done so on one occasion, Russell/Leach, as noted, in San Francisco and Hewitt and Berg at a 2007 ISDA invitational event in Cleveland, where they reached the semifinals.
Two of the top-four seeded teams (third seeds Jenson/Price and the fourth-seeded Englishmen Mark Chaloner and Jonny Smith) will be teammates for the first time, as will American top-10 standouts Preston Quick and Greg Park. The course of this tournament may therefore be influenced as much by how well the many first-time or second-time partners will be able to blend their skills “on the fly” as by the talents of the individual players themselves, a phenomenon that would seem to give Mudge and Gould even more of an advantage than their compelling record had already bestowed on them, a scary thought to contemplate for anyone hoping to witness or engineer a breakthrough. Of the players on the seeded teams behind them, Jenson has reached six finals (four of them with Leach in this their third season as partners) Leach five, Chaloner, Price, Berg, Russell and Quick two each and Hosey and Manek Mathur one each, though the latter also partnered Yvain Badan to Challenger tournament ($10,000 events for players not ranked in the top eight) wins in Buffalo and Philadelphia. Hosey, as mentioned, earned the No. 2 end-of-season ranking in 2002-03 with Pirnak as part of a lengthy early-2000’s run in which they advanced to 11 ISDA finals. He celebrated his milestone 50th birthday late last month (on April 28th), making him by a substantial margin the oldest player in the draw.
The six-team women’s draw could quite possibly culminate Monday night in a final-round rematch of the U. S. National Doubles final in Chicago in late March, when Australian sisters Narelle Krizek and Tarsh McElhiny prevailed in four tight games (three overtimes, two of them one-pointers) over Canadian National Doubles champs Steph Hewitt (winner of this event in ’09 with Adriana DiMauro, who is paired this weekend with Marci Sier) and Seanna Keating. There will be four men’s round-of-16 matches on Thursday and four on Friday, with the four men’s and two women’s quarterfinals Friday evening, the semifinals on Saturday, no play on Sunday except pro-ams in deference to Mother’s Day, and Monday night finals.
DailySquashReport.com will provide full coverage throughout the tournament, with write-ups of each day’s action and a full summary once the event has concluded.
Thursday’s schedule:
Imran Khan/Asad Khan (Pakistan) vs. Trevor McGuinness/Steve Scharff (USA)
Willie Hosey/Michael Pirnak (Canada) vs. Glen Wilson/Daniel Sharplin (New Zealand)
Preston Quick/Greg Park (USA) vs. Martin Heath/Greg McArthur (Scotland)
James Hewitt/Viktor Berg (Canada) vs. Dan Roberts/John Roberts (Ireland)
Copyright © 2011 Rob Dinerman
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By Rob Dinerman for DailySquashReport.com
Dateline May 5th, 2011 --- Top seeds Damien Mudge and Ben Gould enter this weekend in Toronto as strong favorites to cap off their undefeated 2010-11 ISDA season by claiming this coveted biennial competition as well. In going 11 for 11 during the recently completed six-month ISDA tour schedule and compiling a 34-0 record in the process, this pair of Manhattan-based Australian superstars have consistently melded a combination of overwhelming athleticism and power with subtler skills like shot-making and a level of teamwork that belies their half-dozen preceding years of fierce rivalry prior to their decision this past summer to join forces and thereby create a juggernaut that has battered the strongest field in North American doubles history into submission. All that still remains between them and pure perfection is this tournament, which is fittingly being held in the most doubles-active city on the entire continent.
Gould is a defending World Doubles champion, having teamed with Paul Price to win this tourney in San Francisco in 2009, when Mudge and his compatriot Matt Jenson were edged out in a four-game semifinal by the British pairing of Leach and Russell, who are the only team of the 16 entered this coming weekend who also were partners in this event two years ago. Indeed, only eight of the 16 teams have ever previously partnered up --- namely Russell/Leach, the four Canadian entries (Viktor Berg and James Hewitt, recently-ensconced Canadian National Doubles champions and the early-2000’s ISDA No. 2 tandem of Michael Pirnak and Willie Hosey, Chris Deratnay and Scott Stoneburgh, and Will Mariani and Ian Power), Americans Graham Bassett and Dylan Patterson, the Khan brothers, Imran and Asad, of Pakistan, and, of course, Gould and Mudge --- and the two first-named pairings have only done so on one occasion, Russell/Leach, as noted, in San Francisco and Hewitt and Berg at a 2007 ISDA invitational event in Cleveland, where they reached the semifinals.
Two of the top-four seeded teams (third seeds Jenson/Price and the fourth-seeded Englishmen Mark Chaloner and Jonny Smith) will be teammates for the first time, as will American top-10 standouts Preston Quick and Greg Park. The course of this tournament may therefore be influenced as much by how well the many first-time or second-time partners will be able to blend their skills “on the fly” as by the talents of the individual players themselves, a phenomenon that would seem to give Mudge and Gould even more of an advantage than their compelling record had already bestowed on them, a scary thought to contemplate for anyone hoping to witness or engineer a breakthrough. Of the players on the seeded teams behind them, Jenson has reached six finals (four of them with Leach in this their third season as partners) Leach five, Chaloner, Price, Berg, Russell and Quick two each and Hosey and Manek Mathur one each, though the latter also partnered Yvain Badan to Challenger tournament ($10,000 events for players not ranked in the top eight) wins in Buffalo and Philadelphia. Hosey, as mentioned, earned the No. 2 end-of-season ranking in 2002-03 with Pirnak as part of a lengthy early-2000’s run in which they advanced to 11 ISDA finals. He celebrated his milestone 50th birthday late last month (on April 28th), making him by a substantial margin the oldest player in the draw.
The six-team women’s draw could quite possibly culminate Monday night in a final-round rematch of the U. S. National Doubles final in Chicago in late March, when Australian sisters Narelle Krizek and Tarsh McElhiny prevailed in four tight games (three overtimes, two of them one-pointers) over Canadian National Doubles champs Steph Hewitt (winner of this event in ’09 with Adriana DiMauro, who is paired this weekend with Marci Sier) and Seanna Keating. There will be four men’s round-of-16 matches on Thursday and four on Friday, with the four men’s and two women’s quarterfinals Friday evening, the semifinals on Saturday, no play on Sunday except pro-ams in deference to Mother’s Day, and Monday night finals.
DailySquashReport.com will provide full coverage throughout the tournament, with write-ups of each day’s action and a full summary once the event has concluded.
Thursday’s schedule:
Imran Khan/Asad Khan (Pakistan) vs. Trevor McGuinness/Steve Scharff (USA)
Willie Hosey/Michael Pirnak (Canada) vs. Glen Wilson/Daniel Sharplin (New Zealand)
Preston Quick/Greg Park (USA) vs. Martin Heath/Greg McArthur (Scotland)
James Hewitt/Viktor Berg (Canada) vs. Dan Roberts/John Roberts (Ireland)
Copyright © 2011 Rob Dinerman
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