Hosey/Pirnak Advance, Berg Withdraws As World Doubles Gets Underway
By Rob Dinerman
for DailySquashReport.com
 
Dateline  May 6th
--- Reigning Canadian National Doubles champs Michael Pirnak and Willie Hosey, reuniting all these years later after an early-2000's run during which they rose to as high as the No. 2 ISDA team in 2003, advanced to the quarterfinals of the biennial World Doubles Championship with a hard-fought four-game victory over New Zealanders Glen Wilson and Daniel Sharplin in first-round action last night in Toronto. Hosey and Pirnak will now face Americans Preston Quick and Greg Park, winners also in four over the formidable Scottish due of Martin Heath, a former PSA top-four and several times an ISDA tour semifinalist, most recently with Pirnak at a 2006 tour stop in San Francisco.
 
In other Thursday round-of-16 play, Imran Khan and Khayal Khan (who stepped in when Imran's scheduled partner, his younger brother Asad, had to pull out with an arm injury) engineered an upset win over Steve Scharff and a heavily tin-prone Trevor McGuinness, who failed to approach the form that six weeks earlier had carried himself and Addison West to the U. S. National Doubles title in Chicago. Tonight the Khans will oppose the winner of this afternoon's match between top seeds Damien Mudge/Ben Gould and Scotland torch-bearers Jamie Macaulay and Lyall Paterson.
 
James Hewitt and his Canadian partner Viktor Berg had been scheduled to go up against the Irish sibling pairing of Dan and John Roberts, but first Berg contacted the tournament committee earlier this week to announce that he couldn't play (resulting in Fred Reid Jr. being summoned as Berg's replacement) and then the Roberts team withdrew since the severe hamstring injury that Dan Roberts had sustained in a Mass State singles match a few weeks ago had not recovered sufficiently to allow him to play.
 
Hewitt and Reid will do battle with whichever team wins this afternoon's match pitting second seeds and '09 World Doubles finalists Clive Leach and John Russell against Canadians Will Mariani and Ian Power. In the draw's third quadrant, third seeds Matt Jenson and Paul Price will take on Americans Graham Bassett and Dylan Patterson, while Englishmen Mark Chaloner and Jonny Smith will do the same with Canadians Scott Stoneburgh and Chris Deratnay.


Copyright © 2011 Rob Dinerman

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