Mike Ferreira And Baset Chaudhry Capture Racquet & Tennis Club Doubles Championship 
by Rob Dinerman


photos Manek Mathur

Dateline June 10th --- A club championship whose draw was deeper and stronger than many national championships came to a rousing conclusion Thursday night when former Trinity College stars Michael Ferreira and Baset Chaudhry earned a 15-13, 14 and 14 victory over Whitten Morris and Chris Callis in the final round of the Racquet & Tennis Club Doubles Championship in mid-town Manhattan. It may well have been the most evenly-contested straight-game match played anywhere this entire season, an air-sucking, rubber-burning 75-minute punch-out that featured relentlessly crackling pace and an extraordinary display of athleticism on the part of all four participants. There never was more than a three-point spread (and only one or two of those) in any game, and all three games seesawed to 13-all before in each case Ferreira and Chaudhry rose superior, albeit by the barest of margins, in the final few frantic points.

   Callis and Ferreira, frequent partners on the SDA pro doubles tour this past season, during which they won a tour stop in Germantown and reached the final of the prestigious David Johnson Memorial tournament in Brooklyn, had their own intriguing turf war on the left wall, as did Morris and Chaudhry, winners of the 2013 Silver Racquet Invitational at this same venue, on the right, but the most torrid exchanges were the cross-court battles, in which the two right-wallers appeared to be hitting with increasing ferocity from one swing to the next and the left-wallers staunchly stood their ground, repelling nearly everything hit at them and delivering plenty of powerful ripostes of their own. At 13 apiece in the first game, Morris lashed what appeared to be a winning rail down the right wall after Chaudhry had fallen to the floor, but the latter was awarded a let when the referee determined that he still potentially had a chance to return the shot. Reprieved by this somewhat borderline ruling, Ferreira subsequently nailed a forehand cross-court past Callis, then hit a hard serve from the right box that Callis tried to play off the back wall, only to have it instead dead-nick behind him and roll out unplayable.

   Callis and Morris then rallied from 10-7 down in the second to eventually get to double-game-ball when at 13-all Morris knifed a backhand roll-corner off the back wall that Chaudhry never saw coming --- but at that juncture, Callis tinned first a backhand reverse-corner and then a forehand reverse-corner, following which Ferreira and Chaudhry quickly took the first three points of the third game, as Callis and Morris seemed deflated at the  manner in which their chance at evening the match had cruelly slipped away. But whatever letdown they may have been suffering proved only momentary, as they then dashed off a four-point spurt to briefly take the lead in the third game, which, like the two that had preceded it, almost inevitably became deadlocked at 13-all. Ironically for a match heretofore characterized by lengthy all-court rallies and remarkably few unforced errors, the last three points were short and metallic --- first Morris tinned a backhand roll-corner, then Ferreira did the same when he tried to bury a shallow forehand rail, setting up a simultaneous-game-ball that was swiftly resolved when Morris, who had been the most mistake-free of the four players, powered a backhand drive at mid-court that rang loudly off the tell-tale, sealing the outcome and concluding a highly entertaining evening of top-tier doubles squash.