More On The Mudge/Gould Undefeated 2010-11 ISDA Season   
By Rob Dinerman
June 12, 2011 --- When Damien Mudge and his right-wall partner and Australian compatriot Ben Gould responded to the two games to one deficit facing them in the World Doubles final by roaring through the last two single-digit games against John Russell and Clive Leach at the Toronto Cricket Club earlier this month, they thereby fended off the last challenge confronting them and finished off the first wire-to-wire undefeated season since Mudge (playing the right wall back then) and Gary Waite accomplished the feat for the third and final time six years ago in 2004-05. In compiling their 38-0 slate, with only two of those matches going to a fifth game (the one prior case occurring when Russell and Preston Quick led 2-1, 14-11 in a St. Louis semifinal in October), Mudge and Gould compellingly fulfilled the dominance that had been forecast for them during this past summer when, after several years of being fierce rivals and frequent final-round opponents, they decided to leave their respective former partners (Paul Price in Gould's case, Viktor Berg in Mudge's) and join forces.

   But if the unblemished mark they achieved over the seven-month, 12-tournament span of the 2010-11 tour constitutes, as it clearly does, the most noteworthy story-line of both this past season, and, until proven otherwise, of next season as well, it must also be said that a very strong, and highly pertinent co-theme was the number of teams, including some similarly first-year partnerships, that rose to challenge Mudge and Gould in the finals. Indeed, the first six full-ranking tournaments on the schedule saw six different teams (comprised of 10 different players, just two short of the theoretical maximum 12) emerge from the bottom half of the draws. Quick and Russell did so at the season-opening Maryland Club Open, followed by Manek Mathur and Yvain Badan (making their debut as partners) in St. Louis, Leach and Russell at the Big Apple Open, Berg and Price in Vancouver, Leach and Price in Philadelphia and Chris Walker and Mark Chaloner at the U. S. Pro in Wilmington.

    It wasn't until mid-January in Boston that Mudge and Gould faced a "repeat" opponent in the finals, in the form of Leach and Jenson, who also advanced to the final in Greenwich one week later, as well as at the Players Championship, the last ranking event (the biennial World Doubles being a "special" event, hence non-ranking) of the season, in mid-April. Though they were ousted twice in the quarterfinals, Leach and Jenson had their best season in this, the third year of their partnership and fully deserved the No. 2 team end-of-season ranking. In addition to those four finals that they attained as teammates, each of them reached two other finals as well, one ranking and the other non-ranking, with Leach, as noted, getting to the finals with Price in Philadelphia and with Russell in Toronto, while Jenson did the same with Willie Hosey in Cleveland in early February and with Quick at the round-robin Cambridge Doubles in Toronto in November, when they let an 8-3 fifth-game final-round advantage get away against Russell and Berg. Hosey's final at the Tavern Club in Cleveland, his first such advance at an ISDA event in 40 months, came just 11 weeks shy of his late-April 50th birthday (!) and during the interim he and Michael Pirnak captured the Canadian National Doubles title, a ringing reaffirmation of the 10-time Irish National champion's amazing longevity and continued excellence.

    Russell and Quick, whose five-year partnership is by a comfortable margin the longest of any of the top-tier teams, demonstrated their long-established consistency by being stopped short of the semifinals only once all season, that one misstep coming when they were eliminated in the round of 16 in the Players Championship by reigning World Rackets champion James Stout and Greg McArthur, who then topped Imran Khan and Steve Scharff before losing to Leach and Jenson in the semis. It was the second breakthrough win of this past ISDA season for McArthur (who also teamed with Graham Bassett to win the U. S. Under-30 National Doubles), preceded by his and Khan's upset victory in the North American Open round of 16 over Chaloner and Walker, who, however, would solidly rebound from this disappointing setback by defeating first Mathur and Badan in Cleveland, then both Jenson Leach and Russell Quick in getting to the Brooklyn final, and then Badan and Joe Pentland in a Players Championship quarterfinal. Walker and Chaloner, former PSA top-sevens and teammates on British squads that won the World Team Championships during the 1990's, lost to no team other than Mudge Gould from late January onwards and wound up as the No. 4 ranked ISDA team, slightly ahead of former mid-2000's Trinity College teammates Mathur and Badan (Challenger tournament winners in Buffalo and Philadelphia), with the Jonny Smith/Raj Nanda and James Hewitt/Greg Park pairings right behind them.

    For the first time in the six-year history of the annual World Squash Awards event, which had always previously been held in London and recognized only PSA and WISPA singles players in its various awards, two awards were designated for the ISDA, namely the ISDA Team Of The Year and the ISDA Rookie Of The Year. This past season the Awards ceremony was held on the evening of January 20th in New York City as part of the Tournament Of Champions in Grand Central Station, and Mudge and Berg won the Team award and Park the Rookie award. The addition in 2011 of this pair of ISDA Awards to the half-dozen PSA WISPA citations that have always been handed out seems a major tribute to the impact that this pro doubles organization, still barely into the second decade of its existence, has already made upon the dynamics of the overall pro squash scene, as well as an expressed conviction that an even brighter future beckons for hardball doubles squash on this continent and beyond.

    This seems especially likely in view of how supportive and enthusiastic the three major ISDA presenting tour sponsors have been and how great a role, both financially and on every other front, they continue to play in the tour's growth and expansion. Rob Deans III, the Executive Vice-President of the investment advisory firm  Inverness Counsel Inc., served as Tournament Chair of the Players Championship for the 10th consecutive year; Mark Hayden, the head man at Harrow Sports since the early 2000's, has consistently produced the racquets, footwear and other apparel chosen by the leading ISDA players for tournament competition; and Michael (Mickey) Brennan, CEO of North Sea Partners LLC, a private investment banking firm, has been an active supporter of the ISDA ever since his firm became a major sponsor two years ago. It is due to their backing, as well as the passionate involvement of the tournament chairs, their committees and the amateur patrons and pro-am participants at every site, that the ISDA has good cause to look forward with optimism and confidence to the 2011-12 season and onward.


This article first appeared on isdasquash.com.

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