Recap Of The WDSA Women’s Pro Doubles Season: Narelle Krizek And Suzie Pierrepont Are The Top Team in 2014  
by Rob Dinerman

Dateline August 11th --- The 2013-14 WDSA pro women’s doubles season featured eight sanctioned ranking tournaments (including first-time stops in Cincinnati and St. Louis), two invitationals, several exhibitions, a slew of events in the northeastern corridor, the Midwest and all the way out to the west coast, the presence of several young new faces in the finals --- and two very familiar figures atop the rankings as Suzie Pierrepont and Narelle Krizek won all four of the tournaments (the inaugural Cincinnati Open, the U. S. Open, the John’s Island Open and the Turner Cup) in which they partnered up and clinched the No. 1 team ranking for the fourth time in the past five years. They have now won 13 WDSA sanctioned tournaments overall, the most of any team in the seven-year history of the Association, and have taken the last nine events which they entered dating back to their loss in the 2012 Turner Cup final at the hands of Meredeth Quick and Steph Hewitt, whom Pierrepont and Krizek conquered both times they played this past season, namely in the finals of the John’s Island Open and the Turner Cup.

   In addition to this quartet of Pierrepont/Krizek tournament wins as teammates this past season, Krizek also paired with Hewitt to take the U. S. National Doubles in New York and with her sister Tarsh McElhinny to capture the tournament in St. Louis, where they won the final in five games over Quick/Hewitt, while Pierrepont prevailed with Dana Betts at the late-autumn Los Angeles Open and with Hewitt at the mid-March Hashim Khan Open in Denver, also partnering the young Trinity College alumna Tehani Guruge to the final of the non-ranking mid-July season-ending Wilson Cup, there to lose to Quick and Hewitt. Guruge was joined in the list of first-time finalists by the Philadelphia-based duo of Alex Clark and Amy Gross, a co-captain of Yale’s 2006 team that won three straight Howe Cups emblematic of the national team championship. This first-time pairing authored the most surprising result of the entire season in the U. S. Open at the Philadelphia Country Club on a snowy weekend in early December when, after first having to qualify into the main draw, they then shocked second seeds (and Cincinnati Open finalists) Hewitt and McElhinny in five games and followed this up with a 15-12 in the fourth semifinal win over Victoria Simmonds and Heidi Mather (themselves quarterfinal winners over third seeds Carrie Hastings and Tina Rix) that ended when Gross successfully went for broke on a forehand reverse-corner that barely stayed above the tin.

   When the tour resumed in St. Louis following a mid-winter hiatus, 2011 U. S. National Doubles champs Krizek and McElhinny rallied from two-love down to overtake Quick (who had missed the early-season tournaments due to a shoulder injury) and Hewitt, each of whom hit a tin from 13-all in the airtight fourth game, then fell too far behind to catch up in the 15-10 fifth. At the next stop in Denver, eventual winners Hewitt and Pierrepont were buried 15-5 in the first game of their semi with recent William White Invitational titlists Kelsey Engman and Gina Stoker (yet another youthful first-year duo) but recovered to take six straight games, the first three over Engman/Stoker and then the next three over Quick and Dana Betts in the final. At the U.S. National Doubles in New York held the following weekend, Krizek and Hewitt powered through in straight sets over Stoker and Engman, who were pre-final victors over first Natalie Grainger and Sabrina Sobhy (the U. S. National singles champs in 2013 and 2014 respectively) and then second seeds Betts and Jess DiMauro. One month later, at the second annual John’s Island Open in Florida late April, Krizek and Pierrepont let a 14-7 second-game lead get away to make it one game apiece but then were able to impose their superior weaponry in the end stretches of both the third game (eight straight points from 7-all) and the close-out fourth (three straight points from 12-all) of their final with Quick and Hewitt.

   After the early-May METROsquash Open at the Onwentsia Club in suburban Chicago (which arguably has the best women’s doubles program of any club in the country under its head pro Aidan Harrison), in which Hewitt and McElhinny fully redeemed their sub-par showing five months earlier in Philadelphia by maintaining control and playing classic positional doubles throughout their three-game final with Simmonds and Mather, the tour culminated with its flagship event, the Turner Cup, at the Westchester Country Club in Rye, the first time that this tourney has ever been held outside of Manhattan. Quick and Hewitt dashed off a match-closing 13-1 run to close out their semifinal with Betts and Clark, seemingly leaving them well-positioned for their final with Pierrepont and Krizek (semis winners over Karen Jerome and McElhinny) in what was clearly a summit between the two best teams on the circuit.  The high-quality four-game final that ensued was defined by a pair of extended mid-game spurts (from 3-4 to 10-4 in the third game and from 5-4 to 10-4 in the fourth) through which Krizek and Pierrepont effectively clinched the outcome.

   In keeping with its stated mission, the WDSA tour also supported charities at virtually every site throughout the season --- the Cincinnati Open, held at the Cincinnati Country Club, provided valuable seed money for the Cincinnati Squash Academy, an inner-city youth-enrichment  organization which was launched this past spring; Krizek, McElhinny and Pierrepont participated in October in the Anschutz Cup event benefiting Mile High Squash and hosted by the Denver Athletic Club, whose Hashim Khan Open tourney five months later also supported Mile High Squash; the Los Angeles Open benefited LA Angels; the Turner Cup benefited Squash Haven in New Haven; the METROsquash Open was named in honor of the youth-enrichment organization in Chicago; the Wilson Cup benefited Southampton Youth Services; and the U. S. Open helped generate funds to support the Urban Doubles, held in Denver and won by CitySquash in the Bronx.

   The tour was once again enthusiastically welcomed by such repeat host clubs as the Jonathan Club (Los Angeles), the John’s Island Club (Florida), the Onwentsia Club (Chicago), the Denver Athletic Club (where Quick learned the game as a youngster), the Elmaleh Stanton Squash Center (Southampton) and the Philadelphia Country Club and Wilmington Country Club. Major sponsors included Veronis Suhler Stevenson, Morgan Stanley Private Wealth Management, RBC Wealth Management DeRose Group, Harrow Sports, Chroma Commercial Capital, John’s Island Real Estate and Patricia Han.

   Just as happened this past season, the WDSA tour is planning to add several new sites in 2014-15, with an accompanying increase in prize money. The tour has been gradually adding venues, sponsors and players over the past several years, an encouraging trend that augurs well for the future of women’s professional doubles in the United States.





 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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