Damien Mudge To Undergo Knee Surgery, Sidelined Until Calendar 2019 By Rob Dinerman
photo SDA
Dateline August 1, 2018
--- Damien Mudge, by far the most accomplished player in the history of
North American doubles squash and a dominant figure on the pro doubles
tour for nearly 20 years, will undergo a major operation on his right
knee later this month and is expected to miss at least the Autumn 2018
portion of the SDA pro doubles schedule. It will be Mudge’s seventh
knee surgery, the fifth on his right leg, and this particular procedure
normally requires at least six months of rehabilitation, though Mudge
hopes to compress that recovery period enough to return to the
competitive fray in time for him and partner Manek Mathur to enter the
North American Open, which they have won each of the past two years and
which will be contested in Greenwich on the last weekend of January.
A paragon of consistency as well as durability throughout the
2000’s, Mudge has never previously been sidelined for more than a few
weeks, the one exception being when he incurred a fluke injury to his
left wrist while roller-blading in Manhattan in January 2001 that
required the insertion of a steel pin and kept him out of action for
several months that winter and spring. He has been ranked No. 1
virtually uninterrupted since the 1999-2000 season, when he and Gary
Waite had the first of their three wire-to-wire undefeated seasons
(also 2001-02 and 2004-05). After seven years (and 75 tournament wins,
the most all-time of any combination) with Waite, Mudge switched to the
left wall and led the tour in wins first from 2007-10 with Viktor Berg
and then from 2010-15 with Ben Gould before joining forces with Mathur
prior to the 2016-17 season. After losing to Michael Ferreira and Yvain
Badan, 15-13 in the fifth, in their debut as partners at the Maryland
Club Open in September 2016, Mudge and Mathur have gone undefeated ever
since, having won 16 straight tournaments and 54 consecutive matches,
while receiving the SDA Team of the Year Award both years. Mudge holds
the most-times-won record for almost every tournament on the SDA
schedule, highlighted by 15 North American Opens and 17 David Johnson
Invitational titles (all in a row from 2002-18) at the Heights Casino
Club in Brooklyn.
His absence for the upcoming prolonged stretch will therefore
have enormous implications for at least the first half of the 2018-19
SDA Tour, beginning with the intriguing and as-yet-undetermined matter
of who Mathur, the reigning two-time SDA Player of the Year, will
partner up with during the fall tournaments while awaiting Mudge’s
return. During their two recent seasons as partners, Mudge and Mathur
played exclusively with each other, and when one of them had to miss an
SDA event, the other player sat it out as well. But it seems highly
unlikely that Mathur will miss the first four months of the schedule,
and his choice of a partner will have reverberations that will affect
the players on the other top-tier teams as well. Over the years, Mudge
has weathered not only a half-dozen knee surgeries but multiple
concussions, a neuroma in his right foot, a balky right (i.e. playing)
shoulder and wrist issues in both arms, and he has always seemed to
come back stronger and better than ever en route to becoming by a large
margin the SDA’s “all-time leading scorer.” There is every reason to
believe that the same thing will happen this time as well, but it will
be interesting to see how the tour’s competitive dynamics evolve while
he is away and how and whether his impending procedure --- the most
invasive of any he has heretofore undergone --- will impact this great
champion’s level of play upon his return.
