Damien Mudge, Best-Of-All-Time Doubles Player, Returns To Native Australia by Rob Dinerman Dateline September 14, 2020---
Damien Mudge, whose achievements over nearly two decades (from
1999-2018) on the North American pro doubles tour have clearly
established him as the greatest player in the history of doubles
squash, and who has been the head professional at University Club of
New York ever since Spring 2001, has permanently returned to his native
Australia. Although when Mudge originally traveled to Australia after
the University Club closed early this past spring in response to the
Coronavirus pandemic, it was with the intention of coming back to the
States to resume his head-professional duties as soon as the club
reopened, he evidently changed his mind as the months passed and
recently sent in his letter of resignation.
His departure brings to
an end one of the most remarkable eras in squash on this
continent. Mudge was ranked No. 1 virtually uninterrupted since
the outset of 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 Manek 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 final in September 2016, Mudge and Mathur went undefeated
throughout the remainder of both that season and the entire
2017-18 season that followed, covering 16 straight tournaments and 54
consecutive matches, while receiving the SDA Team of the Year Award
both years. Mudge with his various partners has won nearly 175 pro
doubles tournaments, more than double the number amassed by any other
player, and he holds the most-times-won record for every established
tournament on the SDA schedule, highlighted by 15 North American Opens,
10 Kellner Cups, six Briggs Cups and 17 David Johnson Invitational
titles (all in a row from 2002-18) at the Heights Casino Club in
Brooklyn. His Player of The Year and Doubles Team of the Year Awards
totals far exceed anyone else’s and in all five seasons during the
nearly two decades that the SDA and its forerunner, the International
Squash Doubles Association (ISDA) have existed in which one team has
gone undefeated, Mudge has been on that team: as noted, three times
with Waite as well as in 2010-11 with Gould and 2017-18 with Mathur.
In their eighth and final
appearance of the 2017-18 season, the Tavern Club Invitational in
Cleveland, Mathur and Mudge capped off their 24-0 season slate with a
four-game final-round win over John Russell and Scott Arnold. But it
was a Pyrrhic victory for Mudge, who badly injured his right knee,
requiring him to undergo a major allograft procedure, his seventh knee
operation overall and fifth on his right leg. Although he was sidelined
throughout the subsequent 2018-19 season, the hope at the time had been
that he and Mathur (who himself incurred a season-ending Achilles
injury on October 2018) would be able to return to action in the
2019-20 campaign. Mathur was able to make a full recovery, but, by
late-summer 2019, at which juncture Mudge's knee had still not
responded to treatment, he decided, in deference to both that situation
and the cumulative effects of a number of other injuries and maladies
that had cropped up over the years --- among them shoulder and
wrist injuries, one of which required the insertion of a pin for
several months to stabilize the joint; a painful neuroma and a plantar
fascia tear on his right foot; a two-and-a-half-year bout with
chronic-fatigue-syndrome; and multiple concussions --- to retire from
competitive play.
During the last few years of his
career, Mudge, who marked his 44th birthday this past May, had been the
only SDA player whose playing career dated back to the formation of the
ISDA in February 2000, making him the bridge that spanned the
early-2000’s top-tier group consisting of Waite, Berg, Clive Leach,
Blair Horler, Willie Hosey, Michael Pirnak, David Kay, Scott Dulmage,
Jamie Bentley, Scott Stoneburgh and Anders Wahlstedt, and extended
through the Gould/Russell/Paul Price/Preston Quick/Greg Park set of
stars later that decade and into the next, all the way to the
Mathur/Callis/Yvain Badan/Michael Ferreira/Bernardo Samper/James
Stout/Greg McArthur contingent of players headlining the current era.
Throughout that lengthy time frame encapsulating several player
generations, the only relentless constant has been Damien Mudge’s
standing as the dominant player in professional doubles squash in North
America, and his retirement, followed now by his relocation to his
homeland, symbolizes both the ending of a glorious era in the history
of squash on this continent and an acknowledgment of time’s relentless
passage.
