September 22, 2004-This
cat-quick hyper-kinetic dynamo was for a half dozen years the most
exciting player in the game and the one who will go down in history as
the man who finally ended Sharif Khan's legendary and decade-plus reign
as the top hardball player in the world.
More than a half-dozen serious rivals, from Mohibullah Khan to Victor
Niederhoffer to Rainer Ratinac to Stu Goldstein, expended their entire
careers trying and failing to accomplish this feat during a period that
extended well over a decade, but in 1981-82, through a combination of
his own prepossessing competitive and athletic talents and Khan's
advancing years, the 25-year-old Harvard graduate (class of '80) became
the first Canadian to win the North American Open (by toppling the
12-time champ and six-time defender Khan in the final) and the first as
well to claim the WPSA No. 1 ranking.
The Desaulniers takeover had been impending for some time (he actually
held the top ranking for a few weeks during the winter of '81 before
being overtaken by Khan that spring), beginning with his breakthrough
performance in the '80 WPSA Championship in New York, where he
successively defeated both Stu Goldstein and Khan, in each case in four
games, before losing to Clive Caldwell in the final. That tournament
graphically brought out all of the qualities that characterized the
Desaulniers squash persona, the operative word for which was FAST,
lightning fast, in fact.
His rise through the junior (U. S. titles in '75 and '76),
intercollegiate (U. S. champion in '77, '78 and '80 after missing the
'79 event with a broken foot), Open (U. S. Nationals winner in '78 and
'80) and professional ranks was in each case incredibly swift. So was
his fall from that position during the '82-'83 season, which began with
a first-round loss (in five games to Tom Page in Rochester) in the
season-opening event, progressed from there with a series of back and
hamstring injuries, a hernia operation, visa difficulties and sagging
confidence and wound up with Desaulniers out of the top 20 and
effectively off the tour for several years.
So was his comet-like comeback, which began during the latter portion
of the '84-'85 campaign and really took off the following year,
becoming probably the foremost story-line of that season and certainly
leaving him superbly positioned to continue and consolidate his
regained elevated standing going into the '86-87 tour. And so too was
the way that comeback ended, with Desaulniers, still in his 20's but
clearly satisfied that he had proven himself beyond challenge, opting
instead to disappear from the WPSA competitive picture as quickly and
emphatically as he had re-appeared in its top echelons.
ALL-OUT ASSAULT
Lightning fast was certainly the best way to describe not only the
extreme undulations in his squash career but also the manner in which
this streamlined Vancouver native played the game. His style was
perfectly suited to the risk-reward requirements of the hardball game,
and Desaulniers played it to the hilt, always looking to volley and
force the attack, dashing like a roadrunner to the front wall in
pursuit of drop and corner shots and constantly pressuring his
often-overwhelmed opponents and daring them to take advantage of the
occasional loose balls his full-throttle approach created.
Rather than feel his opponents out, Desaulniers clearly wanted to
stifle them with his constant heat, hitting the ball as hard, as early
and as sharply as possible and creating an energy zone that melted
their resolve and left them besieged, exhausted and demoralized.
Playing against Desaulniers during his dominant years, especially
1980-81 and 1981-82, when he won WPSA Player Of The Year honors both
times and copped most of the tour's major titles, was akin to playing
an entire basketball game against a full-court press or perhaps being a
hockey goal-tender against a prolonged two-man power play.
No one could cope with what he threw at them during his torrid surge
during the spring of '82, when he wrested the North American Open title
away from Khan's six-year grasp in Cleveland and barged through the
draw at the season-ending World Series of Squash at the Yale Club Of
New York, burying runner-up Gordy Anderson under a barrage of nicks
throughout a one-sided 15-6 third and final game. He thereby added that
trophy to a collection that during the previous 18 months had included
the '80 Boston Open, the '81 WPSA Championship, the '82 North American
Open, as noted, plus tour stops in Detroit, Minnesota, San Francisco,
Greenwich, Rye and St. Louis.
There was a 22-match winning streak embedded in a 29-1 run during that
period, as well as seven consecutive WPSA ranking tournament singles
final-round victories and a 1982 WPSA Doubles Team Of The Year Award
with his partner Maurice Heckscher. By the end of his career-highlight
1981-82 season, his first at No. 1 after two previous season-end No. 2
rankings behind Khan, Desaulniers was in as dominant a position atop
the WPSA ladder as Khan, or anyone else in the history of the game, for
that matter, had ever been.
But the very incandescence that so fueled Desaulniers's game may also
have contributed to the definite case of burn-out that caused his
hard-won reign to prove so fleeting and his fall from the top so
precipitous the following 1982-83 season. His competitive polar
opposite, Mark Talbott, played a far less frenetic, more patient,
error-free game and evinced a correspondingly more laid-back approach
that almost appeared to lull his opponents rather than assault them, as
Desaulniers and his immediate predecessor Khan preferred to do.
Just as the key moment when Desaulniers displaced Khan occurred in
their '82 North American Open final, when an early 1-0, 8-1 Khan lead
dissolved before a determined Desaulniers surge to victory both in that
game and throughout the third and fourth, so the defining moment in
Talbott's move past Desaulniers came in another WPSA major tournament,
the '82 Boston Open, the site of the latter's first major title two
years earlier and the city where he had performed so brilliantly as a
collegian.
TRANSFER OF POWER
By this mid-November tournament, there had already been three WPSA
events, all of which (Rochester, Detroit and Montreal) had gone to
Talbott, who in fact had easily defeated Desaulniers in their one
meeting, in the final at the Montreal club where Desaulniers had spent
his formative squash years as a junior player. Galvanized by losing so
badly in front of his stunned hometown fans, realizing that he had
played far below par in that ragged, tin-filled final, and still
convinced (as was most of the rest of the squash world at the time)
that at his best he still could muster more firepower than anyone,
Talbott included, could successfully repel, Desaulniers pointed with a
vengeance to the Boston Open the following week, where he and Talbott
would meet in the semis.
And what a semi it was, destined to be classified by tournament
co-founder Len Bernheimer, who had been present at all 16 previous
Boston Opens, as the greatest match in the history of the tournament.
Realizing what was at stake, Desaulniers from the outset threw his
vintage full-court blitz at Talbott, volleying everything within reach,
nailing his punishing three-wall and cruelly maneuvering his slender
foe throughout their fast-paced 80-minute shoot-out.
But Talbott unflappably weathered the constant barrage, lobbed and
extemporized his way out of trouble, coolly glided to virtually
everything that was hit and pocketed a pair of slightly desperate
Desaulniers tins to seal the 18-16 fourth-game match-ending tiebreaker.
For Talbott, who proceeded to win the next-day final handily over Mario
Sanchez, this win truly signified his advance to the top spot among his
WPSA counterparts and launched him to a season-long record (all 17 WPSA
finals, 15 of them victorious) that for sheer volume has never been
equaled. And conversely for Desaulniers, who this time had truly put
himself on the line and seen one of his greatest all-time efforts come
up, albeit barely, short, the myth of his at-his-best invincibility had
been permanently and publicly punctured, and the bravado that had been
a Desasulniers trademark would subsequently evaporate as well during
the injuries and losses to lesser opponents that followed. He didn't
even enter the late-season Yale Club event he had overwhelmingly won
the year before, didn't even play enough events during the ensuing
1983-84 season to avoid "insufficient data" status and was no longer a
visible presence on the WPSA radar when the 1984-85 schedule commenced.
Maybe it was the WPSA Doubles title that he and younger brother Bradley
won that season (and the next), making him the first (and to this point
only) player ever to win both the WPSA and North American Open doubles
and singles titles. Or it might have been his return to full health
following several years of nagging hurts and maladies. Possibly it was
the emergence of the immense challenge and opportunity provided by
Jehangir Khan, who starting in 1983-84 began a series of well-spaced
sorties onto North American soil that brought him most of the hardball
tour's prize money and major titles in the latter's successful mission
to "unify the title" and distinguish himself as the world's best
hardball AND softball player simultaneously. Most likely it was some
combination of these factors, buttressed by a personal discomfort at
having his once-glorious career end on terms other than his own and
with a whimper rather than on the high note it merited.
TRIUMPHANT RETURN
Whatever the genesis of the Desaulniers comeback, which began in the
later stages of the 1984-85 season and expanded into full force in
1985-86, his resurgence was capped off by two memorable semi-final wins
over Talbott, each of which brought him to the final round of major
championships. In Toledo in mid-January 1986 at the WPSA Championship,
Desaulniers was too drained from this effort to put up a representative
effort in his ensuing final with Sanchez, who thereby won his first and
only WPSA major title. But three months later in the semis of the Xerox
Canadian Open in Toronto, when Desaulniers saved three fourth-game
match-points against him, salvaged that game 15-14 and buried Talbott
in the 15-6 fifth before giving Jehangir Khan his strongest challenge
of the season in a thrilling and close four-game final, the Desulniers
re-ascent back to the very top tier of the game had become the most
compelling story of that season.
Everyone pretty much knew that that '86 Canadian Open was to be Khan's
final WPSA appearance, as the latter had decided that three years of
playing both the WPSA and international-ball circuits was enough, and
that he would concentrate on the international game from that point
onward. But no one suspected that it would also be the swan song for
Desaulniers, who had just turned 29 at season's-end, clearly had
several highly productive years still ahead of him and seemed solidly
positioned to consolidate his newly regained standing and reap the
rewards, both competitive and financial, of his successful return to a
top-level WPSA ranking. All that summer tournament promoters excitedly
anticipated the Talbott-Desaulniers rivalry that seemed certain to
occur, complete with the fascinating contrast of styles and
personalities such a series would entail, and the 1986-87 WPSA Pro Tour
Program even had as its center photo an action shot of the Canadian
star lashing into a full-bodied backhand, his whole body language
conveying the confidence that he once again exuded.
Sadly it was not to be, and the self-removals from the tour of two such
entertaining marquee performers as Desaulniers and Khan deprived the
1986-87 season of much of the excitement that has pervaded 1985-86, and
may indeed have started the WPSA on the downward trend that wound up
with its dissolution not that many years later. Having proven his point
by regaining an elite status in such compelling fashion, knowing what a
grind it would be to battle a stayer of Talbott's stature week in and
week out (not to mention star performers like Sanchez, Ned Edwards and
John Nimick, as well as rising stars Kenton Jernigan, Hector Barragan
and Greg Zaff), by this time well ensconced in a business career
trading gold commodities and still having to contend with nagging
strains and muscle pulls, a legacy of his frenetic all-out attacking
style, Desaulniers was unable to muster up the hunger and motivation
that he knew would be needed for him to flourish.
Rather than play at anything less than his best, knowing first-hand how
great a decline just a little slippage had the capacity to occasion and
determined to exit the game this time while on top, Desaulniers retired
from a WPSA tour in whose evolution he had played so major a role with
his personality and meteoric achievements, all of which made him one of
the most historically significant players in the history of the game.
This first appeared on squashtalk.com