Dane Sharp Triumphs At “Hardball Free For All” Event At Merion by Rob Dinerman
photos courtesy Whitney Thain
Dateline October 24th ---
This past weekend the Merion Cricket Club in suburban Philadelphia
hosted a “Hardball Free For All” tournament that served as the
launch-pad for the 2016-17 hardball season. Dane Sharp, an assistant
pro at Merion who won the U. S. National Hardball Championship at this
same venue eight months ago in a riveting five-game final against Imran
Khan, again demonstrated his mastery in the six-player Open division
with straight-set wins first in his semifinal match with Baldwin School
head coach Richard Glanfield and then in the final over his Merion pro
staff colleague Fabio Cechin, who had straight-gamed two-time National
Hardball finalist Rob Dinerman in the bottom-half semi.
Glanfield rebounded from his setback to take the 40’s/50’s
final in five games over Joseph Purazzella, and there were two
other age-group categories as well, namely the 55’s/60’s, in which
Peter Stokes prevailed in three over Eric Berger (whose five-game semis
win over Henry Steinglass reversed their outcome in the 2016 Nationals
70’s final), and the 65’s/70’s, in which Paul Chan demonstrated the
fullness of her recovery from arthroscopic knee surgery this past
spring by out-playing Tefft Smith in a 3-0 final. There was also a B
round-robin, in which Gerard Maddrey took first-place honors and Peter
Landreth finished second. The fact that more than two-dozen players
turned out for a tournament that was organized on fairly short notice
by Merion’s Director Of Athletics Whitney Thain is a clear sign of the
hardball players’ resolve to support their sport throughout the season,
regardless of US Squash’s recent edict not to recognize national
hardball champions beginning with the current season. There are a dozen
events scheduled to take place this fall and winter, and the mood of
the weekend was perhaps best summarized by Thain when she commented
afterwards that, “Lots of hardball played this weekend, everyone just
kept playing.”