Hewitt And Quick Surge To U. S. Open Doubles Crown
by Rob Dinerman
Dateline December 9th --- Confronted with a double-game-ball-against predicament in the opening game, top seeds Steph Hewitt and Meredeth Quick successfully surmounted that challenge and never looked back, solidly out-playing the second-seeded Tippett sisters, Narelle Krizek and Natarsha McElhinny, 16-15 15-10 15-9 today in the final round of the $15,000 U. S. Open Doubles Championship, held at the Wilmington Country Club. Hewitt (who scored a front-court winner followed by a top-of-the-tinned McElhinny reverse-corner to account for the first game’s final two points) and Quick thereby consolidated their U. S. Nationals final-round win over the same opponents last spring and concluded a three-match march to the title in which they didn’t drop a single game.
After an opening-round win over qualifiers Kat Grant and Alex Clark, who did manage to take the third game to overtime, Quick and Hewitt then swept past fourth seeds Emily Lungstrum and Dana Betts. The latter Brooklyn pairing had barely survived their own quarterfinal match against Kelsey Engman and Karen Jerome, who grabbed the first two games and were a third-game best-of-five tiebreaker away from completing the upset before eventually falling by a 7-15 12-15 16-13 15-11 15-7 tally that accurately conveys how close the match was to having the opposite outcome.
Meanwhile, in the bottom half, Krizek and McElhinny met surprisingly stiff resistance first from quarterfinal foes Carrie Hastings and Tiny Rix --- the British-born current Philadelphians who took the second game in overtime and would have forced a fifth game had they not been denied in the best-of-five tiebreaker that concluded the fourth --- and then from first-time partners Suzie Pierrepont and Sarah West (straight-set quarters winners over Amy Milanek and Dawn Gray), who had chances in every game, especially the second, in their 15-12 18-17 15-11 subsequent semi against Krizek and McElhinny.
The latter duo, who in the 2012 U. S. National Doubles eight months ago had gone with the Krizek-on-the-left alignment that had won the 2011 U. S. National Doubles, switched walls for this tournament in deference to the right wall being Krizek’s stronger position (as she proved throughout the final with frequent winners and dynamic shot-selection), and, possibly, in recognition of the Quick/Hewitt victory last April. As noted, they were on the brink of taking today’s opening game before yielding its final two points and being out-played thereafter, but Quick and Hewitt were able to counter their opponents’ re-positioning by forcing McElhinny to retreat to the deep-left, then attacking the front portion of the court. As the match wore on, Krizek increasingly had to cover the front-left, disrupting the team’s court balance and creating openings for Quick/Hewitt to exploit. She also committed some tins going for too much when she had a chance to shoot.
The final two games were competitive but convincing, and Hewitt and Quick, who had lost to Krizek and Pierrepont two months ago in the Philadelphia Open final, were able to finish off the autumn portion of the WDSA 2012-13 tour with a well-deserved victory. The overwhelming feeling among the Wilmington membership was that hosting both the SDA men’s doubles tour (in whose counterpart event Damien Mudge and Ben Gould prevailed, defeating Manek Mathur and Yvain Badan in a four-game final) and the WDSA women’s doubles tour on the same weekend was a tremendous success, which should augur well for this type of double-event going forward.
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