Chris Walker And Tom Harrity Win the U. S. Century Doubles For The Second Straight Year by Rob Dinerman
photo US Squash
Dateline January 20, 2020
--- Trailing at the start of the fifth game of a match that they had
dominated early on, Chris Walker and Tom Harrity erupted on a 12-1 run
en route to a 15-9, 15-12, 8-15, 12-15, 15-7 victory over Dave Rosen
and Jeff Mulligan this afternoon in the final round of the 13th annual
U. S. National Century Doubles Open Championships, hosted as always by
the University Club of New York. In so doing, Walker and Harrity
successfully defended the title they had won in 2019 over Jeff Stanley
and Bill Ullman. Both finalists had to survive five-game semifinals.
Walker and Harrity actually had trailed Chris Haley and Ed Chilton
(five-game quarterfinal winners themselves over Scott Stoneburgh and
Andrew Slater), two games to one before taking each of the last two
games by 15-4 scores. For their part, Rosen and Mulligan, after ousting
Stanley and Ullman, 15-13 in the fourth, in their quarter, then were
pushed to a fifth by three-time (2016-18) U. S. Century Doubles champs
Dominic Hughes and Nigel Thain, who saved a match-ball against them in
the fourth game before grudgingly ceding the fifth 15-10.
Walker and Harrity, still riding the momentum of their
no-nonsense close-out to the Chilton/Haley match, were in complete
command at the outset to the final. Harrity was scoring on cross-drops
and reverse-corners whenever he had an opening, Walker was baffling his
opponents with deadly wrist-switches, including the demoralizing
late-swing lobs that looked so much like front-court shots until the
very last instant that he had Rosen and Mulligan charging to the front,
only to see the ball lofted well over their heads and dying in back. By
contrast, both Rosen and Mulligan were on the defensive and off their
game. They made a late run, saving a few game-balls against them in the
second game, but that was abruptly thwarted when Walker knifed a
reverse-corner serve-return winner to finish off that game.
To their credit, Rosen and Mulligan kept competing, even
when they didn’t seem to be getting much return for their efforts, and
they were rewarded when Walker and Harrity, who had been executing at a
high level throughout the first two games, suddenly ran into some
errors and tactical miscues in the third. Rosen and Mulligan ran out
that game and eked out the fourth, which was characterized by wild
swings on the scoreboard. First Rosen and Mulligan jumped out to 7-2
advantage, most of it on several audacious drop-shot winners from
Rosen’s racquet; then the Walker/Harrity duo went off on a 10-3 run
that got them to 12-10, just three points from victory; and then Rosen
and Mulligan ran off five straight points, the last of which occurred
when Mulligan made a full-out dive to retrieve a ball in the
front-right. His return was weak but clinging so close to the right
wall that Harrity, perhaps distracted as well by Mulligan lying prone
just a few feet from him, was unable to steer the ball back into play.
Both teams looked depleted enough as they entered the court for
the fifth game that one got the sense that, if either team proved able
to establish a substantial lead, the opposing team would be unable to
respond --- which is exactly what happened. Rosen and Mulligan went up
3-1, but the game got completely away from them when they dropped a few
grueling all-court points, at which point Walker took over the play,
hitting eight winners down the stretch. By late in a match, he often
has shown so many different looks, and presented such a variety of
shots, that he has opponents in the predicament of having to deal not
only with the shot that he DOES hit but also the ones that he MIGHT
HAVE hit. In the match’s defining stretch, he hit winners on straight
drops, cross-court drops, a look-away roll-corner, a mid-court
out-of-the-blue nick-finding three-wall, and a late lob that bounced
with zero energy near the back wall. Fittingly, he hit the last winner
of the day on a lunging backhand volley from mid-court that he babied
into the front right corner which Mulligan, who was stuck deep in the
court, had no chance of retrieving.
This Open match was the second five-game final of the day.
In the 60’s flight, Cameron Pilley, a former top-20 PSA player who
retired from the tour less than a month ago after representing his
native Australia in the biennial World Team Championships, teamed up
with Palmer Page to out-last Liam Kenny (another former PSA pro) and
Kenny Scherl, 15-12 in the fifth. In the two other age-group draws,
Rishi Tandon and Ken Leung, both members of the host club, rallied
after dropping the first game to win in four over the Canadian
father/son team of Tim and Adrian Griffin, who had won their semi over
John Brazilian and Ryan Mullaney when at simultaneous-match-point Tim
Griffin hit a cross-court lob that Brazilian was unable to excavate
back into play. In the 80’s final, Dylan Patterson and Mike Wilson,
winners of the Century 70’s flight eight years ago in 2012, won in four
games over 2019 80’s champs Dave Matthews and William Moore.
There were successful title defenses not only by
Walker/Harrity but also by Chris Spahr and Mary McKee in the Mixed
Doubles tournament and Kat Grant and Lissen Tutrone in the Women’s
event. Spahr and McKee complemented each other with surgical efficiency
at the expense of Natalie Grainger and Ed Kelly. Spahr is calm,
consistent and virtually error-free, while McKee is more noticeably
intense, moves extremely well to the front and has a very proficient
short game. Their positioning and ability to dictate the play were
constant factors throughout the three games, as was also true of Grant
and Tutrone, who now have won this flight for the third straight year.
Other than one loose patch late in the close-out third game, which
allowed opponents Jeannie Blasberg and 1988 Intercollegiate Individuals
champion Diana Dowling to creep to 13-14 (a bid that ended when Dowling
tinned a backhand reverse corner), Grant and Tutrone were well in
control. In the one remaining flight, the A Division, which with 23
entries was the largest of any of the draws, No. 1 seeds Alfredo Nieto
and Mauricio Bocanegra won a four-game final over John Beaman and Jim
Grass. The latter pair, having weathered both a five-game quarterfinal
with 2018 A Division winners Joseph Purrazzella and Charlie Parkhurst
and a 15-14 fifth-game semifinal with Amrit Kanwal and Scott Poirier,
were able to extend the match by winning the third game but fell just a
few points short in the 15-13 fourth. It was the second A Division
Century win in as many years for Bocanegra, who annexed this event with
Tzintzun Carranza in 2019.
On a weekend filled with impressive performances, the most
impressive performance of all, as has been true regarding the Century
Doubles tournament ever since its inception, was turned in by the
event’s founder, Chairman and perennial foremost advocate Kit Tatum,
who for what is now more than a dozen years has embraced and promoted
this tournament with an enthusiasm and fervor that, more than any other
factor, is responsible for its continuing growth and popularity. No
figure in squash is as closely associated with a tournament as Tatum is
with the U. S. Century Doubles, and today he was sitting in the front
row from the time the first match began until Walker delivered the last
stroke of the Open final nearly eight hours later. Acknowledgement and
appreciation are due as well to the six New York-area clubs (namely the
University, Union, Heights Casino, Apawamis, Racquet & Tennis and
New York Athletic Clubs), who generously made their doubles courts
available, as well as to the U. S. Squash on-site representatives who
monitored and recorded the matches and kept the tournament running
smoothly. During this four-day holiday weekend, New York City hosted
the final round of the Tournament of Champions, the Squash &
Education Association’s (SEA) 25thanniversary celebration (including a
Saturday night Jubilee dinner that had more than 1200 people) and the
U. S. Century Doubles, and for the many squash aficionados who
witnessed the pro singles final, attended the SEA Jubilee and competed
in the Century Doubles, it was indeed a full squash weekend.
