Josh Schwartz And Peter Kelly Capture New York Athletic Club Invitational Doubles by Rob Dinerman
Finalists Dylan Patterson and Alex Domenick, Winners Josh Schwartz and Peter Kelly
Finalists Ripley Hartmeyer and Tara Harrington, Winners Laura Pyne and Charlene Neo
Dateline February 11
--- On a rainy Sunday afternoon in mid-town Manhattan, top seeds Josh
Schwartz and Peter Kelly persevered to a 15-4, 13-15, 15-12, 13-15,
15-9 victory over second seeds Alex Domenick and Dylan Patterson in the
final round of the ninth annual New York Athletic Club Invitational. It
was the third straight year that this tournament’s final round had to
be resolved by a fifth game: in 2016, Racquet & Tennis Club pros
James Stout and Will Newnham out-lasted Will Hartigan and Addison West
and last year Stout and Patterson, after dropping a close fourth game
to Schwartz and Kelly, jumped out to a commanding lead midway through
the fifth game and rolled to victory from there in a prelude to the
course of today’s fifth game as well.
The Schwartz/Kelly and Domenick/Patterson pairings had met
10 weeks ago in the final round of the Gold Racquet Invitational at the
Rockaway Hunting Club in Long Island, where Schwartz and Kelly had
staged an eleventh-hour rally from 10-14 to 15-14 on the strength of a
Kelly forehand cross-court winner at simultaneous-championship-point.
In this rematch they burst out of the gate, racing to a 10-3 lead in
the first game with a host of front-court winners. Domenick and
Patterson were on their heels, tinning frequently and totally off their
game, but they were able to turn the match around in the second by
slowing the pace, lobbing Schwartz to the back of the court and
regaining their accuracy and rhythm. The entire middle three games of
the match were marked by high-quality all-court play from all four
participants, each of whom is a solid member of the SDA pro tour;
indeed Schwartz and Kelly had played in the SDA Baltimore Cup on
Thursday night prior to the weekend. Domenick was lashing tight corners
and harsh cross-courts and Patterson was constantly probing the
front-left nick, while Schwartz alternated skid boasts, wall-hugging
rails and backhand cross-drops and Kelly powered the ball and knocked
off his sharply angled forehand reverse-corner. Ahead 14-10 in the
fourth and seemingly with the equalizing game in hand, Domenick and
Patterson then lost the next three points, conjuring up memories of
what had happened the last time these two pairings had clashed at
Rockaway, but at 13-14 Patterson made a sensational retrieve to keep
the point alive and, a few exchanges later, Kelly barely caught the tin
on a mid-court backhand roll-corner, tying the match at two games
apiece.
To that juncture of the match, the two teams had played
themselves to a statistical, territorial and psychological stand-still,
and no one present could have confidently predicted how the fifth game
would go. It is to the winners’ credit that they were able to reel off
a mid-game burst that gave them enough of a cushion to get across the
finish line. Kelly in particular came up with his best squash of the
day, blasting the ball down the right wall and creating openings for
both himself and his partner to exploit as they forged a 12-5 lead.
Domenick and Patterson had one final rally in them, capped off by a
delicately placed cross-drop winner that Domenick hit off his shoe-tops
that might have been the shot of the day and narrowed the score to
9-12. But Schwartz then hit a cross-court to perfect length to end his
team’s four-point drought, following which Kelly hit a bold backhand
roll-corner (the same shot he had tinned to end the fourth game) to
move to match-ball and then blasted a ball down the middle that died in
back to finish off the riveting 100-minute battle. In the semifinals
Schwartz and Kelly had defeated Parker Hurst and Matt Mackin, while
Domenick and Patterson had taken the measure of former Yale teammates
Ryan Dowd and Naishadh Lalwani.
There was also a ten-team Women’s tournament, in which top
seeds Charlene Neo and Laura Pyne prevailed in the final by scores of
15-7, 11 and 9 over Tara Harrington and Ripley Hartmeyer. In the
singles portion of the tournament, Mackin, who played on three Potter
Cup-winning Trinity College teams and served as co-captain in his
senior 2013-14 season, won a five-game men’s final over Chris
Fernandez, and in the women’s flight, which consisted of only Jennifer
Gemmell and former Princeton co-captain Elise O’Connell, Gemmell rose
superior in straight games.
