Tierney And Scharff Capture U. S. Century Doubles Open Crown by Rob Dinerman
Dateline February 23rd ---
Nearly 90 teams competed this past weekend in New York City in the
eighth annual U. S. Century Doubles, a record turnout for this
tournament, and the total would have been even higher were it not for
several weather-related defaults caused by severe foggy conditions on
Friday that imperiled air travel enough to shut LaGuardia Airport
down for several hours and divert a number of flights to neighboring
states. The tournament was sponsored by Jefferson’s Very Small Batch
Bourbon and headquartered at the University Club, with the CityView
Racquet Club, the New York Athletic Club, the Racquet & Tennis Club
and the Union Club all co-hosting matches throughout the three-day
event.
In the
nine-team Open division, first-time partners Sandy Tierney and Steve
Scharff staged a series of late-game rallies in both the semifinal and
final rounds to emerge victorious, thereby perpetuating this flight’s
history of no team ever successfully defending their title. In fact,
both finalists from 2013 were eliminated in their first-round
quarterfinal matches, with last year’s winners, Atlantans Eben Hardie
and Bill Villari, falling in four games to Bill Mangan and Bill Ullman,
while 2013 runners-up Charlie Parkhurst and Morris Clothier (who won
this event with Mike Pierce in 2008) led Eric Christiansen and Rob
Dinerman two games to love only to lose the fourth and fifth games
15-14, with Dinerman nicking a three-wall on the weekend’s only
main-draw simultaneous-match-ball.
In the
semis, Chris Spahr and Andrew Slater, who had opened with a
straight-game win over 2012 Open winners Eric Vlcek and Jamie Heldring,
then eked out a 15-14-in-the-fourth victory over Mangan and Ullman,
following which Christiansen and Dinerman let late-game leads slip away
in both the first and second games (12-11 in the first and 14-13 in the
second), with Scharff scoring on a pair of forehand reverse-corner
winners that rescued that second game preceding the anticlimactic 15-9
third.
The final
featured highly capable and savvy players whose thorough familiarity
with each other’s games was doubtless abetted by the fact that three of
the four are based at the University Club of Boston --- where Slater
and Tierney are members and Spahr is the head pro --- and practice with
each other several times per week; indeed Tierney/Scharff’s
quarterfinal match was with yet ANOTHER pair from that same club,
namely John Nimick and Scott Poirier. The one exception in the
final-round quartet, the Greenwich-based Scharff, has in recent years
won the U. S. National Doubles and the U. S. National Mixed Doubles a
combined three times, and in this match, as throughout the tournament,
he was the best player on the court, gliding smoothly to wherever he
had to be, knifing front-court winners of all types (particularly on
his reverse corner), keeping Spahr (who was remarkably error-free the
entire match) and Slater off balance by varying his choice of shots,
and hitting several demoralizing serve-return winners. Tierney’s tin
and winner counts were both high, but for the most part he held his
front-court position well and engaged Slater in a number of evenly
contested cross-court battles.
As they had
done in their Christiansen/Dinerman semifinal the day before, Scharff
and Tierney came from behind in all three of the games they won en
route to the eventual 15-13 12-15 15-14 15-12 tally. They trailed 13-11
in the first, 14-13 in the third and 10-6 in the fourth. The third game
was by far the most important, with Tierney keeping the game alive on
the 14-13 point with his best retrieval of the day, leading to a
frantic mid-court scramble that ended when Spahr made a diving get but
lifted the ball just above the front-wall boundary line to make the
score 14-all. Four lets later, a fierce exchange terminated when Slater
was jammed by a ball and his attempted response just caught the top of
the tin. A series of mid-game Spahr backhand reverse-corner winners
(the only time in the match that he went to this shot) earned his team
a 10-6 lead, but a combination of Tierney nick winners and Slater
errors led to a 7-1 run to 13-11. Tierney then tinned a drive but
Scharff, who as the match wore on became increasingly able to push
Slater deep and then exploit the open front-right sector, scored in
this fashion on a well-disguised backhand roll-corner, and on
match-point Spahr committed a rare tin on a mid-court volley.
In the A
Division, Ed Chilton, the longtime Wilmington Country Club pro, and his
brother Court fended off two fourth-game match-balls-against in their
semi with 2010 A champs Alex Dean and Jim Marver, won the fifth 15-13
and then swept to a 3-0 final-round win over Michael Koep and Gary
Yeager. The Mixed Doubles tourney was won by top seeds Tom Boldt and
Steph Hewitt, who lost the first game of their final with 2011 Century
Mixed Doubles winners Kip Gould and Karen Jerome, with the latter
hitting a number of drop-shot winners. Chastened by that temporary
setback, Boldt and Hewitt then softened the pace, kept Jerome deep
enough to mitigate her shot-making, and reeled off three single-figure
games, a solid companion-piece to the Canadian Century Cup title they
had annexed in Toronto 12 weeks ago. The Women’s draw was won by Kathy
Tuckwell and Ann McGowan in a four-game final with top seeds Sue Rose
and Sue Greene.
There
were also three age-group events, the Legends 70-plus, in which Tom
Poor and Jonathan Hyett won a five-game final over top seeds Bart
McGuire and Mark Price; the Masters 60-plus, in which Baltimoreans Dave
Rosen and Scooter Dorney first dethroned three-time defending
champions, Canadians Scott Stoneburgh and Tony Ross 3-1 in the semis
(with both the third and fourth games 15-14) and then out-played
Doug Lifford and John Brazilian in four games in the final; and the
Grand Champions 80-plus, in which Drewe Williams and Dave Matthews of
Santa Fe won out over two-time defending champs Mike McBean and Will
Simonton 15-10, 6 and 11. Former WPSA singles and doubles champion
Clive Caldwell had entered with his 92-year-old father Brian, but the
elder Caldwell caught bronchitis late last week and was unable to
participate. All told, no fewer than seven University Club of Boston
representatives (Tierney, Spahr, Slater, Poor, Hyett, Brazilian and
Lifford) made it to the final round this weekend.
For the
second straight year, Randy Goodleaf served as Tournament Chairman, and
he and U. S. Squash Director of Doubles Preston Quick did an admirable
job of administering the event and responding to the various travel
exigencies that arose on Friday – but the most heroic role, in this
Century Doubles weekend as in all of its predecessors, was played by
the tournament’s foremost advocate Kit Tatum, who right from the
event’s inception has embraced and promoted it, recruiting players and
matching up partners with an enthusiasm and fervor that more than
anything else is responsible for its continuing growth and this year’s
all-time high entry level. At a time when some events are struggling to
maintain their prior attendance levels, the U. S. Century Doubles
remains flourishing and vibrant.
