Pierrepont And Hewitt Earn Hashim Khan WDSA Open Crown
by Rob Dinerman
Dateline March 11th --- Chastened by the loss of a second-game best-of-nine tiebreaker in which some late-game miscues played an important role, first-time partners Suzie Pierrepont and Steph Hewitt strongly asserted themselves in the next two games to defeat Narelle Tippett Krizek and her sister Natarsha Tippett McElhinny 15-10 16-18 15-10 15-6 Sunday afternoon in the final round of the Hashim Khan Open benefiting Mile High Squash, hosted as always by the Denver Athletic Club and sponsored by RBC Wealth Management DeRose/Krantz Group. The outcome represented the second WDSA tour title this season for both Pierrepont (who had teamed with Krizek to win the season-opening Philadelphia Open in October) and Hewitt, who combined with Meredeth Quick to take the early-December U. S. Open and who came into this past weekend still flush from having just won the Canadian Mixed Doubles event with Scott Stoneburgh earlier this month.
Both final-round tandems had been byed to the semifinals of this six-team event. Pierrepont and Hewitt then faced Kelsey Engman and many-times U. S. National Doubles champion Alicia McConnell, who had progressed to that stage with an entertaining four-game first-round win over Karen Jerome and Sarah West in which Engman’s parabolic lobs over West’s head had frequently forced defensive responses for McConnell to attack. The Engman/McConnell duo then forced Hewitt and Pierrepont to a best-of-nine tiebreaker in the first game, but four Engman errors accounted for that overtime session, after which the eventual champions maintained control the rest of the three-game way.
The Tippett siblings, U. S. National Doubles champions in 2011 before losing the 2012 final to Hewitt and Quick last spring, dominated the balancing semi 15-4, 12 and 6 against the veteran Philadelphia pair of Dawn Gray and Amy Milanek, quarters straight-set winners over 1998 Intercollegiate Individuals winner Ivy Pochoda and Victoria Simmonds, with McElhinny on fire with her accurate shot-making from her right-wall perch. After falling behind 10-4 in the first game of the final, Krizek and McElhinny played better late in that game and carried that quality into the second, which they led throughout and were never headed in the overtime.
But Pierrepont and Hewitt raced out to daunting 5-1 advantages in both the third game and the fourth, forcing Krizek to be a little too aggressive in her shot-making, sometimes with metallic results, while Pierrepont, liberated by the substantial cushion her team enjoyed, was able to increasingly commandeer the play, alternating forceful volleys with some delicate angles as she and Hewitt closed out the match in convincing 15-6 fashion. The next WDSA tour stops will be the $30,000 Turner Cup, part of the biennial World Doubles next month in mid-town Manhattan, in which WDSA players will be competing not only in the women's draw but in a $15,000 Mixed Doubles flight as well, followed immediately by the Inaugural $25,000 John’s Island Open in Vero Beach, FL.
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