Krizek And McElhinny Rally To St. Louis Open Crown by Rob Dinerman
L-R: Winners Natarsha McElhinny/Narelle Krizek,
Head Pro Missouri Athletic Club/WDSA player Heidi Mather,
Finalists Meredeth Quick/Steph Hewitt
Dateline March 2nd
--- Trailing two games to love, the Tippett sisters, Narelle Krizek and
Tarsh McElhinny, made a mid-match tactical adjustment and successfully
rallied to an 11-15 14-15 15-8 15-13 15-10 victory over Meredeth Quick
and Steph Hewitt Sunday afternoon in the final round of the inaugural
$10,000 St. Louis Open, held at the Missouri Athletic Club. Top seeds
Krizek and McElhinny had won a tough four-game semifinal over Fernanda
Rocha and Karen Jerome (who were two points from taking a two games to
love lead), while Quick and Hewitt, who had defeated Krizek/McElhinny
in the final of the 2012 U. S National Doubles in suburban New York the
last time these two teams met 23 months ago, had straight-gamed first
Larissa Stephenson and Joyce Davenport and then Tournament Chairman
Heidi Mather (the head pro at the host club) and Vic SImmonds en route
to the final round of the six-team draw.
In the opening portion of the final, Krizek and McElhinny
committed too many tins (especially in losing six of the match’s first
seven points) and went for shots too soon, frequently leaving open
balls in front for Hewitt and Quick to exploit. McElhinny spent much of
those games positioned behind Quick, who for the most part was winning
their exchange of rails along the left wall and scoring on her
reverse-corner. Hewitt, fresh off teaming with Tom Boldt one week
earlier to win the Mixed Doubles flight in the U. S. National Century
Doubles, was dictating the play with a variety of shots that kept her
opponents on the defensive. Even at that, the second game seesawed
through 28 evenly-divided points before a McElhinny lob sailed above
the front-wall boundary line to complete the two-game deficit.
Starting at the outset of the third, however, the
Australian-born eventual winners made two important strategic changes
that altered the match’s pattern, as McElhinny began both to
cross-court lob Hewitt, pushing her deep and out of her comfort zone,
and to let Hewitt’s responding lobs go over her head, where Krizek
could play them with her backhand at the back wall. Both decisions
allowed Krizek to play a much more significant role, also forcing
Hewitt to the back and enabling McElhinny to better establish position
and to produce a slew of drop-shot winners during the remaining three
games. Hewitt’s best shot is usually her reverse-corner, but she
tried very few in the last three games, seemingly fearing Krizek’s
responding counters, especially after the latter had answered one
Hewitt reverse with an even more sharply-angled reverse-corner winner
of her own. After losing the third game convincingly, Quick and Hewitt
had a real shot at the fourth, but at 13-all Quick tinned a drop shot
and Hewitt did the same on a three-wall. By mid-fifth Krizek was
pounding her patented shallow nick-finding rail for winners and her
team was amassing too big a lead to be overcome. Throughout the five
games, the quality of the play, and especially of the retrieving, was
admirable, with McElhinny turning in one of the best overall
performances of her career.
The tour resumes in two weeks’ time with the Hashim Khan
Invitational at the Denver Athletic Club, where Quick learned the game
as a youngster during the mid-1990’s.
