Dane Sharp Captures US Hardball Nationals Crown by Rob Dinerman photos courtesy Whitney Thain
Dateline March 4th
– Trailing two games to love against his top-seeded opponent, Dane
Sharp staged a magnificent rally and won, 15-11 in the fifth, over
Imran Khan this past Sunday afternoon in the final round of the 2016 U.
S. Hardball National Championships, held at the Merion Cricket Club in
suburban Philadelphia, where the Canadian-born Sharp has been on the
professional staff since he ended his eight-year PSA career early last
year. Sharp’s comeback effort, one of three finals to go the distance
(with a number of 3-2 matches in prior rounds as well), put an emphatic
calling-card exclamation point on an enormously successful weekend, an
achievement rendered all the more remarkable for coming in the face of
a doubly disappointing backdrop. This past spring the Board of
Directors at Merion, which has hosted the Hardball Nationals 14 times
in the past 21 years while serving as the flagship venue for hardball
squash throughout that considerable time frame, decided to replace its
three remaining hardball courts with two softball courts in the next
few months, and in late December US Squash CEO Kevin Klipstein
announced that this 107th edition of this hallowed event would be the
last that the Association would classify as an official national
championship.
It must be said that both the
entry figures (79 all told, a 60% increase over the turnout during the
past few years) and the energy level that pervaded the on-court play
and gallery support exuded an almost defiant response to these
potentially deflating developments. This was also explicitly conveyed
in some of the speeches at the Saturday evening dinner and after the
finals were concluded the following afternoon, constituting in sum a
definitive expression of the hardball squash community’s continuing
devotion to the hardball game and its determination to have it
continue, regardless of what administrative decisions are made by the
sport’s governing bodies. Tom Harrity, just 27 weeks after undergoing
total-hip-replacement surgery on August 21st, made a triumphant return
to tournament play by winning both the 40’s and 50’s tournaments. After
splitting the first two games of his 50’s final against Joseph
Purrazzella, Harrity battled back from 9-12 in the third to rescue that
game and eke out the fourth 15-13, after which he surmounted a two
games to one deficit to overtake David Ford in the 40’s final. In the
55’s final, Bryce Harding scored a tight four-game (two overtimes)
final-round win over Hall of Fame inductee Ned Edwards, a former (1987)
North American Open champion who was playing in his first Nationals
since 1981. Palmer Page, still riding the momentum of his Century 60’s
Doubles triumph with Patrick Chifunda one week earlier, won the 60’s
with an impressive straight-set final over defending champion Gary
Yeager, and in the 70’s, Henry Steinglass benefited from a string of
exceptional lob serves (not often the defining element of a match) to
overcome a 2-1 deficit against Kit Tatum in his semi before then taking
a four-game final against Eric Berger.
Harrison Sebring (30’s), Lucky Young (75’s) and Charlie Baker (80’s)
all won round-robin competitions and in the Women’s draws, Gina Stoker
took the Open final 3-0 over Alicia Rodriguez, while also teaming with
Ed Garno to win the concomitant Merion Mixed Doubles event. In the
deciding match of the three-player Women’s 40’s round robin, Joyce
Davenport, a two-time winner (in 1965 and 1969) of the Open portion of
the Nationals who turned 74 early last week, nonetheless pushed Julie
Kessler to five games before Kessler pulled through in the end.
But by far the most memorable match of the weekend was the Men’s Open
final, throughout which the crackling pace and precision displayed by
both contestants resulted in perhaps the highest-quality Nationals
match in several decades. Khan, currently ranked in the top 20 of the
SDA pro doubles tour, held a slight but definite edge early on, both
statistically and territorially, his vaunted wrist-flicking action,
brainy shot selection and volleying acumen enabling him to forge and
hold small leads, and when he came away with a 15-13 second game to
take a two-love lead, he appeared well positioned for the remainder.
But Sharp’s competitive mental toughness, and especially his
otherworldly retrieving skills on Khan forays that would have been
clear winners against anyone else, exerted a gradual but cumulative
influence on the final three games, frustrating Khan and inducing just
enough impatient and costly errors to swing the action in Sharp’s favor
as the titanic battle for hardball supremacy moved rivetingly along.
After escaping with the third game (which had been tied at 12-all) and
taking an intensity-filled 15-12 fourth, Sharp raced to leads of 7-1
and 9-3. From that ill-boding juncture, Khan, whose tin count at the
outset of that game had really hurt his chances, regained his top form
and mounted a tortuous eleventh-hour comeback bid with virtually no
margin for error against an implacable foe who made him earn every
point. Khan saved two match-balls to close to 11-14 but Sharp laced a
backhand blast to perfect length down the left wall to finish off a
monumental effort by both players that left them showered with applause
from an exhausted but admiring band of spectators who overfilled
Merion’s cozy gallery.
If this is indeed the swan
song for the officially-sanctioned U. S. Hardball Nationals, as has
been currently decreed by US Squash, it couldn’t have gone out on a
better or more memorable note; to the extent that the hardball players
viewed the weekend not just as a sentimental send-off but also as a
testing ground and opportunity to convince the US Squash Board to
reconsider its decision, they passed in flying colors. Certainly the
event has been plagued by flagging attendance in recent years prior to
this one, and the projected removal of Merion’s trio of hardball
courts, if it indeed goes forward, would be a precipitous blow. That
said, the collective will of the hardball squash group was forcefully
and repeatedly displayed in both words and action throughout the
tournament, making it abundantly clear that the hardball game and its
unique dynamics are well worth preserving and in any event are not
going away anytime soon.
