Suzie Pierrepont And Narelle Krizek Capture Inaugural $25K John’s Island Title
by Rob Dinerman
Dateline April 22nd --- Chastened by the one-point loss of an opening game which they had led throughout, top seeds Suzie Pierrepont and Narelle Krizek rallied to a 17-18 15-11 15-5 18-15 victory over second seeds and recently-crowned U. S. National Doubles champions Dana Betts and Steph Hewitt Sunday afternoon in the final round of the inaugural $25,000 John’s Island Open in Florida. The win represented the seventh WDSA tour title for the Pierrepont/Krizek tandem and their second this season, preceded by the season-opening Philadelphia Open in October. It also gave Krizek her second doubles victory in an eight-day stretch, coming as it did barely a week after she and her Australian compatriot Paul Price had annexed the World Doubles Mixed draw with a close four-game final-round win over the American team of Natalie Grainger and Preston Quick.
Pierrepont and Krizek surged through a pair of one-sided pre-final wins over first Victoria Simmonds and Ivy Pochoda and then 2011 Los Angeles Open finalists Amanda Sobhy and Latasha Khan, who had reached that semifinal stage only by saving two fifth-game match-balls against them and moving from 12-14 to 17-15 in a qualifying match with Kat Grant and Alex Clark. Sobhy, who had earned the World Doubles Women’s title with Grainger earlier this month, and Khan then subdued the Philadelphia team of Dawn Gray and Amy Milanek but were unable to repulse the constant pressure that Pierrepont and Krizek imposed right from the start.
The bottom-half semifinal between the Betts/Hewitt duo and the young British-born Philadelphia-based Tina Rix/Carrie Hastings team was much more competitive, as witness the 16-14 15-12 13-15 15-11 stat line. A few errors by Rix doomed her team’s cause in the first-game best-of-five tiebreaker but for much of the remainder she and Hastings (who played maybe her best match of the season) were able to carry the play, and only some excellent defensive maneuvering by Hewitt (who frequently dashed from her right-wall position to the front left to keep points alive after the British women had forced Betts to the back) allowed the second seeds to weather what turned out to be a very severe challenge.
As noted, the first game of the final came down to a simultaneous-game-point, on which a nervy mid-court Krizek forehand roll-corner that Betts never saw caught the very top of the tin. Opening-game tiebreaker tins had cost the Pierrepont/Krizek team dearly during the 2011-12 season --- most notably in one-point reversals in both the Philadelphia Open and Turner Cup final-round losses to Hewitt and Meredeth Quick --- but this time they responded to this potentially deflating turn with a resilience and resolve that carried them through the rest of the match. They also meshed beautifully as a team, with Krizek skid-boasting and lobbing over Betts, forcing her to run the ball down way in back and play the return on her backhand, thereby opening up the front-left for Pierrepont/Krizek to attack, while also directing enough action at Hewitt to “keep her honest,” and pinned to the right wall, unable to cross over as she had done so successfully the day before.
Though seemingly out of the match after the 15-5 third game, Betts and Hewitt fought back admirably in the fourth, coming from behind to force another potentially match-turning best-of-nine tiebreaker, but this time Krizek and Pierrepont stayed error-free and won, five points to two. Great credit is due to the entire John’s Island squash community, especially the Pierce family, which supported this tournament financially and in every other way, getting this first-year event off to a rousing start, hopefully a harbinger of a bright future for this new stop on the growing WDSA tour.
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