Massachusetts State Doubles Update: Defending Champions Still Alive In Men’s A, Women’s A, Mixed and Parent/Child Draws
by Rob Dinerman, for DailySquashReport.com
Dateline April 25th, 2012 --- Recently crowned U. S. National Doubles 45-and-over champions Chris Spahr and Doug Lifford will be facing John Nimick and Scott Poirier next week in the semifinal round of the Men’s A portion of the 67th holding of the Massachusetts State Doubles tournament, which Spahr and Lifford won a year ago and which the Massachusetts SRA runs on a self-scheduled basis leading up to a May 7th “finals night” when the finals of all nine competitive categories (six of which have more than a dozen team entries) will be contested at the University Club of Boston. Proof of how deep the Boston-area field has become in recent years can be found in the fact that the last four editions of this season-ending event have seen four completely different teams (i.e. eight different players) crowned as champions, namely Sandy Tierney and Pat Malloy (who will be opposing Dan Roberts and Max Montgelas in this year’s bottom-half semi) in 2008, four-time British Open champion David Palmer and Andrew Slater in 2009, ISDA pro doubles partners Greg McArthur and Roberts in 2010 and, as noted, Lifford (a seven-time Mass State doubles winner with three different partners over the past 20 years) and Spahr in 2011.
New Englanders, who perennially enthusiastically support this doubles championship (192 players this season), have even more to celebrate this spring in light of how many noteworthy results have been achieved by the participants in this year’s tourney. In national-level doubles play this season, the Spahr/Lifford exploits in Rye early this month were accompanied by those of Tierney who is marking the 25th anniversary of the first of the six Mass State doubles titles he has won, with Len Bernheimer in 1987, and who partnered Sean McDonough to the U. S. National Doubles 55-and-over title; of Bernheimer and Tom Poor (whose total of 14 Mass State crowns dwarfs that of anyone else), who reached the finals of both the U. S. and Canadian 65-and-over draws; of Roberts, who teamed with McArthur to reach the finals of an ISDA Challenger event in Pittsburgh this past autumn; and of Nimick and Slater, who took the Canadian National Doubles 50-and-over two weeks ago in Toronto and are already safely into the semifinal round of this year’s Mass State 50-and-over draw, where they are seeded second behind 2011 champs Tierney and Jamie Fagan.
The Mixed Doubles flight will match the top-seeded defending-champion team of Malloy, an early-2000’s Trinity College captain who played for several years on the ISDA tour, and Margot Kearney against 2009 and 2010 winners Spahr and Hope Crosier if the latter pairing can first get past a quarterfinal match later this week against Montgelas and Breck Haynes. The bottom-half semi is already set, with Roberts and his fellow University Club of Boston pro Fernanda Rocha to take on second seeds Lifford and Robin Silver-Grace. A number of these women are also into the semifinals of the Women’s A draw, where reigning champs Crosier and Rocha are seeded No. 1 and scheduled to play Hope Prockop and Sue Greene next week, while in the other semi Haynes and Kearney will face Silver-Grace and current Harvard student Nirasha Guruge.
The Parent/Child tournament is featuring several of the teams who just this past weekend achieved distinction in the U. S. National Father & Son Doubles in New York City. Bob Brownell and his son Timmy, fresh off winning the U. S. Father & Son 15-and-under flight, will face Spahr and his son Carson, already the No. 1 player at Milton Academy as a freshman this winter, who had won U. S. Father & Son junior titles (the 13-and-under from 2008-2010 and the 17-and-under in 2011) the past four years before barely losing in the semis of the Open draw to the eventual champs Geordie and B. G. Lemmon, if the Spahrs can win their quarterfinal against Jeff Struzenski and his son Nick. In the bottom-half semifinal, Poor and his son Morgan, who successfully defended their 2011 U. S. Father & Son Century title Sunday afternoon, will face whoever wins the quarterfinal between 2008 Mass State Parent/Child champs Gregory and David Crane and Joe Cortes and his son Cody. There are also massive B and C level draws (more than 32 teams in each), as well as 50-and-over and 60-and-over flights and a Siblings event in which several players who achieved distinction as sons in the U. S. Father & Son event (Morgan Poor, Carson Spahr and Timmy Brownell) are all entered and still in the draw as of this morning’s writing.
Tom Poor Nails A Backhand In U. S. Father & Son Century Final
Left To Right: U. S. Father & Son 15-And-Under Winners Bob And Timmy Brownell; Runners-Up Samuel And Harry Curtis
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