WDSA John’s Island Open Final: Pierrepont And Krizek Triumph Over Quick And Hewitt by Rob Dinerman Dateline April 27th
--- Chastened by the loss of a second game in which they yielded the
final eight points after leading 14-7, top seeds and defending
champions Narelle Krizek and Suzie Pierrepont regained control with
late-game runs of their own in the third and fourth and defeated
Meredeth Quick and Steph Hewitt 15-13 14-15 15-8 15-12 to win the
second annual John’s Island Open, sponsored by John’s Island Real
Estate, in Vero Beach, Florida. It was the eighth straight tournament
win for Krizek and Pierrepont, dating back to their last loss, in the
Turner Cup final to Hewitt and Quick in May 2012, with a possible
rematch between these two top WDSA teams to come in this year’s Turner
Cup three weeks hence at the Westchester Country Club in Rye.
Pierrepont and Krizek often seem to struggle in the first game of their
matches, as witness the 15-14 scores of their straight-set pre-final
matches against first Alex Clark and Emily Lungstrum and then Amanda
Sobhy and Latasha Khan. This time as well they were met on nearly equal
terms by Hewitt and Quick, until Krizek rolled out a forehand
three-wall from deep in the court at 14-13 that averted what would have
been a third straight opening-game simultaneous-game-ball. Relieved by
this narrow escape, they controlled the second game, both statistically
and territorially, all the way to 14-7, at which juncture for some
reason they abandoned the high-paced pressure tactics that had
heretofore worked so well, instead floating the ball and giving Hewitt
and Quick openings to exploit. Both hit several front-court winners
that enabled them to tie the game at 14-all, and on the ensuing
exchange Krizek went for a volleyed cross-drop that caught the tin.
That kind
of late-game reversal has hurt Pierrepont/Krizek in the past against
this pair of opportunistic opponents, most notably in their two losses
to this pair during the 2011-12 season, when in the finals of both the
Philadelphia Open and the aforementioned Turner Cup, Quick and Hewitt
had rallied from behind to first-game one-point wins and gone on to
victory in wresting the No. 1 team ranking for that year from Krizek
and Pierrepont. But this time the latter duo were able to right
themselves, seizing the third game with a 7-0 run from 8-all with an
unrelenting attack that also came to the fore in the three-point
match-ending string from 12-all in the fourth. In both cases, Quick and
Hewitt, though frequently on the defensive, had hung in as long as they
could but were unable to suppress the multi-front Pierrepont/Krizek
weaponry down the stretch.
Prior to the
WDSA final, two pro-am finals were played, with Clark and Jason Sevier
defeating Dana Betts and Danny Dolan 9-15 15-11 15-7 15-7 in the Open
pro-am and Sobhy and Leo Pierce taking the A pro-am final with a 15-14,
9 and 11 win over Tarsh McElhinny and Bob Thibodeau. The tour resumes
next week with the MetroSquash Open in Chicago, with the Turner Cup to
follow two weeks later.
