All-Greenwich Finals (And Nearly All-Greenwich Turnout) In US National Mixed Doubles Tourney
by Rob Dinerman
Dateline April 29th --- Trailing two games to love, the third-seeded team of Steve Scharff and Natalie Grainger rallied to a high-quality and entertaining 14-15 9-15 15-7 15-8 15-10 victory over top seeds and 2012 finalists Suzie Pierrepont and Greg McArthur Sunday afternoon in the final round of the 2013 U. S. Mixed Doubles Championship at the Round Hill Club in Greenwich, CT. The praiseworthy standard of play in the Open final aside, however, all four flights of this tournament (Open, 40’s, 50’s and B), which is billed as a “national” competition, were characterized by a level of provincialism in both turnout and tone whose staggering extent had to have dealt a severe and disheartening setback to the oft-stated and admirable U. S. Squash aspiration of spreading the game of hardball doubles squash throughout the United States. This event turned out to have been much more a Greenwich garden party than a tournament of any kind of credible national scope.
All four finalists are based in Greenwich, with both men finalists Scharff and McArthur being the two main head pros at the host venue and five of the seven other participating male pros in the Open draw being affiliated either with the other hosting Greenwich clubs or with private clubs in nearby Manhattan (the exceptions being Mark Price, currently a New Jerseyan but for years and until recently based at the Westchester Country Club in Rye, just two MetroNorth stops south of Greenwich, and Iago Cornes). The only team of the 11 in the Open neither of whose members are based in either New York or Greenwich was the St. Louis pairing of Cornes and Heidi Mather. Similarly, seven of the eight players comprising the four-team 40’s round-robin are either Greenwich/Rye-area-based or New York residents, as was also true of all but one of the 14 entrants in both the 50’s and B flights, each of which had seven teams in their respective draws. Altogether, more than 90% of the tournament participants live either in New York or within a 20-mile radius from Greenwich.
The play itself, especially in the weekend’s latter stages, was highly competitive and engaging. It was the second U. S. Mixed Doubles win for the Scharff/Grainger tandem in the past four years, and both times they lived dangerously, having faced multiple match-balls against them in 2010 in their semifinal against Narelle Krizek and Manek Mathur (who won this event a year ago) before rescuing that match and prevailing in the subsequent final against Ryan O’Connell and Emily Lungstrum. In the semis this past weekend, Scharff and Grainger had defeated Krizek and Price in straight sets while Pierrepont and McArthur did the same to Lynn Leong and Travis Judson,
Eric Vlcek and his wife Marie rallied from a 2-1 deficit to edge Dave Rosen and Lee Belknap, 18-16 in the fifth, in the last and deciding match of the 40’s round-robin, while top seeds Joyce Davenport and Charlie Parkhurst, byed to the semis of the 50’s by virtue of their No. 1 seeding, won each of their matches in straight sets, though they were pushed most of the way in the 15-14, 9 and 13 final by Will Carlin and Zerline Goodman. The B Division went to another husband/wife team, as Yvain Badan, a top-tier player on the SDA pro tour, and his wife Cynthia dropped the first two games of the final before surpassing Tom Whelan and Kendra Raine 15-13, 13 and 10.
Back To Main
