Massachusetts
States Open Doubles Update: Amanda Sobhy And Fernanda Rocha Record
Upset Win Over Sandy Tierney And Pat
Malloy by Rob Dinerman Dateline April 5th
--- Trailing 2-0, 12-8, and later down match-ball in the fourth game,
first-time partners Amanda Sobhy and Fernanda Rocha rallied to a
riveting 10-15, 14-15, 15-12, 15-14, 15-9 victory over third seeds
Sandy Tierney and Pat Malloy this past Thursday afternoon at the
University Club of Boston in the round-of-16 of the 2015 Massachusetts
States Open Doubles Championship. Sobhy, a Harvard senior, and Rocha, a
squash pro at the host club, will now face the winner of a match early
this coming week pitting Graham Bassett and Jonathan Hyett against Amrit Kanwal and his son, Deven.
In other scheduled quarterfinal match-ups, second seeds
Doug Lifford and Max Montgelas, finalists in this tourney a year ago,
will take on Belmont Hill coach Bob Brownell and his precocious son
Timmy, the No. 1 ranked U. S. junior, and former Trinity College
teammates Reg Schonborn and Simba Muhwati, straight-game round-of-16
winners over Rob Dinerman and J. P. Morais, will face Greg Zaff and
Andrew Slater, who have advanced to the quarterfinal juncture of this
24-team event without hitting a ball, having received walkover wins
over first William Keravuori/Morgan Poor and then 2013 Mass States
finalists Chris Spahr (who had to withdraw due to plantar fasciitis)
and his talented Dartmouth-bound son Carson. Brandon McLaughlin,
captain of the 2014 Harvard team that won the Potter Cup, and his
partner Ryan Mullaney have also advanced to the quarterfinals and are
awaiting the winner of an upcoming match between the two-time defending
champion Roberts brothers, Dan and John, and their opponents, Josh
Horwitz and Mary McKee.
In recent weeks Sobhy, the reigning World Doubles champion
with Natalie Grainger, has won a pair of significant national singles
titles, namely the Intercollegiate Individual championship (for the
fourth time) and the U. S. Nationals, while Rocha has steadily been
climbing up the WDSA women’s pro doubles tour rankings. Still, no one
expected their adventurous entry into this high-quality men’s open
regional championship to result in a win of this dimension over
two-time (2007 and 2008) Mass States champions Tierney and Malloy, who
were finalists in this event as recently as 2012, especially in light
of Tierney’s title-taking performances in the U. S. Century Doubles in
mid-February with Steve Scharff and in the U. S. National Doubles
60-and-over flight with Sean McDonough just four days before the match
with Sobhy and Rocha, and especially after Tierney/Malloy took a
two-games-to-love lead.
But as the match wore on, Sobhy’s winner count ---
mostly on tight reverse-corners and several times when she scorched
drives through the middle --- increased during each succeeding game,
and she and Rocha ran off seven straight points to close out the third
game and narrowly escaped with the 15-14 fourth on a Tierney
straight-drop that in all likelihood would have been a match-ending
winner had it not ticked the top of the tin. With the momentum they
acquired through this fortuitous turn, and by this time having gained
the psychological edge with their pair of consecutive end-game
successes, Rocha and Sobhy battled their vaunted adversaries through 18
evenly divided points in the fifth game and then ran off the final
six-straight points, emphatically closing it out on the last of a host
of knifed forehand reverse-corner winners off Sobhy’s lethal racquet as
the full gallery loudly applauded in admiration.
This tournament, affectionately referred to by New England
denizens simply as “The States,” is the culmination of the doubles
season and by far the most subscribed to regional doubles competition
of any in the country. It is a self-scheduling event, featuring NINE
separate categories (Men’s, Women’s and Mixed Doubles Opens, along with
a Men’s 50, a Men’s 60, a Parent-Child, a Siblings, and B and C
flights), which begins in early March and progresses at a rate of
approximately one round every two weeks, with all finals scheduled to
be playing in the afternoon and evening of May 4th. There are a total
of 179 entered teams overall (including 43 in the B’s and 39 in the
C’s) and no flight has fewer than eight entries.
