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Turner Cup Quarters Report: First-Time Partners Keating And McElhinny Topple Fourth Seed To Reach Semis   
by Rob Dinerman, for DailySquashReport.com

Dateline May 12th, 2012 --- Chastened by their failure to convert a substantial fourth-game lead and the three match-balls that slipped from their grasp, first-time partners and former WSA singles players Seanna Keating and Natarsha McElhinny exploded on a 13-2 match-closing run and earned their way into the semifinals of the $30,000 Turner Cup by defeating fourth seeds Dawn Gray and Amy Milanek 5-15 15-11 15-10 16-17 15-5 this afternoon at the New York Athletic Club in the only quarterfinal match to exceed the three-game minimum and the only match as well to be won by an unseeded team. In so doing, Keating and McElhinny earned the right to face top seeds and recently-crowned U. S. National Doubles champions Meredeth Quick and Steph Hewitt, quarterfinal winners over Karen Jerome and Sarah West, Sunday afternoon in the semis, while the bottom half has devolved into a match pitting Narelle Krizek and Suzie Pierrepont, who have reached both prior Turner Cup finals (winning the inaugural event and losing to Natalie Grainger and Amanda Sobhy last season) against Dana Betts and Emily Lungstrum, finalists last month at a WDSA pro women's doubles tour stop in Chicago.

   The Keating/McElhinny victory came only after 85 minutes of often undulating action that featured wild momentum swings in the final two games. After recovering from their slow start and out-playing their opponents (who have been teammates for a number of years) by a small but definite margin throughout the second and third games and to a 9-4 advantage in the fourth, Keating and McElhinny were victimized by a seven-point Gray/Milanek run to 11-9 during which the latter tandem cut out the errors that had been plaguing them and came up with perhaps their best sustained output of the match. Milanek scored on a tight reverse-corner and with a few balls she slashed at unpredictable angles, while Gray (whose left-wall battles with Keating were omnipresent and sensational) nailed some reverse-corner volleys as well. But just as it appeared at 12-10 that they had successfully wrested the game away, Keating pulled off a perfectly-placed backhand Philadelphia boast (ironic for the way it victimized a pair of lifetime Philadelphians) that launched a four-point surge that put her and McElhinny at 14-12, double-match-ball. McElhinny then barely tinned what almost certainly would have been a match-ending reverse-corner and Gray hit a shallow rail that Keating could not retrieve. Eschewing a "no-set" call that would have given them a third match-ball opportunity, Keating and McElhinny won two of the next four points in the best-of-five tiebreaker, leading to a simultaneous-game-ball that was decided when Gray powered a drive directly into Keating's body that skipped through her to force a fifth game, the first two points of which were accounted for by a pair of Milanek front-court winners (a tight reverse-corner and a shallow roll-corner).

   McElhinny then hit a rail just above the tin to get her team on the scoreboard, following which Gray tinned a reverse-corner (2-all now) and Milanek (whose bold creativity, especially with her fearless skid-boasts and unconventional angles with her mid-court attacks, set the tone for many of the points developed throughout the match) hit a serve-return winner for 3-2. At that juncture the game appeared fated to seesaw evenly along to an airtight conclusion, as the teams had played themselves to a virtual standstill in which all four protagonists at one time or another had had their moments. No one could have foreseen the manner in which instead Keating and McElhinny would commandeer the action from that point onward. Keating relentlessly pounded her drives and cross-courts, getting remarkable leverage given how high she was having to reach over her head on many of her swings), while McElhinny glided along the right wall and at one stage in the middle of her team's back-breaking closing spurt conjuring up four consecutive winners, including a delicate cross-drop and a reverse from behind Milanek that died before she could react. By the end, and especially after a completely unexpected inside-out forehand roll-corner winner from off the back wall by Keating that made the score 12-5, the Philly pair were in full retreat, as witness the trio of tins that ensued from there. An anticlimactic ending to what was nevertheless a praiseworthy effort overall by both teams.

  The remaining matches, as noted, were much more straightforward. Carrie Hastings and Tiny Rix, perhaps due at least in part to the rally from two games to love down that they were forced to stage on Friday against Canadians Adrianna DiMauro and Marci Sier, came up flat and lacking in energy in their match with Betts and Lungstrum; Quick and Hewitt had a competitive but convincing win over Jerome and West; and Pierrepont and Krizek had too many weapons for former mid-2000's Trinity College teammates Larissa Stephenson and Fernanda Rocha, who in their round-of-16 match had won, 18-17 in the fifth, over Shireen Kaufman and Victoria Simmonds. The tournament now moves for the final two rounds to the University Club of New York, with the semifinals set for tomorrow afternoon and the final on Monday evening.

Quarterfinal Recap:

Meredeth Quick/Steph Hewitt d. Karen Jerome/Sarah West, 15-13, 10 and 13

Seanna Keating/Natarsha McElhinny d. Dawn Gray/Amy Milanek, 5-15 15-11 15-10 16-17 15-5

Dana Betts/Emily Lungstrum d. Tina Rix/Carrie Hastings, 15-10, 8 and 11

Suzie Pierrepont/Narelle Krizek d. Larissa Stephenson/Fernanda Rocha, 15-7, 7 and 8

DRAW