Mike Ferreira And Baset Chaudhry Capture Racquet & Tennis Club Doubles Championship by Rob Dinerman photos Manek Mathur
Dateline June 10th
--- A club championship whose draw was deeper and stronger than many
national championships came to a rousing conclusion Thursday night when
former Trinity College stars Michael Ferreira and Baset Chaudhry earned
a 15-13, 14 and 14 victory over Whitten Morris and Chris Callis in the
final round of the Racquet & Tennis Club Doubles Championship in
mid-town Manhattan. It may well have been the most evenly-contested
straight-game match played anywhere this entire season, an air-sucking,
rubber-burning 75-minute punch-out that featured relentlessly crackling
pace and an extraordinary display of athleticism on the part of all
four participants. There never was more than a three-point spread (and
only one or two of those) in any game, and all three games seesawed to
13-all before in each case Ferreira and Chaudhry rose superior, albeit
by the barest of margins, in the final few frantic points.
Callis and Ferreira, frequent partners on the SDA pro doubles tour this
past season, during which they won a tour stop in Germantown and
reached the final of the prestigious David Johnson Memorial tournament
in Brooklyn, had their own intriguing turf war on the left wall, as did
Morris and Chaudhry, winners of the 2013 Silver Racquet Invitational at
this same venue, on the right, but the most torrid exchanges were the
cross-court battles, in which the two right-wallers appeared to be
hitting with increasing ferocity from one swing to the next and the
left-wallers staunchly stood their ground, repelling nearly everything
hit at them and delivering plenty of powerful ripostes of their own. At
13 apiece in the first game, Morris lashed what appeared to be a
winning rail down the right wall after Chaudhry had fallen to the
floor, but the latter was awarded a let when the referee determined
that he still potentially had a chance to return the shot. Reprieved by
this somewhat borderline ruling, Ferreira subsequently nailed a
forehand cross-court past Callis, then hit a hard serve from the right
box that Callis tried to play off the back wall, only to have it
instead dead-nick behind him and roll out unplayable.
Callis and Morris then rallied from 10-7 down in the second to
eventually get to double-game-ball when at 13-all Morris knifed a
backhand roll-corner off the back wall that Chaudhry never saw coming
--- but at that juncture, Callis tinned first a backhand reverse-corner
and then a forehand reverse-corner, following which Ferreira and
Chaudhry quickly took the first three points of the third game, as
Callis and Morris seemed deflated at the manner in which their
chance at evening the match had cruelly slipped away. But whatever
letdown they may have been suffering proved only momentary, as they
then dashed off a four-point spurt to briefly take the lead in the
third game, which, like the two that had preceded it, almost inevitably
became deadlocked at 13-all. Ironically for a match heretofore
characterized by lengthy all-court rallies and remarkably few unforced
errors, the last three points were short and metallic --- first Morris
tinned a backhand roll-corner, then Ferreira did the same when he tried
to bury a shallow forehand rail, setting up a simultaneous-game-ball
that was swiftly resolved when Morris, who had been the most
mistake-free of the four players, powered a backhand drive at mid-court
that rang loudly off the tell-tale, sealing the outcome and concluding
a highly entertaining evening of top-tier doubles squash.
