Pierrepont And Krizek Successfully Defend WDSA Wilson Cup Title 
by Rob Dinerman



Dateline July 28th --- Chastened by a disappointing 2011-12 season in which they fell short several times in the finals, top seeds Suzie Pierrepont and Narelle Krizek capped off an impressive 2012-13 comeback season by out-playing second seeds Dana Betts and Steph Hewitt Saturday afternoon in four games in the final round of the $20,000 second annual Wilson Cup, hosted by the Elmaleh/Stanton Center in Southampton, N. Y. In so doing, Pierrepont and Krizek successfully defended the title whose inaugural version they won a year ago, consolidated their pair of springtime final-round wins over Betts and Hewitt in Florida and Chicago and finished off on a triumphant note a season in which they won all four of the WDSA tour stops (in Philadelphia, John’s Island, Chicago and now Southampton) they entered.

   Stung by an opening-round first game which they lost 15-14 to Amanda Sobhy and Victoria Simmonds, Krizek (whose razor-sharp forehand reverse-corner accounted for many winners) and Pierrepont took the next three games 15-11, 10 and 10 to advance to the semis of this eight-team draw, where they then swept past Karen Jerome and Alex Clark, unexpected but convincing quarterfinal winners over Tarsh McElhinny (a finalist in this event last year with Hewitt) and Emily Lungstrum. In the bottom half, Hewitt and Betts defeated first Joyce Davenport and Heidi Mather and then the British-born but Philadelphia-based pair of Carrie Hastings and Tina Rix, who earlier had achieved their first-ever WDSA-tour win over Amy Milanek and Dawn Gray after several frustrating prior attempts.

    Other than a tin-filled third game in which they immediately dropped the first five points and lost 15-5, Krizek and Pierrepont were mostly in control throughout the final, with Krizek repeatedly skid-boasting Betts into the deep-left recesses of the court, thereby creating open space for the eventual champs to attack. Hewitt, whose sharp-shooting was one of the keys in the pair of 2011-12 victories that she and Meredeth Quick recorded over Pierrepont/Krizek in that season’s Philadelphia Open and Turner Cup finals, was retrieving well and error-free but unable to score enough winners to influence the match’s evolution, while Betts was under constant pressure and forced to yield front-court position to her left-wall opponent Pierrepont. The latter actually recorded her fifth WDSA tournament title of this season – her four with Krizek and the Hashim Khan Invitational in Denver, where she and Hewitt emerged victorious from their final with Krizek and her sister McElhinny. The WDSA seems poised for even better things this coming 2013-14 season, which will be the seventh since the tour was formed during the autumn of 2007.