Recap Of The WDSA Women’s Pro Doubles Season: Narelle Krizek And Suzie Pierrepont Are The Top Team in 2014 by Rob Dinerman Dateline August 11th
--- The 2013-14 WDSA pro women’s doubles season featured eight
sanctioned ranking tournaments (including first-time stops in
Cincinnati and St. Louis), two invitationals, several exhibitions, a
slew of events in the northeastern corridor, the Midwest and all the
way out to the west coast, the presence of several young new faces in
the finals --- and two very familiar figures atop the rankings as Suzie
Pierrepont and Narelle Krizek won all four of the tournaments (the
inaugural Cincinnati Open, the U. S. Open, the John’s Island Open and
the Turner Cup) in which they partnered up and clinched the No. 1 team
ranking for the fourth time in the past five years. They have now won
13 WDSA sanctioned tournaments overall, the most of any team in the
seven-year history of the Association, and have taken the last nine
events which they entered dating back to their loss in the 2012 Turner
Cup final at the hands of Meredeth Quick and Steph Hewitt, whom
Pierrepont and Krizek conquered both times they played this past
season, namely in the finals of the John’s Island Open and the Turner
Cup.
In
addition to this quartet of Pierrepont/Krizek tournament wins as
teammates this past season, Krizek also paired with Hewitt to take the
U. S. National Doubles in New York and with her sister Tarsh McElhinny
to capture the tournament in St. Louis, where they won the final in
five games over Quick/Hewitt, while Pierrepont prevailed with Dana
Betts at the late-autumn Los Angeles Open and with Hewitt at the
mid-March Hashim Khan Open in Denver, also partnering the young Trinity
College alumna Tehani Guruge to the final of the non-ranking mid-July
season-ending Wilson Cup, there to lose to Quick and Hewitt. Guruge was
joined in the list of first-time finalists by the Philadelphia-based
duo of Alex Clark and Amy Gross, a co-captain of Yale’s 2006 team that
won three straight Howe Cups emblematic of the national team
championship. This first-time pairing authored the most surprising
result of the entire season in the U. S. Open at the Philadelphia
Country Club on a snowy weekend in early December when, after first
having to qualify into the main draw, they then shocked second seeds
(and Cincinnati Open finalists) Hewitt and McElhinny in five games and
followed this up with a 15-12 in the fourth semifinal win over Victoria
Simmonds and Heidi Mather (themselves quarterfinal winners over third
seeds Carrie Hastings and Tina Rix) that ended when Gross successfully
went for broke on a forehand reverse-corner that barely stayed above
the tin.
When the
tour resumed in St. Louis following a mid-winter hiatus, 2011 U. S.
National Doubles champs Krizek and McElhinny rallied from two-love down
to overtake Quick (who had missed the early-season tournaments due to a
shoulder injury) and Hewitt, each of whom hit a tin from 13-all in the
airtight fourth game, then fell too far behind to catch up in the 15-10
fifth. At the next stop in Denver, eventual winners Hewitt and
Pierrepont were buried 15-5 in the first game of their semi with recent
William White Invitational titlists Kelsey Engman and Gina Stoker (yet
another youthful first-year duo) but recovered to take six straight
games, the first three over Engman/Stoker and then the next three over
Quick and Dana Betts in the final. At the U.S. National Doubles in New
York held the following weekend, Krizek and Hewitt powered through in
straight sets over Stoker and Engman, who were pre-final victors over
first Natalie Grainger and Sabrina Sobhy (the U. S. National singles
champs in 2013 and 2014 respectively) and then second seeds Betts and
Jess DiMauro. One month later, at the second annual John’s Island Open
in Florida late April, Krizek and Pierrepont let a 14-7 second-game
lead get away to make it one game apiece but then were able to impose
their superior weaponry in the end stretches of both the third game
(eight straight points from 7-all) and the close-out fourth (three
straight points from 12-all) of their final with Quick and Hewitt.
After the
early-May METROsquash Open at the Onwentsia Club in suburban Chicago
(which arguably has the best women’s doubles program of any club in the
country under its head pro Aidan Harrison), in which Hewitt and
McElhinny fully redeemed their sub-par showing five months earlier in
Philadelphia by maintaining control and playing classic positional
doubles throughout their three-game final with Simmonds and Mather, the
tour culminated with its flagship event, the Turner Cup, at the
Westchester Country Club in Rye, the first time that this tourney has
ever been held outside of Manhattan. Quick and Hewitt dashed off a
match-closing 13-1 run to close out their semifinal with Betts and
Clark, seemingly leaving them well-positioned for their final with
Pierrepont and Krizek (semis winners over Karen Jerome and McElhinny)
in what was clearly a summit between the two best teams on the
circuit. The high-quality four-game final that ensued was defined
by a pair of extended mid-game spurts (from 3-4 to 10-4 in the third
game and from 5-4 to 10-4 in the fourth) through which Krizek and
Pierrepont effectively clinched the outcome.
In
keeping with its stated mission, the WDSA tour also supported charities
at virtually every site throughout the season --- the Cincinnati Open,
held at the Cincinnati Country Club, provided valuable seed money for
the Cincinnati Squash Academy, an inner-city youth-enrichment
organization which was launched this past spring; Krizek, McElhinny and
Pierrepont participated in October in the Anschutz Cup event benefiting
Mile High Squash and hosted by the Denver Athletic Club, whose Hashim
Khan Open tourney five months later also supported Mile High Squash;
the Los Angeles Open benefited LA Angels; the Turner Cup benefited
Squash Haven in New Haven; the METROsquash Open was named in honor of
the youth-enrichment organization in Chicago; the Wilson Cup benefited
Southampton Youth Services; and the U. S. Open helped generate funds to
support the Urban Doubles, held in Denver and won by CitySquash in the
Bronx.
The tour
was once again enthusiastically welcomed by such repeat host clubs as
the Jonathan Club (Los Angeles), the John’s Island Club (Florida), the
Onwentsia Club (Chicago), the Denver Athletic Club (where Quick learned
the game as a youngster), the Elmaleh Stanton Squash Center
(Southampton) and the Philadelphia Country Club and Wilmington Country
Club. Major sponsors included Veronis Suhler Stevenson, Morgan Stanley
Private Wealth Management, RBC Wealth Management DeRose Group, Harrow
Sports, Chroma Commercial Capital, John’s Island Real Estate and
Patricia Han.
Just as
happened this past season, the WDSA tour is planning to add several new
sites in 2014-15, with an accompanying increase in prize money. The
tour has been gradually adding venues, sponsors and players over the
past several years, an encouraging trend that augurs well for the
future of women’s professional doubles in the United States.
