DailySquashReport.com

Turner And Wilson Cups Cap Off Dynamic 2012 WDSA Campaign
by Rob Dinerman

Dateline August 7th  --- The Women’s Doubles Squash Association (WDSA) completed its 2011-12 tour on the second weekend in July at the inaugural Wilson Cup in Southampton with an exciting five-game (13-16 15-8 18-17 11-15 15-11) victory by Narelle Krizek and Suzie Pierrepont over Steph Hewitt and Natarsha McElhinny whose seesawing character and tiebreaker-defined exposition constituted a microcosm for the entire season. All of the final rounds of the seven tournaments on the tour schedule --- the six ranking events (sequentially in Philadelphia, Denver, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles and Southampton) plus the U. S. National Doubles in Rye --- had at least one overtime session and all but one went to at least a fourth game. With those hotly-contested top-tier battles occurring at the end of a tournament (no fewer than nine different players advanced to at least one ranking tournament final), a number of talented new teams establishing themselves in the opening few rounds and the emergence as well of several new sponsors and first-time sites, the WDSA seems to be in its strongest position ever at the conclusion of this, the fifth competitive season of its existence.

    Undoubtedly the most salient theme of this past season was the rise of partners Meredeth Quick and Steph Hewitt to the very top of the charts after several years of being unable to break through against either the Pierrepont/Krizek or Amanda Sobhy/Natalie Grainger tandems, against whom they had gone a combined zero for five during that time. Four of those defeats, including three finals, had come at the hands of Pierrepont and Krizek, a historical backdrop that made the season-opening final at the Philadelphia Country Club this past October --- in which Quick and Hewitt, who had to first repel a stiff and route-going quarterfinal challenge from the young British pairing of Tina Rix and Carrie Hastings, defeated Pierrepont and Krizek 18-17 15-7 15-13 ---- both an important psychological breakthrough and, as it turned out, the launch-pad to a dream season featuring subsequent tournament wins at the U. S. Nationals, where they eked out a 16-15 fourth-game final over defending champs Krizek and her older sister McElhinny; Chicago, where after a five-game semifinal (including a 16-15 first game) with Pierrepont and Hastings they out-played Dana Betts and Emily Lungstrum in four; and, most importantly, the Turner Cup in early May in New York.

     There, and on the same low-ceilinged University Club Of New York turf where Krizek and Pierrepont had first thrashed them in the 2009 Turner Cup final and then subdued them a few months later in the Players Championship final as well, Quick and Hewitt overcame a pair of late-game three-point deficits (trailing 7-10 and later love-three in the best-of-nine tiebreaker) and weathered a double-game-ball-against to take that crucial opening frame 18-17 (on a nick-finding Quick backhand three-wall followed by a Pierrepont top-of-the-tin), spurring an eventual and totally convincing triumph in which they broke away in the close-out fourth game with a five-point run from 6-5 to 11-5 that sealed the 18-17 15-9 10-15 15-7 outcome. Hewitt also teamed with Betts to win the late-March Hashim Khan Invitational, with tiebreakers again playing an important role in their 11-15 18-16 18-17 (on a shallow Hewitt cross-court winner) 15-7 final-round win over McElhinny and Krizek.

   For all they had accomplished leading into the early spring, it wasn’t until the Turner Cup final that Hewitt and Quick truly singularized themselves, both statistically (in thereby clinching the No. 1 end-of-season team ranking on the WDSA computer) and, perhaps more importantly, in the public perception, as the best women’s doubles team in the land. Notwithstanding their setback at the inaugural Philadelphia Open seven months earlier, Pierrepont and Krizek (who one week earlier had opposed each other in the U. S. Mixed Doubles final, with Krizek and Manek Mathur winning out over Pierrepont and Greg McArthur) entered the Turner Cup event, the most lucrative stop on the schedule with its $30,000 purse, as winners of five of the seven tournaments that they had entered. Though there was a healthy amount of respect for what Quick and Hewitt had accomplished to that point of the season, the prevailing sentiment was that they had caught their rivals on an “off” day back in the autumn and that at their best Pierrepont and Krizek had too much firepower for any team on the tour, Quick/Hewitt included, to withstand. This view, especially current in light of the extraordinary win that Krizek and Pierrepont had engineered over Tim Wyant and reigning U. S. singles champion Julian Illingworth en route to the semis of a high-end MEN’s Open tourney in March, had been further accentuated when they had held Betts and Lungstrum to eight combined points in the first two games of a very quiet Mother’s Day Sunday afternoon semifinal the day before the final. In that same round, Quick and Hewitt had also won in three games over McElhinny and Seanna Keating (interestingly in light of the occasion, five of the eight players that day are parents, including at least one on each team), but, while Quick and Hewitt had been solid and efficient, Pierrepont and Krizek had been dominant and overwhelming.

   However, when, as noted, those two late-first-game leads slipped away from the latter pairing, Quick and Hewitt grew in confidence, as each came up with the best performance of her doubles career. Quick, whose game has always been premised on her movement and depth, has now added impressive shot-making skills and, more significantly, a willingness to LOOK for the front-court shot (especially her straight-drop and reverse-corner) that had been absent in prior years. This more aggressive approach contributed many additional points to her team’s total, while Hewitt’s decision to play more singles practice games and to schedule more of her doubles practices with some of the better men players in Toronto have both improved her fitness level and enabled her to better cope with the high pace that has hurt her in the past, and even to dish out some of her own. The fact that this past year was their third as partners has created a degree of team chemistry that visibly benefited them as well. The peaks all met on that May 14th Monday evening in mid-town Manhattan, where in the same venue in which their aspirations have been dashed multiple times in the past, Quick and Hewitt displaced their long-time nemeses, silenced the doubters and firmly entrenched themselves as the No. 1 WDSA team for the 2011-12 campaign.

   It is to her enduring credit that Krizek responded to this disappointing set of results by capturing each of the two remaining tournaments. First she and McElhinny rallied from two games to one down to overtake Amanda Sobhy and Latasha Khan 15-9 14-15 12-15 15-10 15-9 at the Jonathan Club in the final of the Crescent Los Angeles Open, and then, as referenced, she and Pierrepont out-lasted Hewitt (whose regular partner Quick was in Qatar coaching the American junior girls at the World Junior Championships in Doha) and McElhinny in the final of the Wilson Cup, a first-time tourney open to the top 16 available ranked players. No doubt a major question coming into the 2012-13 tour will be to see whether Pierrepont, who was recently named the interim Executive Director of the WSA women’s pro singles tour, where she was ranked in the top 30 a few years ago, and Krizek can build upon their season-ending accomplishment in Southampton and regain the No. 1 ranking that they had held in recent years.

  Also among the top tier of WDSA teams are Betts (who also partnered former WDSA star Jess DiMauro to the Canadian National Doubles title, defeating defending champs Hewitt and Keating in the final) and Lungstrum, frequent semifinalists during the past few seasons; Sobhy and Khan, Los Angeles Open finalists each of the past two years; and the steady veteran Philadelphians and longtime partners Dawn Gray and Amy Milanek. Karen Jerome and 2002 Dartmouth captain Sarah West won main-draw matches in all three of the tournaments they entered this past season, those being the Turner Cup, Los Angeles Open and Wilson Cup, and are clearly a twosome to watch next season. So is another first-year duo, namely Shirin Kaufman and Victoria Simmonds, who played so well against former mid-2000’s Trinity College teammates Fernanda Rocha (winner of the Mass State Women’s and Mixed Doubles titles in May with Hope Crosier and Dan Roberts respectively) and Larissa Stephenson in a Turner Cup round-of-16 match that was finally resolved by a Stephenson cross-drop winner on simultaneous-match-ball. Two other recently-formed units, Rix/Hastings and Torontonians Marci Sier and Adriana DiMauro, also clashed in a Turner Cup first-round marathon whose 6-15 15-16 15-13 17-15 15-9 stat line fully conveys how closely matched these pairings are, and (in light of the Rix/Hastings subsequent advance to the semis of the Wilson Cup) how capable both teams are of becoming important factors in next year’s tour. And McElhinny, another former WSA top-30, was a three-time finalist this past season who reached at least the semis of every tournament she entered, unflappably teaming up with several different partners along the way and playing both walls at one time or another.

   As has been the case throughout its half-decade tenure, the WDSA was supported by a number of enthusiastic sponsors. These include Morgan Stanley Private Wealth Management, RBC Wealth Management-The Elmore DeRose Group, Saratoga Partners, Harrow Sports, Crescent Capital Group, and Talmadge LLC. With their continued involvement, the addition of several new sites this coming autumn, and the extraordinary strength and depth of the player group, the WDSA seems well positioned for continued expansion in 2012-13 and beyond.