A Retrospective Look At The 2024 Maryland Club Open

Posted adminPosted in 2024, News

By Rob Dinerman

On the first weekend of October 2024 the Maryland Club Open (MCO) returned to the Squash Doubles Association (SDA) schedule after a five-year hiatus due to the Covid pandemic that shut the SDA tour down for nearly two years, followed by Baltimore’s hosting of the 2023 Can-Am competition — and a memorable and triumphant return it was! This latter phenomenon is fully in keeping with an MCO tradition throughout its prior 16 editions of playing host to a major upset, an eleventh-hour comeback, an intriguing back-story or a landscape-changing result — sometimes (as in 2024) all four! For the first time in the history of this tournament — whose inaugural holding took place more than two decades earlier in October 2003 — there was a women’s pro event (possibly related to the club itself having gone co-ed in 2021, 167 years after its founding as a men’s-only club in 1857), as well as a men’s Challenger draw.

The foremost protagonist in this past autumn’s Charm City drama was the first-time pairing of John White, a former PSA No. 1 who was entering his 15th year as the Head Men’s and Women’s Squash Coach at Drexel University, and David Letourneau, the 2011 recipient of the Skillman Cup, the most prestigious award given to a men’s college squash player. This pair hadn’t even initially entered the event as partners, but they wound up engineering the biggest match-ball-saving comeback of the entire 2024-25 season en route to the winner’s circle! Their only previous time on a doubles court together had been when they competed against each other in a Philadelphia-area A League match one year earlier — during which White and Gina Stoker, representing the Cynwyd Club, out-played Wilmington Country Club torch-bearers Letourneau and former Cornell player Owen Butler — and the only reason that White and Letourneau wound up as partners in Baltimore was that Letourneau’s original partner, Josh Hughes, was forced by a scheduling conflict to withdraw.

AN ABSOLUTE CLASSIC

Notwithstanding the sparseness of their prior exposure to each other, White and Letourneau straight-gamed Matt Jenson and Thomas Brinkman in their opening-round quarterfinal match, while Ashley Davies/Lockie Munro and Henry Parkhurst/Carter Robitaille were doing the same to Santiago Orozco/Nathan Snyder and Maryland Club members Dave Rosen/Taylor Tutrone respectively. In the remaining quarterfinal Sam Fenwick and Chris Longman prevailed in four games against Anderson Good and the host club’s Head Teaching Professional Mark Price. The top-half semifinal saw Davies and Munro defeat Parkhurst and Robitaille by a competitive but convincing 15-10, 9 and 13 score (when Davies dead-rolled a forehand three-wall on the final exchange), but the balancing Letourneau/White vs. Fenwick/Longman semi turned out to be an absolute classic.

In each of the first three games the team that eventually won did so after trailing 14-13. Fenwick accounted for the end of the first game’s pair of winners with a sharply-angled backhand roll-corner followed by a blast right at White (who was stuck close to the front wall) that he couldn’t fend off. At 13-14 in the second game, Longman nailed a forehand overhead (perhaps his favorite shot) into the front-left nick, following which his partner Fenwick hit a backhand roll-corner that Letourneau dived towards the front wall for but was unable to retrieve. Now leading two games to love, Fenwick and Longman got to 14-13 (double-match-ball) when Fenwick lashed a forehand cross-court at Letourneau, who tinned his attempted return. But on the ensuing exchange, Letourneau circled around an over-hit Longman cross-court and carved a daring forehand drop-shot winner to the front-right that barely eluded Longman’s racquet. At 14-all, with Fenwick sprawled on the ground after an “emergency” retrieval, Letourneau hammered a forehand cross-court into the open space to salvage that game and keep his team in the match.

Perhaps a bit deflated by their inability to finish off the third game, Fenwick and Longman started the fourth slowly, falling behind 9-3. They then staged a praiseworthy rally that closed the gap to 10-8, but at that juncture Letourneau/White won the last five points of that game —on a tinned Fenwick reverse-corner, a stroke call against Longman, a well-placed Letourneau cross-court winner, a great get-and-re-drop by White and a Letourneau backhand drive that died at the back wall — and the first three points of the fifth game as well. However, at that juncture, Fenwick and Longman righted themselves by winning 13 of the next 18 points. The second-last of those was an all-court, 51-hit rally that ended when White, who had an open ball up front (after Fenwick had been forced to hit the ball into the back wall in order to return it), smoked a forehand cross-court into the tin. Losing such a crucial point in that fashion had to have been especially demoralizing (indeed both White and Letourneau dropped their racquets in dismay), and even more so when Fenwick then followed up with a backhand drop-shot winner that put his team ahead 13-8.

14-9

Letourneau then hit a winner past Fenwick but a stroke call against White along the right wall gave Fenwick/Longman six match-balls at 14-9. However, when Letourneau and White won each of the next two points almost immediately — on a Letourneau serve-return that clung too closely to the left wall for Fenwick to scrape it back, followed by a Letourneau backhand straight-drop winner very early in the following point — the score had swiftly closed to 11-14. Letourneau and White, both long-time veterans of the squash wars, seized that little bit of momentum with a pair of winners on the right wall by White (first on a shallow shot, then a drive to perfect length with Longman stuck on his left hip) sandwiching a Longman tin to tie the score at 14-all.  White bounced the ball twenty-five times before serving on simultaneous-match-ball. Two lets later on the match’s determinative exchange Fenwick’s attempt to drive a forehand cross-court past Letourneau — the same shot from the same spot on the court that he had successfully executed to get his team to double-match-ball in the third game — instead rang loudly off the tin, thereby ending the epic struggle 88 minutes (and four 15-14 games) after it began. Andrew Cordova, the host club’s longtime Racquets Director who has served as Tournament Chairman throughout the MCO’s existence, later called that match, for sheer effort and intensity, all combined with superb sportsmanship, the best he had ever seen.

The differing courses of the pair of men’s semis — Davies/Munro advancing to the final without losing a game, while the Letourneau/White pairing had been required to rally from two-games-to-love down and fend off a total of eight match-balls-against, including six in a row (neither of which latter pair of figures would be equaled throughout the remainder of the 2024-25 season) — would seem to have favored Davies and Munro. But Letourneau and White wended their way through a closely-contested first game (when White smashed a forehand cross-court that nicked in front of Davies at 14-12) and were for the most part in control throughout the 15-10, 15-8 remainder. The 51-year-old White, although weary from the lengthy semifinal and a little more than 20 years removed from the No. 1 PSA ranking he attained for two months in Spring 2004, was keeping his opponents deep and converting whenever he was presented with an open ball, constituting a perfect complement to Letourneau’s excellent reflex volleys and sharp angles.

They were joined as 2024 MCO champions by Gina Stoker and Nikki Todd in a women’s event that, like its men’s counterpart, had its most exciting and competitive match occur in the semifinal round when No. 1 seeds Kayley Leonard and Maria Elena Ubina, after splitting the first two games against Katie Tutrone and Suzie Pierrepont, won both the third and fourth 15-14. The third game’s simultaneous-game-ball point, which had an especially crucial feel to it, went on for 55 seconds and 27 hits — five of them Ubina forehand skid-boasts, an astonishing number for just one point — on the last of which the left-handed Leonard, whose winning volley one point earlier had brought the score to 14-all, angled off a forehand reverse-corner winner that even the fleet Tutrone, Leonard’s college teammate on Harvard’s national champion squads in 2015-16 and 2016-17, was unable to track down.

The fourth game, as noted, seesawed tensely all the way to the end stage as well. Trailing 12-11, Leonard and Ubina ran off the next three points — on shallow volley winners first from Ubina and then from Leonard, followed by a Pierrepont tin — but then Ubina misjudged a deep-right ball and Tutrone squeezed off a risky drop-shot winner to tie the score at 14-all. However, on the following exchange, a Pierrepont backhand caromed well off the left wall, enabling Leonard to back Tutrone far over to the middle and guide a drop shot for a clear winner to the wide-open front-left portion of the court. Leonard and Ubina had defeated Marie-Victoire Wickers and Taryn Clary 3-0 in their quarterfinal match, while Pierrepont and Tutrone had won in four games over Tina Rix and Fernanda Rocha.

In the draw’s bottom half a highly anticipated quarterfinal match between the oldies-but-goodies Narelle Krizek/Steph Hewitt pairing and 2024 Boston SDA champs Line Hansen and her young Egyptian partner Jana Shiha — a 2024 SDA double-awards winner as both the Women’s Rookie of the Year and Most Improved Player — was prevented from happening when Shiha sustained a severe right-knee injury in a pro-am match earlier in the day that necessitated a major operation and sidelined her for the remainder of the season. Byed to the semis as a result of this unfortunate turn of events, Krizek and Hewitt, now 18 years removed from their run to the 2006 World Doubles title and more than a decade after capturing the 2014 U.S. National Doubles crown, played second seeds Stoker and Todd (first-round 3-0 winners over Ineta Hopton and Lauren Johnston) on even terms through the first half of the match, winning the second game 15-13 when Hewitt, who had earlier kept the point alive by racing over to the left wall, hit a nervy backhand cross-drop from fairly deep in the court that Todd didn’t see until it was too late.

COMPLETELY FITTING

But Todd then hit nine winners — mostly forehand reverse-corners but on some other shots as well, including one well-disguised lob when she caught both her opponents rushing forward expecting something short — in the 15-5 third game, and from 7-all in the fourth, a pair of Krizek tins were followed shortly by three consecutive Stoker winners, leading to an eventual 15-9 score-line. It was to be the final match of Krizek’s outstanding career — highlighted by eight U.S. National Open championships (four each in Women’s and Mixed Doubles) and three World Doubles crowns, exhibiting in the process a degree of longevity that can best be expressed by the fact that her last U.S. National Doubles/World Doubles title, the 2022 U.S. Women’s event, occurred a full 16 years after her first — prior to her retirement announcement in February 2025. It was completely fitting that her squash career ended in Baltimore, the same city where it all began 24 years earlier when she and her husband Rob Krizek were hired in 2000 as the Squash Pros at the Baltimore Country Club. Narelle Krizek had been inducted into the Maryland State Squash Racquets Association Hall of Fame in the same ceremony during which Cordova, the godfather to Krizek’s younger son Will, was similarly honored in 2011.

The key to Stoker/Todd’s 15-13, 11 and 11 final-round victory over Leonard and Ubina lay in their ability to conjure up game-deciding spurts during the stretch run of all three games. This was especially the case in the opening game, in which they trailed 13-12 but accepted a rare Leonard unforced error and then emerged triumphant from a 30-hit exchange that ended when Todd nailed a shallow forehand cross-court winner. She then sealed the game with an audacious forehand roll-corner from the deep-right, following which she and Stoker had a 10-2 run (from 4-8 to 14-10) that effectively decided the second game. During that prolonged rally their retrieving skills and constant defensive pressure elicited several Leonard/Ubina tins, all of them coming after long points. Similarly in the third game Stoker and Todd surged from 6-8 to 13-8 (seven straight points). Leonard and Ubina closed to 11-13, but Leonard then tinned a drop shot, following which Stoker slashed a backhand drive irretrievably down the left wall to clinch the outcome. The last point was one of many “scramble points” liberally sprinkled throughout all three games, nearly all of which (at least 75 percent) wound up in the Stoker/Todd column.

AN UNMATCHED DEGREE

To a degree unmatched by any of its 15 predecessors, themes that characterized the 2024 MCO continued to recur throughout the 2024-25 SDA campaign that followed. This was even true at the Maryland Club itself, which served as the headquarters for the early-March U.S. National Doubles, and during which Clinton Leeuw and Jaymie Haycocks staged a back-from-the dead comeback after trailing Steve Scharff and John Russell 2-0, 11-5 in the Men’s Open final that was eerily reminiscent of the Letourneau/White rally vs. Fenwick/Longman on the very same court five months earlier. The Letourneau/White and Leeuw/Haycocks comebacks were two of the seven occasions (an extremely high figure) this past season in which the eventual tournament champion surmounted a two-games-to-love deficit somewhere along the way. One of the other instances of the foregoing occurred in mid-May during the season’s final weekend at the Philadelphia Country Club Challenger, where Fenwick and Longman first won a pre-final match after trailing two games to love (in this case in their quarterfinal against Ricky Weisskopf and Richard Dodd) and then defeated White (this time partnered with Harvard Associate Head Coach Hameed Ahmed) in the final — something very close to a script-flipping mirror image of what had befallen Fenwick and Longman seven months earlier in Baltimore.

Stoker and Todd were able to duplicate their MCO final-round victory over Leonard/Ubina when the two teams had a rematch one month later in the Heights Casino Open final in Brooklyn, and these four players accounted for most of the season’s tournament wins and postseason awards. Leonard and Ubina, by reaching six finals — and winning three of them, namely the Philadelphia Open, Briggs Cup and Boston — and sustaining only one pre-finals loss, attained the No. 1 end-of-season women’s team ranking for the fourth consecutive year and repeated as recipients of the SDA Women’s Team of the Year Award. In addition to reaching five finals (and winning three of them) with her partners Todd and Lauren West, Stoker — who finished first in the SDA Women’s Player of the Year voting — annexed both the U.S. National Doubles with West and the U.S. National Mixed Doubles (for the third time in four years) with White, while Todd and Jamie Minerson co-authored perhaps the most noteworthy result of the entire women’s season with their run to the North American Open Doubles crown. Todd, who received the SDA Women’s Sportsmanship Award, augmented her trio of SDA titles (with Stoker in both Maryland and Brooklyn and with Minerson in Greenwich) by partnering Jackie Moss to the Canadian National Doubles title, and, by playing the left wall with Minerson, Todd became the only player, man or woman, to win SDA events in 2024-25 playing both walls.

Perhaps the biggest SDA Award winner of all was the MCO itself, which was voted both Women’s Tournament of the Year and Men’s Challenger Tournament of the Year, a laudable double-complement to the SDA Tournament of the Year Awards that the MCO had won on a record four previous occasions — in 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2018. The 2024 edition of the MCO was on multiple fronts a significant addition to the tournament’s rich and decorated history, and, with the magnificence of the host club’s squash facility — the only one in the United States that features three doubles courts — and the omnipresent enthusiasm and financial support of its squash-playing membership, there is every reason to look forward with great anticipation to the 2025 MCO and beyond.

 

Rob Dinerman has been the Official Writer for the Maryland Club Open Program in every year of the tournament’s existence (beginning with the inaugural edition in 2003) and wrote A History Of The U.S. National Doubles In Baltimore as the feature piece in the Program for the U.S. National Doubles in 2010, when it was held in Baltimore. He has authored 18 books about squash, all of which are arrayed on the home page of the robdinerman.com website. Dinerman’s most recent squash book, A Century Of Champions: 100 Years Of College Squash, 1923-2023, was released in March 2024, and his forthcoming A History Of The Kellner Cup is scheduled to be published later this season.

A History Of The Maryland Club Open – By Rob Dinerman

Posted adminPosted in 2024, News

A WELCOME RETURN

This weekend will mark the welcome return of the Maryland Club Open (MCO) to the professional doubles schedule after a five-year hiatus largely due to the Covid pandemic and the hosting of the Can-Am Cup one year ago. Virtually every one of this tournament’s preceding 15 editions — the fifth-most of any tour stop, exceeded by only the Johnson Memorial, the North American Open, the Big Apple Open and the Boston Pro-Am — has been characterized by a major upset, the emergence of a contending team and/or a result that changes the dynamics of the tour — sometimes all three!

This phenomenon began with the very first main-draw match of the inaugural 2003 event on Halloween night when Chris Deratnay and Alex Pavulans pulled off a shocking upset victory over the fearsome Blair Horler/Clive Leach duo. Horler and Leach had been the tour’s hottest team during the last half of the 2002-03 season, winning the Canadian Pro (ending a Gary Waite/Damien Mudge 24-tournament, 76-match undefeated streak), the Creek Challenge Cup and, most importantly the Kellner Cup, where they again beat Waite and Mudge, 15-13 in the fifth, after trailing two games to love. They therefore barged into Baltimore for the season-opening MCO as a clear threat to displace Waite and Mudge from the No. 1 ranking and a prohibitive favorite to beat Deratnay and Pavulans, who had to win two tough qualifying matches just to make it into the main draw.

But once that match began (on a tin-defying forehand reverse-corner by Pavulans that caught Leach flat-footed on the very first point), Deratnay and Pavulans raced off to an excellent start and never looked back. Horler and Leach had a lead late in the third game, which came down to a simultaneous-game-ball that ended abruptly when Horler, the tour’s hardest hitter, blazed a backhand drive that would have been a clear winner (since Deratnay was out of position) had the ball not hit the top of the tin with such force that it ricocheted all the way into the gallery. Stunned by this unforeseen reversal, Horler and Leach stumbled through the autumn tournaments that followed and had their partnership end just a few months later when Horler sustained a serious injury to his right knee from which he never fully recovered.

 

THREE-PEAT

Pavulans and Deratnay then lost in the semis to second seeds Willie Hosey and Michael Pirnak — who themselves barely averted a first-round ouster of their own when they survived a 15-13 fifth game against qualifiers Chris Walker and David Kay — and who lost the final to Waite and Mudge. The latter pair continued their dominance throughout the remainder of that season and emphatically the next, throughout which they went undefeated throughout the entire 2004-05 schedule for the third and final time. They then won the October 2005 edition as well to make it an MCO three-peat, in each case over a different final-round opponent. Viktor Berg and Josh McDonald, first-round losers against Jamie Bentley and Preston Quick in 2003, rebounded to reach the 2004 final and in 2005 Quick and Ben Gould, finalists five times as first-year partners one year earlier, fulfilled their No. 2 seeding by subduing debuting partners Walker and Viktor Berg in one semifinal while Mudge and Waite were doing the same to Leach and Pirnak in the other.

Although Quick and Gould lost the 2005 MCO final, they finally beat The Champs (in their 12th attempt, seven of them in finals, over a 13-month period) in the very next SDA tournament three weeks later — the Big Apple Open final — when Gould scorched a shallow forehand cross-court serve-return winner at 14-all in the close-out fourth game. Buoyed by this breakthrough, Gould and Quick came within a simultaneous-championship-point (a tinned Quick overhead volley) of duplicating that result one week later in Toronto and triumphed at tour stops in both Wilmington and Boston in January 2006. But these victories were followed by a springtime slump — in which they were unable to convert multiple-match-balls in pre-final losses at both the Creek Challenge Cup and the Kellner Cup — after which they mutually agreed to seek different partners for the 2006-07 season.

 

AN AURA OF UNPREDICTABILITY

Indeed they wound up opposing each other six months later in the final round of the 2006 MCO, following an intervening summer during which so many other members of the other top SDA teams switched partners that, entering the 2006-07 campaign, the two longest-tenured partnerships — other than Waite and Mudge, starting their eighth and last season together — were Walker and Berg (for whom, as noted, the 2005-06 season was their first as partners) and Leach and Pirnak, who had teamed up only five times in the Winter/Spring of 2005. This scenario imbued the 2006 MCO with an aura of unpredictability even before the first ball was hit that was fully borne out when Gould and his new partner Paul Price gave Mudge and Waite their first-ever MCO loss, a four-gamer keyed by a look-away Price forehand roll-corner winner at 14-all in the second game after Waite and Mudge had won the first. By then out-playing similarly first-time partners Quick and John Russell (upset semis winners over second seeds Berg and Walker) in the ensuing final, Price and Gould launched a 2006-07 season in which they won a tour-leading five ranking tournaments (including the Briggs Cup and North American Open, in each case with comeback final-round wins over Mudge and Waite after falling behind early), attained the No. 1 team ranking and embarked upon a four-year partnership in which they won 22 tournaments, one of which was the 2008 MCO, in which Price and Gould defeated Leach and Matt Jenson in a five-game semi that preceded a 3-1 final-round win over their 2006 final-round opponents Quick and Russell. That year as well, responding to the success that inner-city urban-education/squash organizations were having across the country, the MCO partnered with Baltimore SquashWise, providing further incentive for member support of the tournament and leading to a several-thousand-dollar donation to the organization.

In the 2007 MCO tournament in between the pair of 2006 and 2008 Price/Gould triumphs,  Price and Gould saw a two games to one final-round lead over new partners Leach and Walker dissolve into a five-game loss by the end of which Price and Gould took their frustration out on their respective racquets: Gould hurled his 40 feet to the front wall after his tin at 9-13 in the fifth game effectively sealed the outcome, while Price smashed his in the small alcove just outside the entrance to the exhibition doubles court — an action that was clearly audible in the gallery since the door at the back wall was still open — where it lay in shards for several hours before finally being swept up by a janitor. Although Mudge and his new partner Berg lost in the semifinal of that tournament to Walker and Leach, they would go on to have an extraordinary 2007-08 season, whose second half they would dominate by winning seven ISDA events in a run that culminated in a thrilling late-April Kellner Cup final against Price/Gould in which the No. 1 end-of-season team ranking was at stake, and in which Mudge and Berg, trailing two games to one, 12-9 in the fourth game and 13-12 in the fifth, won both games in overtime. Indeed, the 2007 MCO was the last time that neither Mudge/Berg nor Price/Gould won an ISDA full-ranking tournament for the remainder of that season and the two seasons that followed! That three-year span encompassed 34 such events, which were evenly split 17 apiece, with Price/Gould holding a narrow 9-8 edge in the 17 finals that were contested between those juggernauts during that time frame.

 

A SEISMIC SHIFT

There was no MCO in Autumn 2009 in deference to Charm City being named to host the 2010 U. S. National Doubles that spring (with the Maryland Club serving as Tournament Headquarters), and by the time the 2010-11 season began, the tour would undergo a seismic shift in the wake of the decision of Mudge and Gould to partner up for the first of what would turn out to be five and a half dominant seasons. Their debut performance occurred in the 2010 MCO and it got off to a slow start when they fell behind Walker and former PSA top-10 Mark Chaloner 1-0, 7-4. However they erased that second-game deficit and didn’t drop a single game for the remainder of that tournament (in which they beat Russell/Quick in the final), or a single match for the remainder of that season. Six of their 12 final-round wins that season were against either the Jenson/Leach or Walker/Chaloner pairings, both of whom, along with Mudge and Gould, competed in the 2011 MCO, which was held as a three-team round-robin, which Mudge and Gould won.

The 2010 and 2011 MCO events also had a Legends of Squash pro singles tournament featuring recently-retired PSA stars Peter Nicol, John White, Jonathan Power and Martin Heath. That latter group found themselves so drawn to the doubles matches that one of them almost missed his flight back to Europe when he tarried in the doubles gallery longer than he should have. Their participation in both the singles and in a 16-team Pro-Am flight was in keeping with a willingness on the part of the Tournament Committee, led by its long-time (since 2000) head professional Andrew Cordova, to maximize the MCO’s value to the membership by “changing things up” and offering a variety of innovations from one year to the next, as was the case with the alliance with SquashWise as well.  These creative elements have resulted in different draw-size (as in 2011) and prize-money formats — including a decision to pay teams that lost in the last round of the qualifying brackets, something no other tour site has done — as well as altering the way the highly-subscribed Pro-Am portion of the tournament was played, and, starting with this 2024 event, the addition of a pro women’s draw (perhaps due in part to women becoming Maryland Club members in January 2020) that offers equal prize money to the men’s event.

 

A SUBSTANTIAL REORGANIZATION

During the summer of 2012, the structure of the pro doubles tour, which since its 2000 inception had been the International Squash Doubles Association (or ISDA), underwent a substantial reorganization — which included the appointment of Cordova to a two-year term as Director of Development — and the Association itself  was renamed the Squash Doubles Association (SDA). Its first event in its new incarnation was the 2012 MCO, which was memorable for the sheer depth of the competition at all levels of the draw — all but one of the seven main-draw matches either went to at least a fourth game or had one or more 15-14 tallies, as was also the case in five of the seven qualifying-round matches. Former Trinity College teammates Manek Mathur and Yvain Badan, who had issued Mudge/Gould the only loss of their to-that-point two-year partnership 10 months earlier in a Briggs Cup semifinal (before then winning the final over Leach and Jenson), wound up meeting Mudge and Gould in the final, in which each of the first four evenly-divided games were decided by three points or less before Mudge/Gould raced out to a 7-1 fifth-game lead en route to 15-7.

As that season developed, however, Mudge and Gould increasingly had to deal with both Mathur/Badan and the newly-formed Price/Leach pair, which had a torrid tear during the winter of 2013 in which they won both the North American Open and the tour stop in Boston. They were seeded second in the 2013 MCO and were viewed as extremely likely to reach the final, especially since Mudge/Gould and Mathur/Badan were both in the draw’s top half. However, Chaloner and Imran Khan beat both Price/Leach and their semifinal opponents Walker and Raj Nanda in what was by all odds the single most unexpected final-round advance in the history of the MCO. Chaloner and Khan thereby became the fourth totally different team (i.e. eight different players) to finish as MCO runners-up to Mudge and Gould, preceded as noted by Russell/Quick in 2010, Jenson/Leach in 2011 and Mathur/Badan in 2012. That latter duo reached the finals of the 2014 MCO — narrowly surviving a close (15-14 in the fourth) semifinal over two-time (in 2009 and 2011) World Doubles finalists Leach and Russell while eventual champs Mudge and Gould were out-playing Greg Park and Jonny Smith in the top-half semi.

Mudge and Gould would win the tournament for a (record) sixth-straight and final time in the 2015 edition, in which Gould attained his (record by far) 10th consecutive MCO final and prior to which the Maryland Club, in recognition of its lengthy prominence on the pro-doubles scene, was selected as the site where the 2014-15 postseason awards were handed out to the recipients — namely Mudge/Gould (Team of the Year), Russell (Player of the Year), Chris Callis (Most Improved Player), Rookie of the Year (co-winners and Toronto-based partners Robin Clarke and Scott Arnold), as well as a Sportsmanship Award (Smith) — on Saturday evening during a break between the two semifinal matches.

 

SDA TOURNAMENT OF THE YEAR AWARD

One year later, when the Maryland Club again hosted the presentation of the SDA Annual Awards ceremony, its own tournament became one of the honorees when the SDA players voted the MCO as the Tournament of the Year! This was one of four times that the club has been selected for this distinction (including the two most recent holdings in 2018 and 2019), a figure that exceeds that of any other SDA tour stop. Mudge and Gould’s final-round win over Leach and Russell avenged their loss to the British pair on the World Doubles final five months earlier. Mudge and Gould then swept the remaining tournaments in the autumn portion of the 2015-16 season, which turned out to be the only part of the season in which they played together as a consequence of Gould’s early-November announcement that he planned to retire after the mid-December Briggs Cup. Although Mathur and Badan lost that Briggs Cup final, they spent the rest of that season taking advantage of the departure of their longtime Mudge/Gould nemesis by conjuring up an extended performance during the ensuing winter and spring months that saw them win three tournaments (Boston, Greenwich and the Baltimore Cup) while compiling a Calendar 2016 record of 10-1 that resulted in their being voted the 2015-16 SDA Team of the Year at season’s end.

 

A MARKEDLY CHANGED LANDSCAPE

Ironically, Mathur and Badan received this prestigious trophy the following autumn less than 24 hours prior to the start of the final round of the 2016 MCO — a match in which they played against (rather than with) each other! During the intervening summer, Mathur decided to team up with Mudge, who, after spending nine years on the left wall, returned to the right wall position that he had occupied as Waite’s partner until the latter’s retirement at the end of the 2006-07 season. In fact, the 2016-17 SDA tour promised a markedly changed landscape even before it began due to the fact that no less than six of the top eight ranked players from the previous campaign arrived in Baltimore with first-time-ever partners, and the now-retired Gould was one of the two exceptions. A certain amount of interpersonal tension understandably animated the final between the debuting Mathur/Mudge pairing and their opponents (who were also teaming up for the very first time), Badan and Michael Ferreira, who wound up winning the match, albeit barely, by a 15-13 fifth-game tally when Mathur tinned a forehand reverse-corner on the final exchange, thereby ending a match in which four of the five games were decided by two points or less.

No one could have known at the time that this 2016 MCO final represented the only match that Mudge and Mathur would lose during the remainder of that season and the 2017-18 season that followed as well — 16 straight tournaments and 54 consecutive match wins. They would have been prohibitive favorites to win the 2017 MCO were it not for the fact that that edition had to be canceled as a consequence of a massive year-long reconstruction of the club’s entire athletic facility from which the Maryland Club emerged as the only club in the U.S. that featured three doubles courts, having added a third to the pair that had already existed.

 

ALL-TIME LEADING SCORER

The 2018 MCO was the first in which Mudge did not participate, since he had undergone a major allograft procedure on his right knee several months earlier. The hope at the time was that he would be able to return for the last half of the 2018-19 season, but the injury ultimately proved career-ending to the SDA’s “all-time leading scorer,” who holds the record for most-tournament-wins in every significant event on the SDA schedule, including the nine MCO’s he won (2003-05 with Waite and 2010-15 with Gould). In the aftermath of his retirement, Mathur decided to team up with Callis for only the second time (preceded by their advance a few years earlier to the 2015 Big Apple Open final) in what proved to be a successful run to the winner’s circle that culminated with a 3-0 final-round win over James Stout, the reigning World Rackets champion at the time, and Greg McArthur.

Mathur and Callis would win the next tour stop in Denver as well, and were in full command of their Big Apple Open final against Badan and Bernardo Samper — until Mathur ruptured his left Achilles tendon partway through the second game, sidelining him for the remainder of the 2018-19 season. By the end of that campaign, Callis had sustained a left-knee injury as well, requiring a surgical procedure during the summer months. This pair of surgeries lent an intriguing backdrop coming into the 2019 MCO — the milestone 15th MCO and the season-opening SDA event, hence marking the return of both players to the competitive fray — with everyone curious as to how physically capable they would be, both individually and as a team, and how close they would be able to come to duplicating their masterful performance in Baltimore one year earlier.

Ironically, they turned out to be one of the few late-round teams that remained healthy throughout a weekend in which both semifinal matches ended prematurely in their respective second games. McArthur (playing again with Stout) entered the match against Callis and Mathur having already strained his wrist in an earlier match, and by early in the second game it was clear that he could not swing effectively and that trying to do so would only make it worse. In the bottom-half semi between Russell/Arnold (Kellner Cup champions six months earlier) and Samper/Badan, Samper pulled a hamstring muscle so severely while sprinting to the front wall that he was unable to continue. In the final, Mathur and Callis completed their successful double-return with a four-game victory over Russell and Arnold, thereby launching a season in which they triumphed at the Briggs Cup and Boston as well before illness (when Callis suffered a severe case of the flu) and injury (Mathur’s hamstring pull) kept them out of the North American Open and Heights Casino respectively, almost immediately after which the pandemic completely shut the SDA tour down for the rest of the 2019-20 season and all of 2020-21.

 

A CHARACTER AND DYNAMIC ALL ITS OWN

Over the years, enough tour-defining trends have either been stopped, marked, extended or jump-started on Eager Street to give the MCO a character and dynamic all its own. To date $1.65 million has been raised for the MCO, and more than $60,000 in capital improvements have benefited the club’s squash facilities directly related to the MCO. The tournament has rich and decorated past and, with the magnificence of the Maryland Club’s doubles squash facility and the omnipresent enthusiasm of its squash-playing membership — as evinced every year in its financial support, participation in the pro-am and vocal presence in the gallery — there is every reason to believe that an even brighter future is at hand.

 

Rob Dinerman has been the Official Writer for the MCO Tournament Program in every year of the tournament’s existence, beginning with the inaugural edition in 2003. He has written 16 books about squash, all of which are arrayed on the robdinerman.com home page. His most recent book, A Century Of Champions: A History Of College Squash, 1923-2023, was released in March 2024.

MATHUR MAKES VICTORIOUS RETURN FROM TOUR WITH CALLIS IN MARYLAND CLUB SEASON OPENER

Posted adminPosted in 2019, News
(l-r): Andrew Cordova, John Porter, Martin Knott, Robb Merritt, Mark Price, Manek Mathur, Sage Platt, Chris Callis, JD Wells, John Russell, Scott Arnold, Hugh McGuirk, Chris Haley

Nearly one year after rupturing his Achilles while playing with Chris Callis, former world No. 1 Manek Mathur made a victorious return to the SDA Pro Tour with Callis by capturing the season-opening Maryland Club Open title, Monday, September 30, in Baltimore.

The $50,000 diamond draw was reflective of the parity that formed over the course of last season in the vacuum of Mathur, who had gone undefeated with the now retired Damien Mudge two seasons ago. James Stout & Greg McArthur, who won three titles last season, led the draw as top seeds, opposed by world No. 1 John Russell & Scott Arnold as the two seeds. Callis, then ranked No. 2, and Mathur, No. 12, entered the top half of the draw as the four seeds.

Mathur & Callis dropped their opening games in both their first and second round matches before getting up to speed and winning both matches in four games. The quartefinals played out according to seeding despite a close slate of matches that were all decided in either four or five games.

Both of Sunday’s semifinals took an unfortunate turn in the second game of each match. First, McArthur picked up a wrist injury forcing a retirement that sent Mathur & Callis into the final. Then Bernardo Samper sustained a hamstring injury in the second semifinal, causing another retirement and sending Russell & Arnold through to the final.

In the final, Mathur & Callis held off a comeback from Russell & Arnold to claim the first title of the season 15-10, 15-9, 12-15, 15-11.

Both Mathur & Callis were pleased with improved form as the tournament progressed–particularly Mathur having spent so long off court–and were happy to be back on court together.

“We were a bit rusty to start, not to take anything away from our initial round opponents who played lights out, but it was fun to watch our progress through the weekend,” Mathur said. “The injury layoff was something I personally expected to be harder on the legs, but seeing the ball at that speed and pace, was the biggest thing to readjust to. Being on court with Chris has always been a treat. We go back so many years competing against each other, that battling on the same team is a ton of fun. We have a good off court relationship which transfers pretty seamlessly to the on court game.”

“I think we were both so excited to get back out there that it translated to us being a little too amped on court,” Callis said. “Each round we got a little more comfortable out there and by the finals it felt like the game had slowed down massively versus the first match. We knew from last year that we had good quality doubles in us and we were really happy to find it in our first event back together.”

The result sends Callis back atop the world rankings in October, marking the second time the Princeton graduate has reached the tour’s top ranking in the past year. Callis was more focused on the successful return of Mathur, however.

“The amount of work Manek put in to get to this point in just eleven months is just incredible–nobody deserved this win more than he did, so I’m glad we could get it done,” Callis said. “Having him back in these draws is great for the sport of doubles and really raises the bar for all of us in the tournament.”

On Friday night, the Maryland Club Open was recognized for being named the 2018 SDA Tournament of the year as voted by the players. The board tenures for outgoing members and SDA players Mike Ferreira and Peter Kelly were also celebrated.

(l-r): Mike Ferreira, Maryland Club Director of Squash Andrew Cordova, Peter Kelly

The Maryland Club Open, now four times voted SDA Tournament of the year, heralded in the new SDA Pro Tour season in front of one of the country’s most passionate hotbeds of squash doubles.

“The Maryland Club is such a doubles enthusiastic club that the energy around the event is electric,” Mathur said. “It lifts all of us up and gets us excited for the season. Andrew Cordova goes out of his way to make the event a success and the membership treats the entire tour like family and opens all their doors to us. With the only club in America to have three doubles courts, it definitely fits the mould for the first event of the season!”

“The enthusiasm around doubles at the Maryland Club is truly second to none,” Callis said. “The members really love the sport and put so much energy into the game–it’s always a blast to play in front of a packed crowd that really knows their doubles.”

The tour resumes later this month with the Big Apple Open, October 25-28.

2019 Maryland Club Open Preview By Rob Dinerman

Posted adminPosted in 2019

September 25th, 2019 —- This weekend will mark the milestone 15th edition of the Maryland Club Open (MCO), which has become one of the most popular and best subscribed tournaments on the Squash Doubles Association (SDA) professional hardball doubles schedule. Partly stemming from its frequent positioning at the very outset of an SDA season, when there is always a furious battle among the top teams to either reassert or undo the prior campaign’s pecking order, and partly due as well to how enthusiastic the club-member turnout has perennially been (as witness the extraordinary size of the pro-am events and the degree to which the galleries are packed throughout the event), this tournament has borne witness over the years to some of the most memorable matches of any venue on the tour. This latter phenomenon began right in the very first evening of the inaugural edition of the MCO, Halloween night in 2003, during which two of the four seeded teams in the eight-team main draw were decisively defeated — Clive Leach and Blair Horler, who six months earlier had emphatically capped off a strong spring-of-2003 run by dethroning three-time defending champs Gary Waite and Damien Mudge in the Kellner Cup final, were ousted in straight sets by qualifiers Alex Pavulans and Chris Deratnay, immediately following which Josh McDonald and Viktor Berg lost, 15-4 in the fifth, to Preston Quick and Jamie Bentley.

Mudge and Waite wound up winning that initial MCO, as well as the two that followed, in each case out-playing different teams in those respective finals — Mike Pirnak/Willie Hosey (who themselves barely avoided being yet another Halloween ’03 first-round casualty by eking out a 15-13 fifth-game win over Chris Walker/David Kay) in 2003, McDonald/Berg in 2004 and Quick/Ben Gould in 2005 — which double-fact points up both how dominant Mudge and Waite had been during that time frame and how evenly matched the teams behind them had become. But Waite and Mudge then lost in the semis of the 2006 MCO to Gould and his new partner (and Australian compatriot) Paul Price, whose 3-1 win in the ensuing final over Quick and John Russell launched the best of the four seasons comprising the Price/Gould partnership, highlighted by their wins that winter over Waite (who retired at the end of that 2006-07 season) and Mudge in the finals of both the North American Open and Briggs Cup.

However, Price and Gould stumbled in the opening tournament of the following season when they let a 2-1, 14-9 semis lead over eventual champs Leach and Walker get away in St. Louis (a rare instance when the MCO was not the first event on the schedule), which may have played a role in their inability to convert a two games to one advantage a few weeks later in the 2007 MCO final, also against Walker/Leach, who seized the momentum early in the fourth game and won the last two games going away. Price and Gould did regain this title one year later in a four-game final over Russell and Quick, after which the MCO took a one-year hiatus in deference to the fact that Baltimore had been selected to host the 2010 U. S. National Doubles for the first time in 14 years (and the12th time overall), with the Maryland Club essentially serving as this championship’s headquarters and flagship venue.

The resumption of the MCO in Autumn 2010 marked the debut of the partnership between Mudge and Gould, who — after many years of battling against each other in an extended three-year Mudge/Berg vs. Price/Gould rivalry during which every one of the 34 full-ranking pro doubles tournaments had been won by one of those teams (with each tandem winning 17 of them and Price/Gould holding the narrowest-possible 9-8 edge in their 17 head-to-head finals meetings) — decided to join forces ahead of the 2010-11 season. They actually trailed Walker and Mark Chaloner 1-0, 7-4 in their opening match but wrested control from that point onward and never looked back, going wire-to-wire undefeated throughout that entire season and capturing the MCO for the first of six consecutive times from 2010-15 prior to Gould’s retirement after he and Mudge had triumphed in the Briggs Cup in December 2015.

Meanwhile, Yvain Badan and Manek Mathur, former mid-2000’s teammates on Trinity College teams that won the college team national championship throughout their college careers, had over the course of several years become the foremost challengers to the Mudge/Gould dynasty and the team that most frequently (including in Gould’s swan-song Briggs Cup) were the tournaments’ runners-up. Once Gould had taken himself out of the picture, Badan and Mathur won the 2016 North American Open and wound up that season as the tour’s No. 1 ranked team. But their shared time at the summit would be brief — by the time the 2016-17 season began, Mathur and Mudge had decided to team up, in the wake of which Badan took on yet another former Trinity College teammate in Michael Ferreira. These two teams clashed in the 2016 MCO final, with Ferreira and Badan edging their opponents, 15-13 in the fifth, when Mathur tinned a reverse-corner on the final point. Somewhat ironically, Badan and Mathur received the SDA Team of the Year Award  for the 2015-16 season earlier in the weekend in a presentation on the Maryland Club’s main gallery court less than 24 hours before they would oppose each other in the final.

Little did anyone realize it at the time, but that loss in their debut appearance as partners would prove to be the last one that the Mathur/Mudge pairing would ever sustain. They won all eight tournaments during the remainder of that season as well as all eight in which they played throughout the 2017-18 campaign, during which the MCO was not held since the club underwent a major renovation of its athletic facility, resulting in the addition of a third doubles court. During that 16-consecutive-tournaments-won skein, Mathur and Mudge, (fully worthy successors to the M&M salutation bestowed  57 years earlier on Yankee sluggers Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris when both chased Babe Ruth’s single-season record of 60 home runs during the 1961 baseball season) went 54-0, a run that finally ended not via an on-court defeat but rather due to the severe right-knee injury that Mudge incurred in Buffalo in May 2018 during the final match of that season, necessitating a major allograft procedure on his right knee (his seventh knee surgery overall, the fourth on his right leg) in August that sidelined him throughout the subsequent 2018-19 SDA season.

In his absence, Mathur initially didn’t miss a beat, beginning the season with first-time partner Chris Callis (whom Mathur had rallied to defeat 3-2 ten years earlier at the No. 2 position as part of Trinity College’s epic 5-4 victory over Princeton in the final of the 2009 national-college-championship tournament) and roaring through the 2018 Maryland Club Open without coming close to dropping a single game. Mathur then partnered Zac Alexander through the Denver Club Open draw (again with a string of 3-0 tallies) and teamed back up with Callis in a sprint to the Big Apple Open final, where they steamrolled Badan and Bernardo Samper 15-5 in the first game. To that point, Mathur, the reigning three-time SDA Player of the Year, had opened the season by reeling off 28 straight games, and on that particular night (his consecutive-wins numbers by then having expanded to 18 tournaments and 63 matches) he was playing at his absolute peak, pouncing cat-like on every ball, scorching his drives and catching a half-dozen nicks, a superstar in all his glory, with his parents visiting from India watching proudly from the gallery of the host New York Athletic Club.

The pace and level of play were extraordinary, and there was tremendous energy coursing both on court and through the crowd  — until in an instant it all came to a stunning and screeching halt midway through the second game when Mathur suddenly pulled up lame, having ruptured his left Achilles tendon as he started forward to retrieve a shallow Samper forehand cross-court. Mudge was in attendance, sitting on a bench just outside the host venue’s glass back wall, and it seemed a cruelly ironic symbol of how much things can change in a short time and in light of how full of energy and health both he and Mathur had exuded throughout their undefeated 2017-18 season that it was Mudge’s crutch that Mathur had to lean on in order to exit the court after incurring his injury, which required reattachment surgery several days later and ended his 2017-18 season before October had even ended.

With both Mudge and Mathur thus out of action for the rest of the season  — and with Callis shortly thereafter joining them on the sidelines with a left knee injury that prevented him from playing in any of the last three events of the Fall 2018 portion of the schedule — the tour became (and remained right till the very end) a kaleidoscope of constantly-changing top-tier partnerships, with a correspondingly undulating set of faces in the winner’s circle and late stages of the draws. There were 43 different semifinalists (10 of them after New Year’s Day), 21 finalists and 16 different tournament winners, seven of whom didn’t reach that stage until Calendar 2019. Only three distinct pairings — Samper/Badan, James Stout/Greg McArthur and Russell/Scott Arnold — won as many as two tournaments in 2018-19 (none of them won a third) and, beginning with the Big Apple Open, the top-seeded team wound up winning the tournament in only two of the SDA circuit’s last 14 events.

L to R Damien Mudge and Rob Dinerman

Throughout last season and extending well into the summer months, the expectation had been that Mudge would be making his return to the fray this weekend at the Maryland Club, where he had launched his enormously successful partnerships with both Gould and Mathur and where his nine MCO crowns exceeds the total of anyone else (indeed, no currently active player on the SDA tour has won it more than once). But in mid-August, realizing that his leg was still at least several months away from being ready to return to SDA-level competition, and in deference as well to the cumulative effect of a number of other injuries and depleting maladies that have befallen him over the course of nearly two decades of grueling play — among them shoulder and wrist injuries, one of which required the insertion of a pin for several months to stabilize the joint; a painful neuroma and a plantar fascia tear on his right foot; a two-and-a-half-year bout with chronic-fatigue-syndrome; and multiple concussions — the 43-year-old Mudge concluded that the time has come for him to end his doubles career, and he announced his retirement. The most accomplished doubles player in the history of the sport and its “all-time leading scorer” by a wide margin, Mudge with his various partners has won nearly 175 pro doubles tournaments, more than double the number amassed by any other player, and he holds the most-times-won record for every established tournament on the SDA schedule, highlighted by 15 North American Opens, 10 Kellner Cups, six Briggs Cups and 17 David Johnson Invitational titles (all in a row from 2002-18) at the Heights Casino Club in Brooklyn. His Player of The Year and Doubles Team of the Year Awards totals also far exceed anyone else’s, and in all five seasons during the nearly two decades that the SDA and its forerunner, the International Squash Doubles Association (ISDA) have existed in which one team has gone undefeated, Mudge has been on that team: three times with Waite as well as in 2010-11 with Gould and 2017-18 with Mathur. He has also demonstrated amazing versatility by playing his first seven years on the right wall with Waite, then switching to the left wall for a total of nine combined years while partnering Berg and Gould, after which he moved back to the right upon teaming up with the left-handed Mathur.

Mudge’s retirement punctuates a Spring/Summer 2019 period during which some of the all-time best players in squash’s various professional Associations have stepped away from the sport. Five-time British Open champion Nicol David, who also won eight World Opens and enjoyed nearly a decade atop the women’s pro singles tour, retired this past spring, as did three-time World Open Champion Ramy Ashour, two-time British Open champion Laura Massaro and former World No. 2 Jenny Duncalf. In recent years Mudge had been the only SDA player whose playing career dated back to the formation of the ISDA in February 2000, making him the bridge that spanned the early-2000’s top-tier group consisting of Waite, Berg, Leach, Horler, Hosey, Pirnak, Kay, Bentley, Scott Dulmage, Scott Stoneburgh and Anders Wahlstedt, and extended through the Gould/Russell/Price/Quick/Matt Jenson/Greg Park set of stars later that decade and into the next, all the way to the Mathur/Callis/Badan/Ferreira/Samper/Stout/McArthur/Arnold/Alexander/Robin Clarke contingent of players headlining the current era. Throughout that lengthy time frame encapsulating several player generations, the only relentless constant has been Damien Mudge’s standing as the dominant player in professional doubles squash in North America, and his retirement symbolizes the passing of a glorious era in the history of squash on this continent.

So, rather than the 2019 MCO being the tournament at which Mudge made his much-anticipated return, it will instead serve as the first official tournament of the post-Mudge era, and, like many events this past season, it figures to be wide open, highly competitive and anyone’s guess as to its outcome. All three two-time tournament winners last season, namely Samper/Badan (Big Apple Open and Atlanta), Stout/McArthur (Sleepy Hollow and Baltimore Country Club Open) and Russell/Arnold (the season-ending Kellner Cup and Buffalo) — will be vying for this championship, as will 2019 North American Open winners Clarke and Alexander, Jenson and Leach (the only entrants who also competed in the inaugural MCO 16 years ago in 2003) and Ferreira and Will Hartigan. There are several other teams that are fully capable of advancing far into this year’s draw as well. But perhaps the most intriguing entry is that of defending MCO champions Mathur and Callis, both of whom will be marking their competitive return from surgery: Mathur, as noted, with his Achilles tendon reattachment and Callis underwent an arthroscopic procedure on his left knee in late July to clean up some frayed cartilage. How physically capable they (especially Mathur) will be, both individually and as a team, in their impending comeback efforts and how close they can come to replicating the form that enabled them to dominate the action on Eager Street a year ago, will be a defining question in terms of both this weekend and, more broadly, the entire 2019-20 SDA tour.

Whatever turns out to be the on-court set of results this time around, the MCO, under the leadership of the Maryland Club’s long-time Director of Squash Andrew Cordova and his dedicated Tournament Committee, has continued to flourish and grow ever since its inception. The current budget, spearheaded by the four Platinum sponsors — namely T. Rowe Price, Knott Mechanical, Platt Development Group and Merritt Companies — and a host of significant supporting sponsors as well, is more than triple the $47,600 budget for the first edition in 2003, and altogether a total of $1.5 million has been raised to fund the MCO during that time span. The three times that the MCO has by vote of the players received the SDA Tournament of the Year Award exceeds the total of any other site on the schedule, which bears testament to its popularity and to the respect it has earned among the tour group.  As a new season begins, there is great excitement among the best doubles players in the world as they prepare to perform at their peak in an inspiring forum at an event with such a rich history and, by all indications, such a promising future.

 

 

Rob Dinerman has written the feature article for the Maryland Club Open Program in every year of the tournament’s existence and was the Official Writer for the ISDA/SDA Tour throughout the 12-year period from 2001-13. Ranked as high as No. 10 on the WPSA pro hardball singles tour and as high as No. 16 on the ISDA doubles tour, he has authored seven books, three of which, namely “The Sheriff Of Squash: The Life And Times Of Sharif Khan” (available on Amazon.com), “A History Of Princeton Squash, 1928-2013” and “A History Of Squash At Episcopal Academy”, were published during the 2018-19 season.

MATHUR & CALLIS CLINCH SEASON-OPENER AT EXPANDED MARYLAND CLUB

Posted adminPosted in 2018, News

Manek Mathur & Chris Callis opened the 2018-2019 SDA season with a dominant display in Baltimore, clinching the SDA Diamond Maryland Club Open title Monday night.

Mathur, world No. 1, had been forced to shuffle partners this season due to an injury keeping Damien Mudge off court—his partner for the past two seasons. Mathur rekindled his 2015 Big Apple Open finalist partnership with Chris Callis, Princeton graduate and 2016 SDA rookie of the year. Callis stepped into Mudge’s role on the right wall as Mathur & Callis led the draw as top seeds.

Mathur & Callis blew past Peter Kelly & Joshua Schwartz 15-5, 15-8, 15-7 in the first round, and put in another strong performance in the quarterfinals against Mike Ferreira & Whitten Morris, 15-9, 15-3, 15-3.

Commonwealth Games doubles gold medalist Zac Alexander & Robin Clark upset the seedings in the quarterfinals, defeating England’s Clive Leach & James Bamber 15-14, 15-4, 15-5 to set up a semifinal against the top seeds. Mathur & Callis proved to be too much for Alexander & Clarke in the semis with the top seeds once again progressing to the final in three games.

2018 Buffalo Pro Doubles champions James Stout & Greg McArthur claimed the biggest upset in the bottom half of the draw. Two seeds John Russell & Yvain Badan had come back from 2-0 down to win their quarterfinal match up in five games against Raj Nanda & Greg Park. The two seeds found themselves 2-0 down once again in the semis against Stout & McArthur and appeared to be on the brink of another come back by winning the third and holding a simultaneous game/match ball at 14-all in the fourth. Stout & McArthur claimed the pivotal point to take the match 15-14 in the fourth.

Mathur & Callis continued their strong form into the final against Stout & McArthur, dropping just five points in the first and third games to claim the title in three. The title marks the largest of Callis’ SDA career and Mathur’s first at the Maryland Club.

“It was a treat to be out there with Chris,” Mathur said. “We go so far back that our friendship and understanding showed through with our on court communication, which was a massive plus. When you have someone new to play doubles with, no matter who they are or how good, the meshing aspect can be tricky. I think we understood each other’s strengths and weaknesses to a T.”

The Maryland Club Open event returns to the SDA Tour with its highest prize money to date following a brief hiatus last season. The club underwent renovations that added a third hardball doubles court—the only club in the United States with three courts.

“The Maryland Club is a special place,” Mathur said. “They’ve got some of the best members and now the best squash doubles facility in the world. It was a treat to be a part of their event and history and I am already counting down the days to their next event. Andrew Cordova is a class act. What he does for the game and the sport is unparalleled and consistently pushes us pros to raise the bar at our home clubs. Can’t thank the club, membership and the staff enough for treating us like family all through the weekend.”

KICKING OFF THE PRO DOUBLES SEASON AMIDST A TRANSFORMED COMPETITIVE LANDSCAPE

Posted adminPosted in 2018, News

By Rob Dinerman

Dateline September 26, 2018 —- Of all the venues that have established themselves on the North American professional doubles tour during the past nearly two decades of its existence, the Maryland Club Open (MCO), which began in 2003 and is now entering its 14th edition (there were hiatuses in 2009 in deference to Baltimore hosting the U. S. National Doubles that season and in 2017 due to an extensive club renovation) has delivered by far the most significant innovations, memorable results and player-friendly services. The confluence of its early-autumn positioning on the SDA calendar, extraordinary facilities (now even more so with the introduction of a third doubles court), enthusiastic membership participation and support, and the dedication and business acumen of Director of Squash Andrew Cordova, has made the Maryland Club one of the most popular tour stops of the entire season and a deserving three-time recipient of the SDA’s Event Of The Year Award to the site “that has made a significant contribution to the tour and its players.”

The 2018 MCO will be the first one in which Damien Mudge, a nine-time winner (from 2003-05 with Gary Waite and from 2010-15 with Ben Gould) and by far the “all-time leading scorer” in the history of professional squash doubles, will not participate. Mudge, whose narrow 15-13 fifth-game setback in the 2016 MCO final to Michael Ferreira and Yvain Badan in his debut appearance with Manek Mathur represented the one and only loss sustained by this duo, which subsequently has  won 16 straight tournaments and 54 consecutive matches during past two years, underwent a major knee operation on his right leg in mid-August (his seventh knee surgery overall) and will be sidelined until at least January 2019. Their undefeated path throughout the 2017-18 season marked the first time that a team has gone undefeated for an entire tour season in the seven years since Mudge and Ben Gould did so in 2010-11, and all five times that this has occurred in the 18 years since a pro doubles association was formed in 2000, Mudge has been a team member, having achieved this feat with Gary Waite in 1999-2000, 2001-02 and 2004-05 and once each with Gould and now with Mathur. Mudge’s absence for the next several months, combined with a reshuffling of several of the partnerships in the tour’s top tier in the wake of a 2017-18 season that featured an unprecedented number of breakthrough performances and unexpected results at all levels of the draws, has resulted in a transformed competitive landscape whose defining tone could well be set this weekend as a plethora of new pairings jockey furiously for early position in this opening foray on the schedule.

Mathur, the reigning two-time winner of the SDA Player of the Year Award, will be playing with Chris Callis throughout the autumn months while Mudge goes through an extensive rehab regimen. Callis,  a co-captain of the Princeton team that wrested the national college team championship from Trinity College’s 13-year grip in 2012, has partnered up with Mathur only once before, at the Big Apple Open in 2015, when they defeated Hamed Anvari and Viktor Berg in the semis before losing, 15-14 in the fourth, to Mudge and Gould. Like Mathur and Callis, Badan and Ferreira, five-time finalists last season, will also be playing this weekend with partners with whom they have teamed up only once before. Badan is matched up with John Russell (a three-time MCO finalist with Preston Quick during the first decade of the 2000’s) with whom Badan co-authored a run to the final in Germantown in 2017, and Ferreira and his MCO partner Whitten Morris advanced  to the semis at Heights Casino in 2014 in their lone prior SDA collaboration. This latter pair were finalists that year in the U. S. National Doubles as well, and are three-time winners (in 2004, 2005 and 2008) of the Silver Racquets, a highly regarded Open tournament in New York. Other teams who could contend for the title in Charm City include the ageless Clive Leach (who partnered Chris Walker to the 2007 MCO crown) and the agile James Bamber, as well as James Stout and Greg McArthur (who followed a Challenger tournament triumph in New York last April with a final-round upset win over the top-seeded Russell and Scott Arnold in Buffalo in last season’s final tour stop) and first-time partners Zac Alexander, the reigning U. S. National hardball champion and a finalist with Steve Scharff in the U. S. National Doubles this past spring, and Jonny Smith.

This weekend’s season opener, as noted, is taking place against the backdrop of a 2017-18 pro doubles season that was replete with upsets and thrillers, notwithstanding the Mathur/Mudge domination, as it seemed that virtually every weekend featured at least one noteworthy result. In the very first event, the biennial World Doubles in September in St. Louis, the winning teams in both the Men’s and Mixed Doubles tournaments had to survive at least one final-round match-ball against them. The men’s final between defending champions Russell and Leach of England and Canadians Robin Clarke and Thomas Brinkman came down to simultaneous-championship-point, at which juncture Brinkman hit a drive back at himself for a stroke call, and in the Mixed Doubles final, the Canadian team of Berg and Steph Hewitt, after earning a 2-1, 14-10 advantage, faltered in the final five points of that game and were then out-played in the fifth by Americans Callis and Natalie Grainger. In the several weeks after that, Mathur and Mudge had to extricate themselves first from a 2-1, 12-7 deficit against Alexander and Raj Nanda in the quarters of the Big Apple Open, and then when they were brought right to the brink in the semis of the Bentley Cup in Toronto by Clarke and Scott Arnold, who led 14-13 in the fifth (double-match-ball) before first Mathur and then Mudge hit cross-court winners into the nick on the last two points. The final-round opponents they then subdued, Berg and Brinkman, had themselves needed to fend off multiple-match-balls against them in an earlier tilt against Fred Reid Jr. and Aaron Luque.

The final tournament before the Christmas-holidays break was the biennial Briggs Cup at the Apawamis Club in early December. Adam Bews and Will Hartigan, who had lost in the first round of the qualifying the last time this event was held in 2015, this time came up with a pair of praiseworthy five-game wins over first Reid and Bobby Burns and then Ferreira and Badan to advance to the semis. There they lost in four games to Russell and Arnold, who then took the first game of their Mathur/Mudge final (despite Russell severely spraining his right ankle late in that game) and led 13-10 in the second before Mathur and Mudge engineered their third successful comeback effort of the fall with a 5-0 run to salvage that pivotal game in their eventual 3-1 triumph. Though Russell was able to get through the remainder of the final on adrenaline, he was subsequently found to have torn ligaments in his ankle, putting him in a boot-cast for the next month and sidelining him from competitive play until March.

It is a tribute to how extensive the tour’s top tier had become that Mathur and Mudge had played — and won — their four autumn finals against the theoretical maximum of four completely different teams (i.e. eight players), namely Bernardo Samper/Callis, Ferreira/Badan, Berg/Brinkman and Russell/Arnold. Furthermore, through the six Autumn 2017 pro tournaments, there had been no fewer than 22 players attaining at least the semifinal round, an unusually high number for that juncture of the season and a sign of the depth among the playing membership. What is truly extraordinary is that that number would nearly double by season’s end, with 19 additional players reaching the semifinal stage during the winter and spring months for a total of FORTY-ONE overall, which is by a substantial margin the most in the  history of the professional doubles tour. Similarly the total of 25 players advancing to an SDA final (12 before Christmas and 13 in the Calendar 2018 portion of the tour) is an all-time single-season high.

The field was wide open during the first few events in January 2018, since Mathur spent several weeks in his native India while attending a friend’s wedding, during which time Mudge was traveling in Thailand. The tournament at the University Club of Boston during the opening days of the year was nearly capsized by a ferocious snowstorm that pounded the entire northeast corridor and prevented some of the entered teams from participating. There was plenty of on-court drama as well, with both the opening match on a snowy Thursday night (in which the Graham Bassett/John Roberts Boston pairing eked out a 15-14 fifth-game win over the Tyler Hamilton/Rob Nigro Toronto duo when Bassett mis-hit a winner on the last exchange) and the closing match on a much more temperate Sunday afternoon (in which reigning four-time Canadian National Doubles champs Clarke and Arnold out-lasted Ferreira and Badan) coming down to a fifth game.

Mathur and Mudge — fully worthy successors to the M&M salutation bestowed  57 years ago on Yankee sluggers Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris when both chased Babe Ruth’s single-season record of 61 home runs during the 1961 baseball season — resurfaced in Greenwich to defend the North American Open title they had won in 2017 (and, in Mudge’s case, to try to win this flagship championship for a milestone 15th time) and they rolled through the draw with a four-game final-round tally over Ferreira and Badan, who then reached the final of the Baltimore Cup one week later, only to be turned away by 2013 World Doubles finalists Smith and Leach. It was the fifth and last final-round advance of the season for the Ferreira/Badan pairing, none of them victorious, and they seemed listless both in the 15-3 close-out third game of this match and in a round-of-16 elimination at the Heights Casino Club in Brooklyn at the hands of James Stout and Greg McArthur in the next tour stop, which turned out to be their last joint appearance of the season. Stout and McArthur then followed up with a four-game win over Bews and Hartigan before losing in the semis to Samper and Callis, whom Mathur and Mudge then beat in the final. It was, incredibly, the 17th time that Mudge has won this, the longest continuously held doubles tournament in the world, all of them in a row. This consecutive-wins figure in this venerable event is more than twice  the total compiled by any other player, past or current, in any pro-doubles tour stop in the history of professional doubles squash on this continent.

Mathur and Mudge then missed the next three events on the SDA schedule, each of which was distinctive in its own way. At the Denver Athletic Club, Burns and Eric Bedell strung together a trio of 15-14 games at the expense of 2017 U. S. National Doubles champs Bassett and Preston Quick to reach the final, where each of them secured his first-ever SDA title when they defeated Greg Park and Matt Jenson. One week later in Germantown, Samper and Callis, runners-up several times in recent years, were able to break through with wins in the semis over Jenson and Park and in the final over Russell (making his return from his mid-December ankle injury) and Arnold. Then at the Challenger event hosted by the Racquet & Tennis Club in midtown Manhattan, Stout and McArthur built upon their excellent showing in Brooklyn by conquering recently-crowned U. S. National Doubles champs Ed Garno and Alex Stait in the semifinals and first-time partners Jacques Swanepoel  and Jordan Greenberg (semis winners over Marks/Judson) in the final. Swanepoel was making his first SDA appearance since the end of the college season, during which the Columbia men’s squash team, which he has coached for the past nine years, won the Ivy League pennant for the first time in the history of the program.

Russell experienced success as a coach this past winter as well when he guided the Episcopal Academy boys team to its first Philadelphia-area Inter-Ac pennant in six years in a performance highlighted by a 6-3 dual meet win over a Haverford School team that was the reigning U. S. High School Championships title-holder at the time. He and Arnold then reached the final at the Tavern Club in Cleveland, defeating Greenberg and John Roberts in the semis, before losing to Mathur and Mudge in a four-game final that swung on the forehand drive that Mathur lashed down the left wall for a clear winner at 14-all in the third game that put his team ahead to stay. However, it was a Phyrric victory, as it was in the latter stages of that match that Mudge, who had undergone a relatively minor “cleaning out” knee operation a few months earlier, incurred a more serious injury, necessitating the much more comprehensive procedure that had to be performed last month. During the Cleveland weekend, Roberts and 2010 Intercollegiate Individuals winner Colin West (who with partner Bews lost the top-half semi to Mudge and Mathur) became the 40th and 41th SDA semifinalists of the season.

If history is any guide, Mudge, who over the years has weathered not only a half-dozen knee surgeries but multiple concussions, a neuroma in his right foot, a balky right (i.e. playing) shoulder and wrist issues in both arms (including one involving his left wrist that required the insertion of a pin for several months to stabilize the joint), will come back as strong as ever. In the meantime, the SDA tour for a number of reasons has a new and changed dynamic, the first markers of which will be established right here on Eager Street during the next several days.

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Rob Dinerman has written the feature article for every MCO Program, beginning with the inaugural edition of this tournament in 2003, and he served as the pro doubles tour’s Official Writer throughout the 12-year period from 2001-13. A former top-10 ranked player on the WPSA pro hardball tour who was also ranked as high as 16th on the SDA doubles tour, Dinerman has spent the past five years writing Histories of squash at Harvard, Exeter, St. Paul’s and Episcopal Academy. His latest books are “The Sheriff Of Squash: The Life And Times Of Sharif Khan,” now available on Amazon.com, and “A History Of Squash At Princeton University, 1928-2013”, which is scheduled to be released in October 2018.

MARYLAND CLUB OPEN GIVEN SDA TOURNAMENT OF YEAR AWARD

Posted adminPosted in 2016

The Squash Doubles Association, the men’s North American pro doubles tour, handed out its coveted Tournament of the Year Award at the 2017 United States Open to the Maryland Club.

Graham Bassett, the SDA’s tour director, handed out the award to Andrew Cordova, the head squash pro, Hugh McGurk, tournament chariman and Stewart Shettle, squash committee chariman of the Maryland Club.

For the third year in a row, the downtown Baltimore men’s club was honored with this award as voted by SDA players. It has long been an anchor of squash doubles, hosting the famous Baltimore Invitational Doubles for decades and more recently adding a major stop on the pro tour.

Renowned for hospitality, a lucrative purse and avid, knowledgeable fans, the Maryland Club Open is a favorite among the tour’s players.

More than forty Maryland Club members took traveled north to watch U.S. Open matches Thursday night.

The Maryland Club hopes to open a third doubles court next year.

MARYLAND CLUB OPEN RETAINS TOURNAMENT OF THE YEAR; MATHUR & GARNO SCOOP DOUBLE SDA AWARDS

Posted adminPosted in 2016, News

The second annual SDA Awards concluded with a surprise presentation of Tournament of the Year to Andrew Cordova and the Maryland Club Open for the second consecutive year.

The awards were voted on by the tour professionals and presented during an on-court ceremony in between semifinals during the Maryland Club Open.

“I feel so honored to be on court with these gentlemen,” said Cordova as he accepted the award on court to a standing ovation. ” We have the finest sport in the world, the best spectators in the world, and some of the finest athletes in our game here so this is a great honor.”

“Sponsors, staff, friends, everyone is family here. Everyone at this club makes this tournament a priority, so you’re just seeing really good teamwork and dedication from our staff and supporters so I’m proud to accept this honor on behalf of everyone.”

World No. 3 collected the highest player accolades, being voted both the Player of the Year and one half of the team of the year, along with long-time partner Yvain Badan.

Mathur & Badan enjoyed a breakout season last year winning the Putnam Pro-Am, North American Open and Baltimore Cup.

Mathur, who has partnered with world No. 2 Damien Mudge this season, made the final in ten of twelve tournaments last season and is considered the hardest-hitting player on tour.

Canada’s Justin Todd was named Rookie of the Year. The west-coast -based player notched nine wins in his first season and rose to world No. 25 by February 2016.

Ed Garno was voted both Most Improved Player and presented the Sportsmanship Award. Last season, Garno reached the semis of the Graham Company Cup and won the R & T Challenger.

2015-2016 SDA Awards:

Tournament of the Year: Maryland Club Open
Team of the Year: Manek Mathur & Yvain Badan
Player of the Year: Manek Mathur
Most Improved Player: Ed Garno
Sportsmanship Award: Ed Garno
Rookies of the Year: Justin Todd

Watch the awards ceremony below.

NEW PARTNERSHIP FERREIRA & BADAN WIN SDA SEASON OPENER AT MARYLAND CLUB

Posted adminPosted in 2016, News

The 2016-2017 SDA Pro Tour season has revealed new partnerships in the season-opening Maryland Club Open, including champions and first-time partners Mike Ferreira & Yvain Badan.

The trinity graduates entered the draw seeded second with world No. 2 Damien Mudge forging a new partnership on the right wall with Badan’s former partner on the left wall, world No. 3 Manek Mathur, to top the draw as the one seeds.

The top half of the draw also saw the return of Baset Chaudhry to the tour. The Pakistani, who once cracked the top ten rankings two seasons ago, teamed up with Colombian and fellow Bantam Bernardo Samper in qualifying. A semifinal run ensued with Chaudhry & Samper taking out Andres Vargas & Hamed Anvari in the first round, then upsetting four seeds and England’s world doubles champions John Russell & Clive Leach in a four-game quarterfinal. Mathur & Mudge then continued their partnership’s strong start with a second three-game victory in the semis over Chaudhry & Samper.

The eventual champions endured a more difficult road to the final including a five-gamer in the semis against three seeds Viktor Berg & Raj Nanda, winning 15-11 in the fifth after squandering a 2-0 lead.

“I think we competed well together under pressure this weekend—tough semi which we managed to pull out in five and obviously a very tough final,” Ferreira said. “Mathur & Mudge are the team to beat this season and heading into the final alone to play against them was an accomplishment.”

In Sunday’s final, Ferreira & Badan edged out a five gamer 13-15, 15-14, 15-13, 11-15, 15-13.

“I think our goal was to play a tough and consistent game against them,” Ferreira said of the final. “There are not too many weaknesses on that team—so being able to stay with them and not give them too much of a lead gave us an opportunity to make a run at some of the big points.”

A potential final rematch between the two new power partnerships could be in store at the Big Apple Open later this month.

“Great start to the season but early days as well,” Ferreira said. “Looking forward to continuing to be able to compete with Yvain in some of the other great locations/events that we have coming up this season. Thank you to Andrew Cordova and the Maryland Club for hosting such an outstanding event!”

View all results on the SDA Maryland Club Open page.