Gary Waite/Damien Mudge: Four for four in their Baltimore appearances this decade, including victorious runs throughout the three-year history of the Maryland Club Open (also the 2002 BIDS), featuring final-round wins over Michael Pirnak/Willie Hosey in 2003, Josh McDonald/Viktor Berg in 2004 and Preston Quick/Ben Gould last year, this (by far) best-ever pairing in the history of doubles squash won seven of the nine ISDA ranking tournaments which they entered in 2005-2006, their seventh consecutive year in which they easily finished as the No. 1 ranked team.
They enter the current season this weekend with milestone birthdays (Waite turned 40 last month, Mudge turned 30 last May) recently behind them, with 71 tournament wins (in 78 attempts) and 76 final-round appearances in their trophy-swollen ledger and with the real possibility of extending already record-setting title runs both here in Baltimore and this winter at the North American Open (where their streak stands at seven and counting, NINE and counting in Waite’s case, since he and Mark Talbott won from 1997-99) and at the Heights Casino, whose last five editions have landed in their column.
But it should be said as well that last season some fissures in their skein of dominance finally began to show even before Mudge incurred a significant shoulder injury while surfing this past summer, and that some of the best opposing teams in the ISDA tour’s history emerged as major threats to their reign. Their final-round loss to 2005 Maryland Club Open finalists Gould and Quick early last November in the Big Apple Open final was followed shortly thereafter by an unprecedented several-months Waite/Mudge hiatus from the tour schedule during which they were actually (and very briefly) supplanted by Gould and Quick from the No. 1 position on the ISDA computer. And after resurfacing with a winning performance in Greenwich in late January, Waite and Mudge suffered a one-sided 15-4 fifth-game battering at the hands of Berg and Chris Walker in the Cleveland semifinals three weeks later and subsequently forced to survive do-or-die fifth games twice by Scott Butcher and Clive Leach (in the Brooklyn and Kellner Cup semis) and by Paul Price and Jamie Bentley in the U. S. National Doubles final.
In addition to their septet of ISDA tour championships as a pair, each triumphed in a separate foray as well, with Mudge defending the Cambridge Club tourney that he and Price had won the prior season and Waite combining with Berg to capture the season-ending event in San Francisco last May with an 18-16 fifth-game final over Walker and Leach. Clearly Waite and Mudge remain the team to beat in any tournament which they enter, but equally clearly they figure to be challenged as never before by a host of formidable contenders that were baying at their heels for most of last season.
Chris Walker/Viktor Berg: Entering their second full season together (which makes them, improbably, the second-longest-tenured current pairing behind only Gary Waite/Damien Mudge), this athletically gifted tandem consists of two of the most popular and charismatic protagonists on the ISDA tour. They reached five ranking-tournament finals last season, winning in Cleveland in February by virtue of a fifth-game semifinal rout of Waite and Mudge preceding a 15-12 fifth-game marathon win over Preston Quick and Ben Gould, against whom Walker and Berg went 3-3 last season in what became perhaps the best extended rivalry of the entire 2005-2006 tour.
Their remaining quartet of ISDA finals (in Wilmington, Greenwich, Long Island and the Kellner Cup) were part of a run of reaching at least the finals eight times last season in nine attempts that largely accounted for a highly praiseworthy overall won-lost record of 17-8, 6-2 in five-game matches, which latter detail points up the reputation this partnership has already acquired for exciting, down-to-the-wire matches. They led Waite and Mudge two games to love in the second tournament of last season, the Big Apple Open, before being overtaken, saved multiple-match-balls-against quandaries in their semifinal wins over Waite/Mudge in Cleveland and Quick/Gould at the Kellner Cup, and rallied from two-one down in quarterfinal wins over both Michael Pirnak/Clive Leach in Greenwich and Chris Deratnay/Alex Pavulans in Brooklyn.
They also were involved in a thrilling battle AGAINST each other in the season-ending early-May tour stop in San Francisco. Waite and Berg (who had won four ISDA events together in the winter of 2001 while Mudge was sidelined with a wrist injury) rallied from two-one down to overtake Pirnak and Martin Heath in one semi, while Walker and British compatriot Clive Leach did the same from two-love down against Gould and Paul Price in the other. The ensuing final seesawed tensely to 3-all, set-five, at which point Waite and Berg were able to take the final two points for an 18-16 victory.
Scott Butcher/Clive Leach: This Manhattan-based partnership of PSA singles tour alumni was formed only last February and embarked on a remarkably productive five-tournament run whose momentum they hope will carry over into the current season as well. After losing in their Cleveland first-round match to eventual finalists Preston Quick and Ben Gould, Butcher and Leach out-played first John Russell and David Kay and then Willie Hosey and Michael Pirnak to get to the first of their four consecutive ISDA semis in Brooklyn, before they lost in five to Gary Waite and Damien Mudge.
They then manhandled Chris Walker and Viktor Berg (allowing only 12 total points in the third and close-out fourth games after narrowly dropping a second-game tiebreaker) in a St. Louis quarterfinal; saved four consecutive fourth-game match-balls against them and dominated a 15-8 fifth in Long Island against Ben Gould and Preston Quick; and handily dispatched first PSA standouts Jonathon Power and Mark Chaloner and then Pirnak and Hosey at the Kellner Cup. Butcher and Leach then again pressed Waite and Mudge to a fifth game in the ensuing Kellner Cup semi before grudgingly ceding the fifth game to the successfully defending six-time champs.
This three-month period comprised the most successful extended stint of the Australia native Butcher’s solid six-year ISDA career, while also marking the third year in a row in which former PSA No. 26 Leach has taken on a new partner late in the season and promptly embarked on a noteworthy springtime spurt. In 2004 he and Hosey debuted by capturing the Big Apple Open, then reached the Long Island and San Francisco finals, and last season Leach and Pirnak attained the final both in Chicago and San Francisco. Leach’s early-2000’s three-plus years with Blair Horler produced three ranking tour titles (the 2003 Canadian Pro, Creek Challenge Cup and Kellner Cup tourneys) and five additional final-round advances while Butcher got to the 2005 Canadian Pro final with Paul Price and the 2003 U. S. Nationals final with Morris Clothier, with whom Butcher also won the 2000 Silver Racquet Invitational on their “home” Racquet & Tennis Club court.
Paul Price/Ben Gould: This recently-formed all-Aussie tandem enters the current campaign with high expectations and excellent achievements in ISDA tour competition, but also with only one tournament as partners under their collective belts, having only joined forces in time for the last tournament on the 2005-2006 schedule, at the University Club of San Francisco. There they overwhelmed Willie Hosey and Jamie Bentley and took a two games to love semifinal lead over Chris Walker and Clive Leach, only to be overtaken in the closing laps by their British opponents, who eked out narrow victories in each of the final trio of games for a spot in the final.
This latter setback capped off a disappointing spring for the lean but power-hitting Gould, whose first-half brilliance with second-year partner Preston Quick (featuring advances to at least the finals in each of the first five events on the schedule, and seven of the first eight, culminating in the first tournament titles of each of their careers in New York, Wilmington and Boston) gave way to consecutive first-round losses in St. Louis at the hands of eventual finalists Price and Jamie Bentley) and in Long Island, where a 2-1, 14-ll fourth-game advantage over Scott Butcher and Leach metamorphosed into a single-figure fifth-game defeat. One week later, Gould and Quick again let several match-balls slip away in the third game of their Kellner Cup semi vs. Walker and Viktor Berg and again were held under 10 points in the ensuing fourth and fifth games, signaling the unforeseeably swift termination to a partnership that had appeared so unstoppable just a few short months earlier.
Price, like Walker an early-2000’s British Open finalist and former PSA top-three, had only dabbled in ISDA doubles for several years before making a serious commitment last season, which saw him and partner Jamie Bentley advance to the U. S. National Doubles final (via upset wins over Quick/Gould and Hosey/Michael Pirnak); post a solid three-game North American Open quarterfinal triumph over Hosey and Blair Horler; and come within a single point of beating Gould and Quick in Brooklyn and within a few points of upsetting Walker and Berg in Long Island. Price and his Australian compatriot Butcher also reached the 2005 Canadian Pro final (by winning a pair of five-gamers over first Berg/Josh McDonald and then Hosey/David Kay), and Price and fellow Aussie Damien Mudge captured the Cambridge Club Doubles championship for the second consecutive time last November.
John Russell/Preston Quick: This duo resembles the Paul Price/Ben Gould pairing in that last May’s season-ending San Francisco tour stop represents to date the entirety of their “body of work” as partners, and an inauspicious debut it was in light of the five-game first-round loss they suffered at the hands of Michael Pirnak and Martin Heath. After several years during which Quick established himself as one of the best left-wall performers on the pro circuit, first with Jamie Bentley and over the past two campaigns with Gould, Quick will be moving to the right wall, from which vantage point he won the 2003 and 2004 U. S. National Doubles with Eric Vlcek and partnered Chris Deratnay to the 2006 World Doubles crown (four days after winning the World Mixed from the LEFT wall with Narelle Krizek!) last April in Toronto.
Quick’s implicit versatility extends to singles as well, in which he has led a number of U. S. teams in Pan Am Federation Cup and World Team Championships competition throughout the early 2000’s, while winning the 2003 and 2004 S. L Green tourney. This latter accomplishment, combined with the U. S. Doubles titles he won those same two years, makes Quick the only player ever to win the USSRA singles and doubles national championships during the same season twice in a row. He and Gould attained 12 ISDA tour finals during the 17-month span from October 2004 through February 2006, winning the Big Apple Open over Gary Waite and Damien Mudge this past November and coming within a single point (18-17 in the fifth) of repeating this milestone breakthrough one week later in the Toronto final. They added the U. S. Pro and Boston titles early last January before a series of subsequent setbacks caused their decision to amicably part company in mid-spring.
Russell, who recently joined the New York Athletic Club staff after several years at Heights Casino, is a former British National junior champion, top-50 PSA rankee and five-time PSA finalist whose best ISDA tour results to this point have been the spring 2005 semifinal rounds that he attained first with David Kay (over Willie Hosey and Josh McDonald) in March and then one month later with Steve Scharff at the Kellner Cup. There they gratefully accepted Viktor Berg’s pair of consecutive unforced tins to survive an 18-17 fourth game and swept past Berg and McDonald in the fifth, then followed this taut upset with a more routine quarterfinal win over James Hewitt and Tyler Millard. The solidly built but surprisingly mobile Russell also combined with Kay to defeat Price and Bentley last autumn in a Big Apple Open first-rounder before falling in a close fourth-set tiebreaker to Hosey and Blair Horler.
ISDA Partnerships: A New Beginning By Rob Dinerman
The Maryland Club Open, now entering its fourth year as a fixture on the ISDA pro North American doubles tour, has throughout its brief but colorful history played an important role as the first significant tournament of the ISDA schedule, and hence the one that has frequently set the tone for the season that follows. There is always a furious struggle at the outset of any tour year to establish or redefine the established pecking order that had been in place at the end of the prior year, and in several cases (the Alex Pavulans/Chris Deratnay upset first-round win over reigning Kellner Cup champions Blair Horler and Clive Leach three years ago being the most salient example) the results on Eager Street have elevated a team to prominence and/or jolted a seeded team, at least temporarily, from the status its members had enjoyed.
This year the effect the Maryland Club Open is likely to exert upon the dynamics of the current tour has the potential to be even greater than usual, since never before in the ISDA (now entering the eighth year of its existence) has a season begun with so many brand-new or virtually brand-new partnerships. As recently as the April 2003 Kellner Cup, no fewer than nine teams—namely Gary Waite/Damien Mudge, Michael Pirnak/Willie Hosey, Horler/Leach, Viktor Berg/Josh McDonald, Preston Quick/Jamie Bentley, Scott Butcher/Jeff Osborne, Chris Walker/David Kay, Todd Binns/Jeff Mulligan and James Hewitt/Doug Lifford—had played together as a unit throughout that entire season, and in most cases for SEVERAL consecutive seasons.
Coming into this 2006-2007 campaign, by contrast, only two teams (Waite/Mudge and Walker/Berg) are intact from 2005-2006, which, moreover, was the “rookie” season as partners for Walker and Berg, whose partnership debuted at the 2005 Maryland Club Open. Of the six main-draw teams in this weekend’s tourney, Leach and Butcher, who began as partners in midseason last February and have only logged five tournaments together, thereby enter this season as the THIRD most-tenured team in the ISDA top tier. Furthermore, no fewer than 13 of the 19 top-ranked players in last May’s end-of-season ISDA rankings will be entering this season with partners whom they previously teamed with either never or (in the cases of Ben Gould/Paul Price and John Russell/Quick, both of which tandems played together for the first time in the season-ending San Francisco tour stop last May) only once before.
This scenario imbues this weekend’s Maryland Club Open with an aura of unpredictability and intrigue that is certain to enliven the entire competition, during which, if history is any guide, the tone will be at least initially set for the themes and story lines that define the 2006-2007 tour. Certainly the three-time defending champions Gary Waite and Damien Mudge (whose trio of final-round Maryland Club Open victories were at the expense of three different teams composed of six different players) enter the action as the team to beat.
But Waite’s recent 40th birthday, the several-month hiatus from the tour that the team took from late-November to mid-January last season after one defeat and several near-defeats, the manner in which Gould and Quick memorably reversed their 3-0 2005 Maryland Club Open loss three weeks later with a breakthrough four-game Big Apple Open final-round win over The Champs in their 12th attempt (seven of them in finals)—-all point to, or at least hint at, a possible changing of the guard, particularly with a host of new and extremely talent-laden teams looking to make a forceful statement at the outset of this new professional doubles season.
Preview
This fourth edition of the Maryland Club Open will for the first time in tournament history also constitute Opening Day of the 2006-2007 International Squash Doubles Association (ISDA) professional doubles tour. There is always a furious battle early on in any season among the tour’s elite teams to reassert, consolidate or transform the pecking order that had prevailed at the end of the prior campaign, and the opening salvos (as when qualifiers Alex Pavulans and Chris Deratnay shocked reigning Kellner Cup champs Blair Horler and Clive Leach in the first round of the maiden Maryland Club Open three years ago) have frequently made a permanent impact on the remainder of the schedule.
Augmenting this year’s $ 20,000 main-draw purse will be a 20-player, $ 7,500 pro-am (featuring both main-draw and Consolation flights) whose chockfull schedule of matches will be populating the host club’s pair of outstanding doubles courts throughout the Friday through Sunday portion of the weekend. The tourney will kick off with pro qualifying matches Thursday afternoon (preceding the Opening Banquet Thursday evening extravaganza, complete with Calcutta) and Friday morning, followed by the quarterfinals Friday late afternoon/evening, the semis Saturday late afternoon and Sunday’s trifecta consisting of the pro-am consolation, pro-am and pro finals.
Tournament Chairman Andrew Cordova’s 2005 innovation of providing a $ 2,000 purse for teams that lose during the qualifying rounds (which invariably exceed the number of main-draw team entries) was so greatly appreciated by the player group that he has decided to re-up this benefit (the only tour site to this point to do so) both out of a conviction that pros who perform at this level deserve to be paid for their efforts (several teams that have lost in the Maryland Club Open qualifying have posted notable main-dreaw wins in subsequent events) and in the hope that other ISDA sites will be motivated to adopt this measure in their own tournaments as well.