Paul Price/Ben Gould: Winners of a tour-leading five ISDA ranking tournaments (in, sequentially, Baltimore, New York, Greenwich, Boston and Rye), including the two most prestigious and lucrative events on the schedule, namely the $ 1000,000 Briggs Cup and the $ 50,000 North American Open, this pair of Australian gunslingers now beginning the second full season of their partnership will forever be remembered as the team that finally succeeded where so many teams before them had tried and failed in displacing Gary Waite and Damien Mudge from the No. 1 ranking which the latter legendary juggernaut had previously held throughout the seven-year history of the ISDA tour. Price (a former British Open finalist and PSA No. 2) and Gould made an emphatic first step in that direction right off the bat last year in the season-opening Maryland Club Open when they used a one-point second game (on a look-away Price forehand roll-corner that Waite never reacted to) to square the match at a game apiece, then rolled through the final pair of single-figure frames to reach the final, where they scored a 3-0 victory over Preston Quick and John Russell. This was Gould’s second Maryland Club Open final in as many years, as he and Quick reached that stage as well two years ago by defeating first Chris Deratnay/Alex Pavulans and then Chris Walker/Viktor Berg.
That Maryland Club Open semifinal win over Waite and Mudge was keyed by a pair of “clutch performance” phenomena that played a major role in the success of the overall Price/Gould 2006-07 campaign. Of their four wins (in five matches) against Waite and Mudge (who had never previously lost more than twice in one season to any team), three were largely decided by the four tiebreaker sessions that occurred, all of which landed in the Price/Gould column. Furthermore, their five-game Greenwich final-round win (after trailing two games to love and 13-12 in the third and fourth games) over Waite/Mudge was preceded by a mesmerizing 17-16 fifth-game semi over Scott Butcher and Clive Leach (who led 2-1, 12-9), part of a 6-0 record that Price and Gould attained in five-game matches during the course of the season.
In addition to his quintet of ranking titles with Gould, Price also teamed in non-ranking play first with Jamie Bentley to win the Cambridge Club Doubles in a five-game final against Butcher and Leach, and then with his Aussie compatriot Narelle Krizek to capture the U. S. National Mixed tourney by virtue of their 18-17 fourth-game final-round win over the defending-champion Quick siblings, Preston and Meredeth. But he also was forced by injury into mid-match defaults both in a late-autumn Wilmington semi (when a bad knee ended his and Gould’s match against Walker and Berg, who were leading 2-0, 12-7 at the time) and in an early-spring Denver quarter, where they trailed Matt Jensen and Jeff Mulligan badly in the fourth game, down 2-1, before Price’s balky back made him retire and sidelined him for the remainder of the season, during which Gould and pinch-hitting partner Willie Hosey dropped a pair of overtime-in-the-fifth semis first to Butcher/Leach in Philadelphia and then to Walker/Berg in Long Island. Price and Gould therefore enter the current campaign as the top-ranked team but their last tournament win occurred in early February, more than nine months ago, and they will need for both Price’s health and their stellar 2006-07 “clutch performance” numbers to hold up if they want to retain the No. 1 standing that Waite and Mudge held so proudly for so long.
Damien Mudge/Viktor Berg: The key to the competitive fortunes of this superstar-laden pairing of charismatic early-30’s performers will be whether Mudge, who has clearly singularized himself as the best right-wall player in doubles squash history during his record-shattering eight years with the now semi-retired Gary Waite, can successfully make the transition to the left wall. His forehand power, accentuated by the remarkable wingspan that has enabled him to stand way up in the court and rifle the ball down his opponent’s throats, has been such a devastating weapon over the years, that it remains to be seen whether he can remain equally effective without having such a signature part of his arsenal at the ready. Mudge’s left-wall body of work has been small to this point – he and Morris Clothier barely dropped a 15-13 fifth-game U. S. National Doubles final in Chicago to Preston Quick and Eric Vlcek in ’04, and this past May he and Berg were overtaken after taking a 2-1 lead against Ben Gould and Paul Price in the final of a non-ranking four-team event in Toronto — but no one who has seen this extremely gifted athlete and ferociously determined competitor over the years doubts his ability to be a force even in this, this frist year of what he plans to be a permanent wall-switch. In addition to the staggering total of 76 ISDA ranking titles (including four in Baltimore, namely the 2002 BIDS and the Maryland Club Open from 2003-05) that he and Waite captured — no other team has won even a tenth that total in ISDA history — Mudge also joined forces with Michael Pirnak to win the inaugural Briggs Cup in 2003, and even last season, during which he and Waite were finally displaced by Price/Gould as the No. 1 ranked ISDA team, they still were victorious in Vancouver, Wilmington, Brooklyn and in their last appearance together in the season-ending tournament in Long Island this past April.
The always-energized and perpetually youthful albeit just-turned 30-year-old Berg, whose effervescence on and off the court has made him one of the most popular protagonists on the tour, enters this new partnership with nine ISDA ranking tournament titles to his credit, five with Waite (including the 2001 BIDS along with ’01 titles in Toronto, Chicago and New York and the ’06 San Francisco tour stop), the ’01 Heights Casino event with Pirnak, Boston ’04 with Josh McDonald (in a fifth-game overtime from 11-14 down against Waite/Mudge), and both Cleveland ’06 and Denver ’07 with Chris Walker. He also reached the final round of the ’02 BIDS with Willie Hosey (with whom Berg attained the No. 2 season-end team ranking that season) and the ’04 Maryland Club Open with McDonald (via a pair of four-game wins over first Walker/David Kay and then Hosey/Clive Leach), losing both of those finals to Waite and Mudge. Berg has also teamed up with Jessie Chai to win both the ’03 U. S. National Mixed and ’04 World Mixed crowns, in each case in Philadelphia.
Chris Walker/Clive Leach: This all-British tandem has only played as partners on one occasion prior to this season, that being in San Francisco in May ’06, when they defeated first qualifiers Jonathon Power/Tyler Millard and then (in five from two/love down) the similarly debuting Paul Price/Ben Gould before leading Gary Waite and Viktor Berg two games to one in an eventual 18-16 fifth-game defeat. The one time this pair opposed each other this past season was even closer than that California thriller, namely last February in a Briggs Cup quarterfinal in Rye, where Walker and Berg led Leach and Scott Butcher 14-10 in the fifth game, only to wind up losing 15-14.
Walker’s run with Berg, his partner throughout these past two years other than San Francisco ’06, was highlighted by the pair of titles they captured (the first two of Walker’s career) first in Cleveland ’06 (saving fourth-game multiple match-balls against vs. Waite/Damien Mudge in the semis, then taking a five-game final against Gould and Preston Quick) and then last spring in Denver, where they again followed a semifinal over Waite/Mudge with a successful final, this time at the expense of Quick and John Russell. That result capped off a rare weekend doubles “double” for Walker, who had already teamed with WISPA star Natalie Grainger to defeat the Quick siblings, Preston and Meredeth, in the Mixed final. Walker and Berg also attained four other ISDA 2005-06 finals (at the Wilmington, North American Open, Long Island and Kellner Cup tourneys) and two more last season in Wilmington and Long Island.
Leach’s ISDA career highlights include his title runs with Blair Horler in 2003 in the Kellner Cup, Creek Challenge Cup and Canadian Pro (they also reached five ISDA finals during their early-2000’s years together) and with Willie Hosey in the 2004 Big Apple Open. A former PSA No. 26 who dropped a close U. S. Pro singles final to Walker shortly after the latter had reached the British Open final in the spring of 2001, he has also reached the finals of the last two Cambridge Club events, with Preston Quick in ’05 and with current partner Scott Butcher this past season (when they led Price and Jamie Bentley 2-1, 12-9 before being overtaken), during which they also saved multiple-match-balls against them in one-point victories first, as noted, in a Briggs Cup quarterfinal vs. Walker/Berg and then in a U. S. Nationals semi at Merion against Hosey and Gould. Leach’s exciting 2006-07 season included combining with Rory Callagy to win the non-ranking O’Reilly Pro/Am Invitational that he and Rory Callagy earned at the University Club Of New York this past late-January, two weeks after Leach and Butcher had stormed back from 10-14 in the fifth game of a torrid Greenwich semi against Price and Gould, who however eked that one out 17-16.
John Russell/Preston Quick: Runners-up four times (in Baltimore, Vancouver, Boston and Denver) in their inaugural 2006-07 partnership, keyed on the first three occasions by semifinal wins over Chris Walker and Viktor Berg, their Denver final-round conquerors, this tandem highlighted their season in early April by capturing the U. S. National Doubles at the Merion Cricket Club. This latter feat, entailing victories over, sequentially, first PSA standouts Mark Chaloner and Hansi Wiens, then giant-killers Michael Pirnak and Tyler Millard (fresh from their stunning upset over Damien Mudge and Gary Waite) and finally season-long rivals (2-2 overall) Scott Butcher and Clive Leach (winners of an 18-17 fifth-game semi over Ben Gould and Willie Hosey), constituted a career milestone for both Russell, who thereby won his first career ISDA ranking-tournament title and his right-wall partner Quick, who thereby became the first player in ISDA history ever to win ISDA ranking tournaments on both walls. Prior to last season, Russell had only advanced to the semis on one occasion (when he and Steve Scharff did so in the 2005 Kellner Cup), but that was before Quick became his partner at the very tail-end of the 2005-06 campaign.
Their title-taking deeds at Merion and advances to four other finals were augmented by a semifinal appearance in Brooklyn, where they won three quarterfinal tiebreakers, the last a 16-15 fifth, against Hosey and Chaloner before a two games to one lead a few hours later against Price/Gould dissolved agonizingly into a 15-13 defeat. Russell, returning that weekend to the Heights Casino club where he was based for several early-2000’s years before assuming his current position at the New York Athletic Club, capped off his weekend-long travails by teaming with Emily Ash Lungstrum to annex the pro-am final one day after his pair of marathon five-gamers.
Before joining forces with Russell, Quick had teamed with Gould to reach five finals in each of the previous two seasons, winning three of them (the 2005-06 Big Apple Open, U. S. Pro Championships and Boston Invitational), including a 15-14 fourth-game final-round autumn-’05 breakthrough in New York against Waite/Mudge, who beat them 18-17 in the fifth in the Toronto final one week later. Quick also became in 2003 and 2004 the only player ever to win both the U. S. National singles and doubles on consecutive years when he soloed through the fields in Hartford and Seattle respectively while also combining with Eric Vlcek to prevail first over Morris Clothier and Butcher in Denver and then a year later over Clothier and Mudge, 15-13 in the fifth, in Chicago.
Michael Pirnak/Mark Chaloner: This first-year pairing has only played together once prior to this season, in the ’02 Cambridge Club Doubles, where they reached the final, defeating first Damien Mudge and Paul Price and then Willie Hosey and Shane Doherty to win their Pool, before falling to Gary Waite and Chaloner’s British compatriot Stewart Boswell. Chaloner actually came into that event as a defending co-champion, having teamed with Waite the previous year to handily win that tournament with a three-game final-round win over Dean Brown and Jonathon Power.
Notwithstanding those noteworthy accomplishments, Chaloner has made only occasional appearances in ISDA competition, focusing instead on the PSA singles tour, from which he retired just under a year ago, thereby freeing himself to make a much more concerted commitment to doubles this season. His career PSA highlights include more 40 consecutive early-2000’s months of being ranked in the top 10 (getting as high as No. 7 in September ’01), important playing roles on English teams that won World Team Championships World Cups, Commonwealth Games gold medals and European team championships, as well as the captaincy of the English team from 2001-03 and the PSA Presidency from 2002 continuing to the present.
Pirnak’s highly productive ISDA doubles career resume features 20 final-round appearances — 11 with Willie Hosey, including the ’03 Maryland Club Open, when they beat first Chris Walker/David Kay and then Chris Deratnay/Alex Pavulans before finally losing to Waite and Mudge; five with Kay; two with Blair Horler; and one each with Viktor Berg and Mudge, those latter pair both being triumphant, namely the 2001 Heights Casino title he and Berg won over Waite and Mark Talbott in Talbott’s career swan song, and the 2003 Briggs Cup, which he and Mudge barged through without dropping a single game, including in their final against Berg and Josh McDonald. However, Pirnak’s most noteworthy accomplishment last season, and one of the most unforeseen results in ISDA history, was actually a trip to the SEMIfinals in late March during the U. S. Nationals, when he and Tyler Millard knocked off Waite and Mudge, and in straight games at that, in the quarters, only the second time that their legendary foes had been ousted at such an early stage from an ISDA draw.
Other Teams To Watch: The oldies-but-goodies pairing of 40-somethings Willie Hosey and Jamie Bentley, the second-ranked team behind Gary Waite and Damien Mudge during the early 2000’s, re-united last season after a half-decade hiatus and earned their way to a semifinal Briggs Cup berth with an upset victory over Preston Quick and John Russell. Bentley, a semifinalist with Quick in the inaugural 2003 Maryland Club Open, also teamed with Paul Price to capture the Cambridge Club Doubles (making the latter the THIRTEENTH partner with whom Bentley has won an ranking pro doubles tourney, a record by a wide margin), while Hosey reached ISDA finals for three consecutive seasons with three different partners — the ’01 and ’02 BIDS with Bentley and Viktor Berg and the ’03 Maryland Club Open with Michael Pirnak.
Matt Jensen and Jeff Mulligan combined in their first full season together to reach nine quarterfinals in 11 2006-07 attempts, frequently hacking their way through testing qualifying rounds and round of 16 tussles, emerging from several five-game battles and squeezing out of severe trouble a few times, the most severe of which came when they saved a third-game match-ball against them en route to a first-round U. S. Nationals win at Merion over Maryland Club head pro Andrew Cordova and his power-hitting Duke undergraduate left-wall partner Tim Porter. Though they came just that one point short both on that occasion and in the fourth and final game of a Briggs Cup round-of-16 battle in which they seemed to have all the momentum against Russell/Quick had there been a fifth game, Cordova and Porter have made an unexpectedly palpable impact on the ISDA tour during their brief time together, qualifying their way into Wilmington both in ’06 (with a five-game win over Andrew Slater and Porter’s junior-days coach Ed Chilton) and in ’07 (over Trevor McGuinness and Adam Hamill) and acquitting themselves admirably in, as noted, Rye and Philadelphia, as well as Greenwich.
Boston spear-carriers Pat Malloy and Doug Lifford overtook first Tom Clayton and John Macatee in Greenwich and then (from 2-1 down) Mark Price and Ben Howell in Rye to qualify into both of those high-profile main draws, and each had success with other partners as well, with Lifford teaming with Chris Spahr to win the U. S. 40-and-over draw and Malloy partnering Ryan O’Connell to the final of the Silver Racquet Invitational. Michael Ferreira, who along with Morris Clothier defeated O’Connell/Malloy in four games in that latter tournament, teamed with Alex Pavulans to qualify into the Briggs Cup draw and with Whitten Morris (who missed most of last season after late-summer knee surgery but now back to 100%) to defend the U. S. Nationals A’s crown they had won in ’06. Mid-2000’s Trinity teammates Jonny Kaye and Bernardo Samper demonstrated their firepower in qualifying their way into the Briggs Cup main draw, and another Trinity alumnus, Joe Pentland, joined with Steve Scharff in several successful qualifying efforts this past season (including at the Maryland Club Open last October) and in a five-game near-miss in Vancouver against eventual finalists Russell and Quick.