Dateline July 10 — There have been a host of truly noteworthy developments during the six-year history of the Maryland Club Open, which resumes this weekend after a one-year hiatus caused by the mammoth undertaking by the Baltimore squash community of hosting the (extremely successful) 2010 U. S. National Doubles Championships this past spring. Contenders have emerged, overwhelming favorites have been knocked off and important matches, which have often had long-lasting effects on the dynamics of the remainder of that season’s ISDA tour, have all at one time or another characterized the action on Eager Street throughout the decade of the 2000’s. This article will focus on five individual matches, selected from a list that could easily have run much longer, that stand out not only for the quality of play but also for the influence those matches have had upon the subsequent evolution of the ISDA tour. The tournament’s early-autumn placement at or near the very beginning of a pro doubles season, as well as Baltimore’s well-deserved and longstanding reputation as one of the true “hot spots” of squash doubles in this country, have both imbued the Maryland Club Open with an element of adrenaline and immediacy that has inspired some of the most memorable matches in the decade-long history of the ISDA.
October 31, 2003
Quarterfinals: Chris Deratnay/Alex Pavulans d. Blair Horler/Clive Leach, 3-0.
The first of this quintet of chosen matches was actually the first main-draw match in the history of the Maryland Club Open, one which kicked off in emphatic fashion an evening of upsets, demi-upsets and near-upsets, a veritable witches brew that (especially in light of the host club’s trademark colors of orange and black) seemed more than coincidental for having occurred on Halloween. Blair Horler and Clive Leach had finished off the 2002-03 season with their guns blazing, having ended the Gary Waite/Damien Mudge 76-match/24-tournament/22-month undefeated streak (records by runaway margins in all three categories) with a four-game February win in the Canadian Pro final in Toronto that they had then amplified by defeating The Champs 15-13 in the fifth (after trailing two games to love) in the Kellner Cup final in New York in April.
They thus entered Baltimore six months later as the hottest team on the circuit, with fully valid aspirations of permanently displacing Waite and Mudge from the No. 1 perch they had held since the ISDA’s inception, and with what seemed like an excellent draw to boot, i.e. in the bottom half, with a first-round match against a qualifier leading to a likely semifinal against the same Michael Pirnak/Willie Hosey pairing whom Horler and Leach had handily defeated both times these two teams had met (in the semis of the Creek Challenge Cup and the Kellner Cup) during the prior spring.
But those well-laid plans were immediately sabotaged when their quarterfinal opponents, qualifiers Chris Deratnay and Alex Pavulans, who were partnering up for only the second time after having lost in the qualifying in Denver a few weeks earlier, shocked the Maryland Club faithful by not only ousting Horler and Leach but by doing so in a straight-set tally of 15-12, 12 and 14. Right from the very first point, a forehand reverse-corner that Pavulans knifed for a clear winner in front of Leach, he and his partner Deratnay (whose ability to stand up to Horler’s lethal power game on the left wall was a major key to his team’s upset victory) played with the daring spontaneity of a team with nothing to lose and with a confidence that belied their standing as a heavy underdog.
By contrast, Horler and Leach, rocked by the first-game 11-5 deficit that swiftly confronted them and perhaps burdened by the weight of expectations as well in the aftermath of their spring ’03 results, were tinny and increasingly tentative. Every time they seemed on the verge of finally righting their listing ship, something capricious seemed to set them back. Right up to simultaneous-game-ball in the best-of-three tiebreaker that ended the third game, one got the sense that they would finally impose themselves and take over the match, and indeed they might well have done so had they come away with that 14-all point. But with Deratnay slightly out of position and leaving a bit of space on the left wall, Horler perhaps over-swung in trying to crush a backhand rail winner through that slight opening and the ball instead rang loudly off the tin. Leach and Horler would never fully recover from this reversal, stumbling through an uneven autumn performance. They finally showed signs of regaining their spring-of-’03 level by reaching the final of the mid-January North American Open, but by that time Horler had sustained a serious knee injury that necessitated major surgery a few days later, sidelining him for virtually the remainder of that season and ultimately prematurely ending his career just two years later.
Pavulans and Deratnay almost got to face the other qualifying team, Chris Walker and David Kay, in their semifinal (which would have constituted the first-ever all-qualifier ISDA semi), as Walker/Kay led Pirnak/Hosey two games to one later that same evening and rallied from 10-14 to 13-14 in the fifth before an exhausted Kay tinned a forehand rail. In the top half, unseeded Preston Quick and Jamie Bentley lost a two games to love lead over fourth seeds Josh McDonald and Viktor Berg but regained their edge in a dominant (13-2, 15-4) fifth game before losing to eventual champs Waite and Mudge, who then out-played Hosey and Pirnak (3-0 semis winners over Pavulans and Deratnay) in a straight-set final to win this eventful inaugural edition.
October 7, 2006
Semifinals: Paul Price/Ben Gould d. Gary Waite/Damien Mudge, 3-1; John Russell/Preston Quick d. Chris Walker/Viktor Berg, 3-2.
Waite and Mudge would duplicate their 2003 title run at the Maryland Club both in ’04 and ’05, defeating Berg/McDonald and Ben Gould/Quick respectively, and hence entered October ‘06 with milestone birthdays recently behind them (Mudge turned 30 in May and Waite turned 40 in September) and having dominated the ISDA tour for seven consecutive years. One of their foremost rivals during the prior 2005-06 season had been Walker and Berg, who had defeated them 15-4 in the fifth in a midwinter Cleveland semi (en route to that title) and reached four other finals as well, including the North American Open and the Kellner Cup. A resumption of that rivalry was considered quite probable going into the ’06 Maryland Club Open, which for the first time ever was the opening event on the ISDA schedule.
By contrast, both the John Russell/Quick and Gould/Paul Price pairings had formed only at the very tail-end of the previous season, and neither had fared well in their respective debut event as partners, the early-May 2006 season-ending tour stop in San Francisco. Russell and Quick had lost in the first round to qualifiers Martin Heath and Pirnak, while Price and Gould were out-lasted in the semis by Walker and Leach, who would then fall barely short in an 18-16 fifth-game final against Berg and Waite. As a result of these various results, the consecutive climactic outcomes that took place on the first Saturday evening in October ’06 not only surprised everyone present but would have reverberations that would be felt for years to come.
Waite and Mudge grabbed the first game of their Price/Gould semi and were within a point of going up two games to love. But at 2-all in the best-of-five tiebreaker, Price conjured up a well-disguised look-away forehand roll-corner that left Waite completely flat-footed to even the match at a game apiece, following which, completely unexpectedly, Price and Gould dominated the third and fourth games, winning each in single figures to deal Waite and Mudge their first-ever defeat in Baltimore, where they had previously triumphed not only in their 2003-05 Maryland Club Open run but also in capturing the 2002 BIDS tourney.
While the Maryland Club spectators were still absorbing the fact and peremptory manner of the Waite/Mudge ouster, the second semifinal provided still more unforeseen developments, as Russell and Quick, hot off a solid opening-round win over Leach and Scott Butcher, held off Walker and Berg in an exciting back-and-forth five games. Gould and Price would win the next-day final in four games, thereby jump-starting a 2006-07 campaign in which they would win a tour-leading five tournaments (including the North American Open and Briggs Cup, beating Waite/Mudge in both finals) and come away with the No. 1 end-of-season team ranking. For their part, Russell and Quick would duplicate that win over Walker and Berg in the semis in both Vancouver and Boston in a season that was highlighted when they defeated Butcher and Leach in the final round of the ’07 U. S. National Doubles in March. The Russell/Quick and Price/Gould teams have both been in the top tier throughout the past four years, and both had their first significant results on that same Saturday evening at the Maryland Club in the fall of 2006.
October 21, 2007
Final: Chris Walker/Clive Leach d. Paul Price/Ben Gould, 3-2.
As referenced directly above, Price and Gould used the 2006 Maryland Club Open as the launching-pad for a dream 2006-07 season, one which saw them annex most of the ISDA’s most coveted trophies while wresting the No. 1 team ranking from its seven-year captivity in the possession of Waite (who retired at the end of that season) and Mudge. But by the time the very next Maryland Club Open rolled around the following autumn, Price and Gould were reeling from a damaging blow that had been dealt them just one week earlier, when a seemingly safe 2-0, 14-9 semifinal lead over the newly-formed team of Chris Walker and Clive Leach in the season-opening St. Louis tourney had, improbably and almost impossibly, dissolved into a five-game defeat. Walker and Leach had then accentuated this accomplishment by out-playing Mudge (who had over the intervening summer decided to switch to the left wall and to play with Berg in the wake of Waite’s retirement) and Hosey, who was pinch-hitting for Berg after the latter had pulled a hamstring muscle a few days earlier.
In Baltimore, Walker and Leach beat Mudge and a still-subpar Berg three-love in one semi while Price and Gould earned the right to redeem their St. Louis collapse with a four-game win over Quick and Russell in the other. A bent-on-revenge Price and Gould earned a two games to one lead in the final, only to be inexorably overtaken in the final two laps by Walker and Leach to the tune of 15-12, 15-11. By the end, the Aussies were taking their increasingly visible frustration on their respective racquets – Gould hurled his 40 feet to the front wall after his tin at 9-13 in the fifth effectively sealed his team’s defeat, while Price smashed his in an alcove just outside the court. By contrast, the victorious English pair were celebrating their second tour title in as many weekends and heading for a performance over the next several months that would include three additional final-round finishes (in Chicago, Toronto and Boston) and a temporary hold on the No. 1 team ranking.
No one who was present on that unseasonably balmy weekend to witness first Mudge/Berg and then Price/Gould falling to Walker and Leach could have known that for the next three years one or the other of those vanquished tandems would wind up in the winner’s circle of every non-Challenger ISDA tournament: there have been 34 such events since October ’07, and they have been equally divided, with Mudge and Berg winning 17 and Price and Gould winning the other 17. The two juggernauts have met head to head in 17 of those finals, with Price and Gould holding a slim 9-8 edge in what has become the most enduring, intriguing and evenly matched rivalry in the history of the ISDA.
October 20, 2008
Semifinal: John Russell/Preston Quick d. Damien Mudge/Viktor Berg, 3-1.
Though badly out-played by Walker and Leach, as described, in their debut performance as partners in the ’07 Maryland Club Open, Mudge and Berg caught fire right around Thanksgiving of ’07, reaching at least the final round of each of the last 10 ranking tournaments on the 2007-08 schedule and winning eight of them, including the ’08 North American Open and Kellner Cup. Their march to victory in that latter event culminated in a winner-takes-all final in which, with the No. 1 team end-of-season ranking at stake, Mudge and Berg won both the fourth and fifth games in overtime against Price and Gould. They had previously defeated Russell and Quick in the semis to go five for five in that head-to-head matchup for the 2007-08 tour year, which made Berg and Mudge substantial favorites when these same two pairings met six months later in the semis of the ’08 Maryland Club Open.
But this time, Quick and Russell were charged up from the excellent fifth game they had played one round earlier against Eric Vlcek and Yvain Badan (while Mudge and Berg had been a little sloppy in their 3-1 win over Jonny Smith and Walker) and their solid, largely error-free play tellingly contrasted with a number of errors by Mudge that helped carry Russell and Quick to their second Maryland Club Open final in three attempts. Though they would lose the following day’s final in four games to Price and Gould (3-2 winners in the balancing semi over Leach and Matt Jenson), Russell and Quick would go on to two more 2008-09 finals, beating Price/Gould in a Wilmington semi and coming within two points (i.e. 2-1, 13-12) of doing the same to Mudge/Berg in a Brooklyn final.
They would also reach two 2009-10 finals, in the North American Open and Players Championship tourneys, as would Leach and Jenson (Briggs Cup and Kellner Cup), creating a situation coming into this 2010 Maryland Club Open in which there are at least four teams any one of which seems fully capable of joining the roster of championship teams for this tournament. There are other credible contenders as well, including Walker and his British compatriot Mark Chaloner, who split their four-match rivalry with Jenson/Leach last season, and Badan and Smith, mid-2000’s Trinity College teammates who edged Russell/Quick 15-13 in the fourth in a Kellner Cup quarterfinal last spring and came within a 16-15 fifth-game point of defeating Walker and Chaloner in the Wilmington Challenger final. The 2010-11 ISDA tour therefore shapes up as one of the most competitive in recent memory and, if history is any guide, what happens in Charm City this weekend could easily have a major impact on everything that follows.
Rob Dinerman has written the team profiles and major articles for every Maryland Club Open Program in the history of this tournament and authored a “History of the Men’s U. S. National Doubles In Baltimore” as the centerpiece article for the National Doubles Program when that event was hosted by Baltimore this past March. He won two pro-am events, the Mitch Jennings Cup and the Tim Chilton Cup, in 2009-10 (with Chris Walker and Ed Chilton as his respective partners) and recently released a book, “Chasing The Lion: An Unresolved Journey Through The Phillips Exeter Academy,” excerpts of which can be found on his web site, www.RobDinerman.com.