The much-ballyhooed debut was starting to veer far off course from the way they had planned it. Damien Mudge and Ben Gould, fierce rivals throughout the prior several years before deciding to join up during the summer just past, were rapidly and increasingly sliding into trouble in the first-ever match of their partnership, the opening-round quarterfinal of the 2010 Maryland Club Open, where they were being out-played by a slight but definite margin by Mark Chaloner and Chris Walker, who had taken a 1-0, 7-4 lead, their confidence growing with every passing point. Would the prohibitive top seeds, who between them had won every one of the 34 full-ranking pro doubles tournaments that had been played in the three years since the 2007 edition of this event, actually be bounced from the draw in the very first round? And if so, would they ever be able to recover from this rather noteworthy false start?
Two years, 61 wins (out of 62 matches) and 19 titles in 20 attempts later, Mudge and Gould enter this 2012-13 season — and this weekend — as the team to beat, having run off nine straight games to capture that 2010 Maryland Club Open title, which they successfully defended a year ago by overpowering both the Walker/Chaloner and Matt Jenson/Clive Leach pairings in a three-team round-robin invitational. It was by no means the first time that this tournament, now in its ninth holding — every year from 2003 onward, other than a one-year hiatus in 2009, since Baltimore hosted the U. S. National Doubles Championships that season — had provided the launch-pad for a major and enduring alteration of the dynamics of a professional doubles season or era.
When Mudge and Gary Waite captured the inaugural 2003 edition of this tourney (which began on a wild Halloween Friday night with qualifiers Alex Pavulans and Chris Deratnay straight-setting heavy favorites and reigning Kellner Cup champions Leach and Blair Horler), it jump-started a run of three straight Maryland Club Open titles and an equal number of years at No. 1. But when Gould and Paul Price ended that skein with a semifinal win over Mudge/Waite at this venue in October 2006, it signified the takeover that would follow, as Price/Gould would duplicate that result in the ensuing Big Apple Open, North American Open and Briggs Cup finals and finish that 2006-07 season as the No. 1 team.
There are additional similar phenomena associated with the degree to which performances in this tournament have set the tone for what comes afterwards, among them that Leach and Horler never fully recovered from their unexpected first-round 2003 ouster; that Preston Quick and John Russell began the first of their five praiseworthy seasons together (2006-11) by reaching the 2006 Maryland Club Open final, with 15 final-round advances (including in this event in both 2008 and 2010) to follow; and that Viktor Berg and Josh McDonald, first-round losers the year before, rocketed to the final of the 2004 Maryland Club Open en route to a season that saw them attain several other important finals, including that season’s Briggs Cup tourney.
Indeed, so many autumn results that have presaged the entire subsequent tour schedule have taken place right here in Charm City, that it seems poetically fitting that this brand-new Squash Doubles Association (SDA) tour, and the whole new era in men’s professional doubles on this continent that it represents, is being ushered in this weekend with the 2012 Maryland Club Open, the first full-ranking tournament of the 2012-13 SDA campaign. Certainly there are a number of entrants this weekend who with a variety of partners have played major roles in this tournament on multiple occasions — indeed, five of them, namely Mudge, Gould, Leach, Quick and Walker, have been part of this event literally from the moment of its 2003 inception.
But the more prevailing theme this year is how many new team alignments have emerged since the end of last season that are legitimately capable of challenging Mudge and Gould; this seems symbolized by the fact that The Champs, now as noted entering only their third full season as teammates, already have a longer-lasting partnership than that of any other team in the top tier of the tour.
Manek Mathur and Yvain Badan, who had to withdraw from the 2010 Maryland Club Open when the former’s playing hand was badly cut on a pane of glass, took a half-season hiatus this past winter/spring immediately after handing Mudge/Gould their sole defeat (in the semis of the mid-December Briggs Cup) and are rejoining forces this fall. Leach and Price are making their partnership debut this weekend after splitting a pair of five-gamers against each other in this Eager Street venue in 2007 and 2008. Greg Park and Jonny Smith have been partners only once prior to this upcoming season, a final-round advance (the first in full-ranking play for each of them) in Cleveland last winter featuring an exciting late-comeback semifinal win over Mathur and Leach. Jenson and four-time Maryland Club Open finalist Quick have played together two times before, the most recent of which was nearly two years ago, reaching the finals both times.
World rackets champion James Stout, who plans to make an enhanced commitment to this year’s tour after appearing only sparingly the past few years, and 2012 U. S. Mixed Doubles finalist (with Suzie Pierrepont) Greg McArthur have teamed up only once prior to this season, at the April 2011 Players Championship, when McArthur’s scheduled partner Dan Roberts injured a hamstring muscle. Stout proved so successful a pinch-hitter that weekend, during which he and McArthur reached the semis with sequential wins over Russell/Quick and Imran Khan/Steve Scharff, that the pair have decided to team up this season. There are plenty of other potentially contending team entries as well heading to downtown Baltimore, where, if history is any guide, what happens on these venerable (and recently renovated) courts may well prove to be a harbinger for the succeeding seven months of high-level athleticism and excitement.
Rob Dinerman has written the team profiles and major articles for every Maryland Club Open Program in the history of this tournament, and his “History Of The U. S. National Doubles In Baltimore” was the feature article in the National Doubles Program when that event was held in Baltimore in March 2010. The winner of two pro-am events, the Mitch Jennings Cup and Tim Chilton Cup during the 2009-10 season (with Chris Walker and Ed Chilton as his respective partners), Dinerman was ranked as high as No. 10 on the WPSA pro hardball tour, winning more than 50 Open hardball tournaments and reaching the finals of the U. S. Nationals in 2004 and 2005. He is currently the editor of the Dailysquashreport.com web site and is the major writer for both the men’s SDA and women’s WDSA professional doubles tours. He recently released a memoir “Chasing The Lion: An Unresolved Journey Through The Phillips Exeter Academy,” excerpts from which, as well as a number of his squash archival articles, can be found on his web site, www.robdinerman.com.