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Waite and Mudge Escape Berg & McDonald Again in Vancouver

By Rob Dinerman, Oct 20 2002 © 2002 reproduction prohibited

Facing a multiple-game-point predicament at the end of the fourth game of their semi-final after badly losing the third, and facing
the unappetizing prospect of an anything-can-happen fifth game against the
hottest new team in professional doubles squash, top seeds Gary Waite and
Damien Mudge responded to the somewhat self-created peril like the champions
they are, grinding their way relentlessly from an 11-14 deficit to a 14-all
tie against Viktor Berg and Josh McDonald, their co-finalists in the
immediately preceding and season-opening 2002-2003 ISDA event three weeks
earlier, and then making this rally stick by taking the game and with it the
match when Berg tinned an attempted winner on "no-set."

Reprieved and chastened by their survival of this threat to what has now become a 63-match winning streak, Mudge and Waite regained their top form in a 15-7, 10 and 8 final over third seeds Blair Horler and Clive Leach, who had advanced to this stage via victories over a pair of partnerships both of which had of necessity been formed on the fly in reaction to serious physical mishaps that have in recent weeks grounded two of the ISDA's most noteworthy protagonists, in one case for the remainder of the entire season.

Dave Kay, who reached five finals during the last three months of last season after
teaming up with Michael Pirnak, ruptured his left Achilles tendon in a minor softball event in Maryland two weeks ago, while Preston Quick came down with Hepatitis A, which he presumably acquired while competing as a member of the U. S. team this past August in Ecuador in the Pan Am Games, where at least 10 playes and coaches from nearly a half-dozen different countries are now known to have fallen ill.

Quick's malady forced his current partner, Jamie Bentley, to instead play with his Toronto co-denizen Chris Deratnay, whom Horler and Leach constantly attacked in their three-game quarter-final win. Pirnak will be teaming up with Willie Hosey, starting with the next ranking event in December in Montreal, like Vancouver a new addition to the ISDA circuit, but the entries for Vancouver were closed before Quick's diagnosis was confirmed, so he
instead played this event with Eric Vlcek, who reached his first ISDA semi-final in a half-dozen years when he and Pirnak defeated Dean Brown and Hosey in four, following which they lost, also in four, to Horler and Leach.

Quick will definitely be sidelined for at least two months, which make it a close call as top his availability for Montreal, especially given the pernicious tendency Hepatitis A has shown to recur in patients who try to push the envelope in returning to a strenuous activity before they are fully recovered. It is considered a less dangerous strain of infection that
Hepatitis B or C, both of which can even be life-threatening, and Quick's excellent conditioning level should of course stand him in good stead as well.In the top half, Mudge and Waite moved easily past qualifiers James Hewitt and Doug Lifford, then won the first two games against McDonald and Berg (quarter-final winners over Jeff Mulligan and Todd Binns) in such one-sided fashion that it may ironically have helped create the comeback that almost capsized them by dulling the sharpness with which they began the match
and leaving them primed for the major letdown that ensued.

McDonald and Berg seized the opportunity that had been presented to them, firing off nicks and volleying winners especially to the front left portion of the court, where the Waite/Mudge duo has occasionally been vulnerable. The 15-6 third game
seemed like something of a fluke, but when Berg and McDonald kept their
barrage up en route to 10-5 in the fourth, it was clear that all was not well
in the champions' camp. They were having all sorts of trouble trying to
relocate their misplaced intensity, and the jeopardy of a fifth game and the
prospect of defeat it carried was coming into ever-sharper focus.
Even when Waite and Mudge began their inevitable charge, it must be said
that their younger counterparts didn't retreat the way so many other
opponents have in the face of the full-court blitz that The Champs often
employ. The final patch of points was filled with high-paced exchanges, more
lets and elbowing for position, and lots of punishing ground strokes off the
bats of all four players. But Berg and McDonald bent just enough under the
pressure to yield a few grudging tins, including the final one on a Berg
reverse-corner on simultaneous game-point, which ushered Waite and Mudge back
to the winners circle for the 32nd time in the 33 career attempts in ranking
ISDA tournament play in the 42 months since their highly productive
partnership began.

The tour resumes in two weeks with a non-ranking tourney in Philadelphia,
the Tom Page Memorial Invitational, in early November, followed by the
Cambridge Club Doubles in Toronto on Thanksgiving weekend and the Montreal
event in early December.

RECAP:
Quarter-finals:
Gary Waite/Damien Mudge d. James Hewitt/Doug Lifford, 3-0;
Josh McDonald/Viktor Berg d. Todd Binns/Jeff Mulligan, 3-1;
Blair Horler/Clive Leach d. Jamie Bentley/Chris Deratnay, 3-0;
Michael Pirnak/Eric Vlcek d. Dean Brown/Willie Hosey, 3-1.

Semis:
Waite/Mudge d. McDonald/Berg, 3-1;
Horler/Leach d. Pirnak/Vlcek, 3-1

Final:
Waite/Mudge d Horler/Leach, 3-0.

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