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Horler and Leach reach Finals
Seek to unseat Waite and Mudge
By Rob Dinerman © 2003; all rights of reproduction reserved.
April 28 2003       [Kellner Doubles 2003 Draw/Results]    [Kellner qualifier]

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Fourth seeds Blair Horler and Clive Leach used a first-game tiebreaker victory as the launch pad to a 15-13 15-8 10-15 15-12 win over the second-seeded Toronto pairing of Willie Hosey and Michael Pirnak that brought them to this evening's final round of the 2003 Kellner Cup, where they will face three-time defending champions Gary Waite and Damien Mudge.

Stymied at the quarter-final stage of both the 2001 and 2002 editions of this event (in both cases at the hands of Todd Binns and Jeff Mulligan) and confronted by
deficits of 12-9 and 13-11 in a first game in which they had led 9-5, Horler
and Leach rescued that game with a four-point closing run, used the momentum
it generated to dominate the second and broke away from a 7-7 tie in the
fourth to go up 14-10 before cashing in their third match-point on a Horler
backhand reverse three-wall that nicked in front of Pirnak and closed out the
80-minute battle in a rivalry that has gone in both directions this season.

That opening game, as noted, was the key to the entire match. The 7-0
Hosey/Pirnak skein that had brought them from 5-9 to 12-9 had been laborious
and difficult, as they seemed to have to put much more effort into winning a
point than did their opponents, whom they had defeated in a rallying
five-game semi-final (from two games to one down) in Montreal in early
December by hanging tough until impatience and aggravation had undone the
Horler/Leach attack. This painstaking approach was starting to work in this
game as well, notably in the spate of tins that had accounted for four of
those seven points. But Leach tucked a cross court serve return drop-shot
nick into the left corner to get his team back on the scoreboard, and another
delicate volley off his racquet at 11-13 was followed by a Pirnak tinned
overhead volley to knot the game at 13-all.

Hosey and Pirnak clearly needed this game more than Horler and Leach,
especially in the wake of the latter's recent and convincing four-game
victory in the semis of the Creek Challenge Cup just 15 days back, and their
"no-set" call clearly reflected the urgency of the moment. Dishearteningly
for them, a rare Hosey tin on an open rail was followed by a close but proper
"no-let" call on a Leach rail that screamed past them down the middle of the
court to close out the game at 15-13. Discouraged by this outcome after such
a promising mid-game rally, Hosey and Pirnak then fell behind 5-1, 7-2 and
12-6 in the second game, which ended on what appeared to be an angry tin from
Pirnak at 8-14.

In the third game, the retreating but resilient second seeds adopted a
more lob-oriented approach, which had worked so well for them in Montreal,
and were able to hang around long enough to coax a few mid-game tins out of
Horler and Leach, who each committed a few miscues. Pirnak took over once he
and Hosey had gone from 7-all to 11-9, his trio of winners at that stage (on
a rail, a three-wall nick and a cross court drop) making the score 14-9,
whence an unforced Leach volleyed tin ended the game at 15-10.

The fourth crept along evenly for awhile as well, to 7-all again, though
at no time did Horler and Leach appear to not have control of their destiny.
They both can generate so much pace that Pirnak and Hosey were constantly on
their heels and playing defense. Eventually this kind of scenario almost has
to exact a price, and it did this time in the form of a quick little
three-point run (on a Leach drop shot, a Hosey tinned three-wall and a
screaming Leach rail winner down an open right side) to 10-7. From there the
fourth seeds evenly divided the credits, with a Leach reverse three-wall
serve-return on an open Pirnak offering (for 12-9) and a drop shot (for
13-10) preceding a Horler shallow rail winner (14-10) and a his
aforementioned match-closing volley reverse three-wall nick.

WAITE/MUDGE DOMINATE
In contrast to the Horler/Leach march to the final, all three matches of
which (3-2 over Dave Kay/Chris Walker, and 3-1 over both James Hewitt/Doug
Lifford and Pirnak/Hosey) have required extra games, Waite and Mudge have
advanced without coming close to dropping a single game. This was even more
true of their 15-5, 5 and 9 thrashing of third seeds Viktor Berg and Josh
McDonald in today's first semi-final than it had been in their prior two
matches with Martin Heath/Paul Price and Eric Vlcek/Dean Brown.

Berg and McDonald pushed Waite and Mudge to the very brink in the Boston final in
mid-January, leading 11-8 in the fifth before yielding at the very end.
But this match, the sixth of the season between these two teams, was over
practically before it began, with Waite and Mudge storming out to a 13-1 lead
in the first game, carrying the play all the way and making it clear that
their pursuit of their 15th consecutive Kellner Cup match victory was not to
be denied. If anyone had previously had any doubts about the completeness of
Mudge's recovery from the concussion that had forced him to default out of
the Creek Challenge Cup final two weeks ago, they disappeared after his
cat-quick retrieval of a double-boast at 7-1 that he not only got to but
converted into a winner on a razor-tight reverse corner that completely
wrong-footed both of his young and fleet opponents.

The second game was more of the same, becoming 8-0 seemingly immediately
and ending with the same 15-5 tally that had defined the first. Determined to
do something---anything---to change the on-court dynamics, Berg and McDonald
decided to switch walls in the third game, though with a little bit of a
different twist. They started each point on their usual wall, but then
quickly reversed positions on the first exchange of every point, a possibly
unprecedented presentation in the four-year history of the ISDA. Besides
making for some entertaining patterns, it actually improved matters somewhat,
as Berg was able to attack more on the left wall and produced enough winners
to keep the score almost even at 9-8.

But the flaw of this approach was exposed when two early-point Waite
cross courts whistled past McDonald while he was still scurrying into
position and this pair of winners keyed a 6-1 final run that concluded with a
Berg tin off his daring deep-court drop shot at 9-14. The final will be
played at Racquet & Tennis and is scheduled to start tonight at 7 o'clock.

SEMIS RECAP
Gary Waite/Damien Mudge (1) d Josh McDonald/Viktor Berg (3) 15-5, 5 and 8
Blair Horler/Clive Leach(4) d. Michael Pirnak/Willie Hosey (2) 15-13 15-8
10-15 15-12

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