Quick & Gould Reach the finals
By Rob Dinerman, Reporting live from New York; SquashTalk © 2005; all rights of reproduction reserved.
Apr 25, 2005     

Leach and Pirnak Make it Close against Waite and Mudge ...

After Friday's quarter of five-game matches involving several upsets and near-upsets, order was firmly restored in during the Saturday and Sunday quarter- and semi-final rounds, whose six mid-tournament matches required only 19 total games, just one above the minimum. Gary Waite and Damien
Mudge, who will seek their fifth Kellner Cup title in the tournament's
six-year history in Monday night's 6:30 final at Racquet & Tennis, dropped the
second game of today's semi against Clive Leach and Michael Pirnak and were
even to 6-all in the third before pulling away in that game and closing out the
fourth to complete their 15-10 10-15 15-8 15-9 ticket to the final and extend
their current undefeated match streak to 58 in a row going back to the tail end of
last season.

For the fifth time this season, their final-round opponents will be Ben Gould and Preston Quick, who duplicated their earlier-season advances in Denver (twice), Boston and Brooklyn with a swift three-game victory over John Russell and Steve Scharff, authors of the tournament's biggest upset Friday night when they saved two fourth-game tiebreaker match-points against them and went on to topple second seeds and 2004 Kellner Cup finalists Josh McDonald and Viktor Berg 15-7 in the fifth game.

Scharff and Russell then routed James Hewitt and Tyler Millard in yesterday's quarter-final action but were badly out-gunned in their semi with Gould and Quick, who had been equally decisive first against Trinity alumni Noah Wimmer and Joe Pentland and then in exacting revenge against David Kay and Chris Walker, who had upset them in this same quarter- final stage one week ago in Long Island at the Creek Challenge Cup.

The key to both this latter match and the preceding quarterfinal win by Leach and Pirnak over Blair Horler and Willie Hosey was the 15-13 ending to the second games. Walker and Kay (who had barely averted an opening-round upset against them at the hands of Eric Vlcek and Whitten Morris, who had led 2-1, 10-8) and Horler and Hosey had in each case saved multiple game-balls against them, only to be thwarted at 13-14 when Kay foul-tipped a Quick cross court and Horler tinned a would-be winning forehand drop shot respectively. In the remaining quarterfinal, qualifiers Paul Price and Dean Brown, who had already rallied from two games down to upset Alex Pavulans and Chris Deratnay in their round of 16, led Waite and Mudge 4-2, set-five in the first game, triple-game-point, before being overpowered in each of the ensuing trio of points and being out-played throughout the remaining pair of games as well.

Leach (who along with Horler authored the one exception to the Waite/Mudge
Kellner Cup dominance when they nosed out The Champs 15-13 in the fifth game
of the 2003 final) and Pirnak were great all weekend, first in defeating Scott
Butcher and Martin Heath, then in the straight-game fashion in which they
handled Long Island finalists Horler and Hosey, who were expected to give them
a much closer match, and finally even in defeat Sunday afternoon. Leach's
shot-making and imaginative shot selection were exceptional, to the point where
Waite and Mudge increasingly concentrated their salvos on Pirnak as that match
moved along.

The latter played strongly as well, even while being attacked relentlessly by the most lethal two-pronged offense in the game (and by all accounts in the history of the doubles game), but eventually the constant pressure exacted a toll during the identical 6-1 Waite/Mudge runs in mid-third (from 6-6 to 12-7) and late-fourth (from 8-6 to 14-7) that sealed that match's outcome. In their four tournaments together ince they joined forces in mid-March, Leach and Pirnak have gone undefeated against everyone other than Waite and Mudge, who now need only to win Monday's Kellner Cup final and next week's season-ending tour stop in San Francisco to complete the third undefeated ISDA campaign (also 1999-2000 and 2001-2002) in the six-year existence of this Association.

Kellner Cup, New York, Results:

Qualifying:
Paul Price/Dean Brown d Marty Clark/Rob Dinerman, 3-0;
Ed Chilton/Andrew Slater d Michael Sabatine/Nick Barquin, 3-2.

Rd of 16:
Gary Waite/Damien Mudge d Scott Stoneburgh/Jamie Bentley, 3-0;
Price/Brown d Chris Deratnay/Alex Pavulans, 3-2;
Blair Horler/Willie Hosey d Doug Lifford/Pat Malloy, 3-0;
Michael Pirnak/Clive Leach d Scott Butcher/Martin Heath, 3-0;
Preston Quick/Ben Gould d Joe Pentland/Noah Wimmer, 3-0;
Chris Walker/David Kay d Eric Vlcek/Whitten Morris, 3-2;
James Hewitt/Tyler Millard d Chilton/Slater, 3-0;
John Russell/Steve Scharff d Josh McDonald/Viktor Berg, 3-2.

Qtrs:
Waite/Mudge d Price/Brown, 3-0;
Pirnak/Leach d Horler/Hosey, 3-0;
Quick/Gould d Walker/Kay, 3-0;
Russell/Scharff d Hewitt/Millard, 3-0.

Semis:
Waite/Mudge d Pirnak/Leach, 3-1;
Quick/Gould d Russell/Scharff, 3-0.

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