Walker and Heath win Montreal Doubles
By Rob Dinerman; SquashTalk © 2005; all rights of reproduction reserved.
Dec 8 , 2005     

Former PSA Stars Prevail in Six Team Event

Trailing two games to love, Chris Walker and Martin Heath rallied to a 13-15 13-16 15-11 15-9 15-6 victory Sunday afternoon at Club Atwater over host pro and tournament chairman Ken Flynn and Clive Leach in the final round of the Club Atwater Open. The first three editions of this event had been a part of the ISDA pro doubles tour ranking-tournament schedule, but this year's tourney did not meet the prize-money requirement and was therefore not sanctioned by the ISDA.

The diminished field of just six teams, composed of only two players ranked in the top eight (none in the top four), wound up competing in a tournament whose prior holdings, all of which were won by the No. 1 pairing of Gary Waite and Damien Mudge, had attracted virtually every top-tier player and enough team entries to require an extensive qualifying draw.

Heath and Walker followed a 3-1 opening win over Brendan Clarke and '02 Atwater finalist (with Willie Hosey) Michael Pirnak with a similar four-game semi at the expense of top seeds Hosey and recent Cambridge Club Doubles champ (with Mudge) Paul Price. Down below, former Club Atwater teaching pro Josh McDonald, who recently moved back from New York to his native Ottawa, and Tyler Millard defeated Jeff Mulligan and Chris Deratnay before losing to second seeds Leach and Flynn, both times in four games.

Leach, the '05 Cambridge Club runner-up with Preston Quick, and Flynn were able to barely stay ahead in the opening games of the final, with Leach attacking his opponents with several surprise down-the-middle drives that caught them flat-footed, while Flynn scored repeatedly with his fine short game. But Walker and Heath were able to adjust and counter with increasing effect as the match moved along, and by the end their margin of superiority was slightly expanding with each succeeding game.

The fall portion of the 2005-2006 ISDA tour, with its varying elements of politics, positioning and progress, has now ended, and the white-hot newly emerged rivalry between Waite/Mudge and Quick/Ben Gould, all four of whom declined to play in Montreal, as well as the several teams that performed excellently in the ranking autumn events hosted by Baltimore, New York and Toronto, will all be competing in earnest starting in January, when the U. S, Pro in Wilmington, the tour stop in Boston and the North American Open in Greenwich, are scheduled to take place on successive weekends in what should constitute a compelling launch to the 2006 part of this season.

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