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ISDA Team Profiles

By Rob Dinerman, January 12 2002

Chris Walker-Dave Kay:
Walker, 35, a longtime elite softball player whose career highlight came when he reached the finals of last spring's British Open, has progressed rapidly in this his first season of serious doubles competition.

Chris Walker and Dave Kay, ISDA photo( r) ST photo (l) © 2001)

Unsurprisingly, his game has a distinctively softball flavor to it: good pace and depth, conservative, error-free approach, a solid crosscourt drop and noteworthy mobility and stamina. Most of this team's fireworks come from the right wall, where Kay combines his imposing strength and volleying span with a dangerous short game, especially the sharply-angled reverse-corner he can hit even while back-pedaling.

Kay has improved his movement and flexibility through yoga and karate training and, while remaining aggressive, he has become more patient as well. This newly formed team burst from the blocks this fall by winning a pair each of qualifying and main-draw matches to advance to the semis of the Hamilton Cup in late September.

After straight-gaming Dave Rosen and Preston Quick in the final qualifying round, they won in four over a strong all-Aussie contingent of Scott Butcher and Brett Martin and then won 18-17 in the fifth over Mike Pirnak and Jamie Bentley before losing in four to Willie Hosey and Viktor Berg in the semis. However, in Philadelphia, Kay and Walker balanced their month-old simultaneous-match-point Denver win with a loss by the same excruciating margin to THAT weekend's Cinderella team, Clive Leach and Blair Horler, and a lower-back injury that Kay suffered early in the Greenwich qualifiers three weeks later worsened during their four-game final-round qualifying win over Ken Flynn and Andrew Slater, causing them to bow quickly to top seeds Waite and Mudge in their subsequent first-round action. Mixed results for this pairing so far, so the winter months should give a clearer picture of where they stand.

Gary Waite-Damien Mudge:
Waite, though now age 35, remains as dominant a player as he has been throughout the past decade and his power-hitting right-wall partner, now fully recovered from a case of chronic-fatigue syndrome a few years back and a severe off-court fluke left wrist injury which sidelined him for three months last winter and early spring, continues to blaze away and create open balls for them to exploit.

Gary Waite and Damian Mudge - No surprise at #1 , ISDA photos © 2001)

Waite enjoyed several undefeated mid-1990's seasons with Jamie Bentley and then won approximately 40 tournaments with Mark Talbott prior to beginning the alliance with Mudge in 1999; he strikes the ball more cleanly than anyone on the tour, can either belt or finesse with equal proficiency and finds the nick remarkably often with his mid-court three-wall.

To the extent he has any weakness at all, it is a slight loss of explosiveness against a sharp short shot on his side. Mudge has added a drop shot whose effectiveness is abetted by the deep threat he always poses, retrieves beautifully with his long effortless strides and has improved his reverse-corner as well. Victorious in 16 of their 17 career tournaments as a team, they have won all three of the ranking ISDA events during the fall of 2001 and enter any tourney as a prohibitive favorite.

Their one loss came in January 2001 at the U.S. Pro Championships in Wilmington, in five capricious games against the eventual champions, Anders Wahlstedt and Scott Stoneburgh, a reversal Waite and Mudge swiftly avenged in their only subsequent meeting in the semis in Philadelphia this past October. Only once this season have they been extended to a fifth game, in the final of the North American Open vs. Willie Hosey and Viktor Berg, and they responded to the exigency of that moment by jumping out to a 5-0 lead that sealed their eventual single-digit triumph. Waite then teamed with England's Mark Chaloner to win the Cambridge Club Doubles in Toronto, thereby capping off an undefeated autumn.

Willie Hosey-Viktor Berg:
The 24-year-old phenom Berg, who won four ISDA events with Waite last winter while Mudge was sidelined with his wrist injury, is perhaps the most dynamic player on the entire circuit, possessing the guts of a burglar, a complete and enthralling lack of conscience when it comes to his sharpshooting and the short memory of an outstanding baseball closer who responds to a rare blown save with undiminished ardor the next time he is summoned from the bullpen.

Willie Hosey and Viktor Berg - #2 team ISDA photos © 2001)

He has a great reverse-corner, powerful volleying skills whether he goes down the rail or crosscourt and an aggressive nature that makes him position himself close to the front wall and dare his opponents to pass him.

Hosey, who still exudes a nimbleness that belies his 40 years, is extremely steady and almost never fails to return even balls that cling to the side wall. Though he lacks the power of the other top players, he is an excellent counter-puncher and retriever. In this their first season as a combo, they have reached the finals of two of the three ISDA ranking events so far, falling short of this level only at the Philadelphia Racquet Club, where they bowed in three(two overtimes)to the career-best exploits of Clive Leach and Blair Horler.

Probably the most exciting match of the entire 2001-2002 season to this point came the following month when these adversaries met again in the quarters in Greenwich, when Berg's eleventh-hour torrid streak accounted for most of a match-saving 7-1 run in response to an 8-10 fifth-game deficit. As noted, they later pressed Waite and Mudge to a fifth game in the final, and also extended them to two overtimes in their Denver final. By a narrow margin, Hosey and Berg have emerged from the fall just in front of each of the five or six other teams vying for the status of top challengers to the near-invincible Waite and Mudge.

Blair Horler-Clive Leach:
It must be said of this team's outstanding performance so far this season that they went about it the "right" way, sticking together while enduring a series of qualifying-round defeats much of last season before starting to hit their stride that spring and expanding on that progress in a significant manner this fall. Leach, 29, a top-30 softballer from England who only started playing doubles in November 2000, has demonstrated an admirable learning curve, picked up all the doubles shots and seems more comfortable than ever at this stage.

Clive Leach and Blair Horler - #3 team (ISDA photos © 2001)

Horler, a New Zealand native who spent his first few doubles years as Dave Kay's partner, hits one of the hardest backhands in the game, retrieves powerfully, nails a sharp, low reverse-corner and has cut significantly down on his tins. This is a very athletic duo who are just coming into their own and are very motivated to improve even further. The three consecutive upset victories that brought them through the qualifiers and all the way to the final of the Tom Page Invitational was arguably the most electrifying extended performance of the entire season. Placed in the same brutal qualifying bracket as Dave Kay and Chris Walker, they upended their fearsome foes by a single point in the fifth game(on a rifled Horler crosscourt winner at 17-all), and then beat third seeds Mike Pirnak and Jamie Bentley(15-12 in the fifth from 12-all)and second seeds Willie Hosey and Viktor Berg in three games(two overtimes), displaying throughout an implicit ability to come through in the clutch that has made them by far the biggest "movers" in the ISDA rankings; Horler and Leach are now co-ranked No. 5 after ending last season at Nos. 17 and 21 respectively. Even in their first-round losses in Denver to Waite/Mudge and in Greenwich to Hosey/Berg, they were right in the thick of both matches, and they definitely enter the winter months as a full-fledged contender and a threat to any opponent they encounter.

Michael Pirnak-Jamie Bentley:
A classic experience-youth combination a la the alignment between Willie Hosey (Bentley's partner through each of the previous two seasons) and Viktor Berg, who played with Pirnak much of last season, during which they won the Heights Casino event in mid-February. The southpaw Pirnak is dangerous with his racquet, which can produce high pace and a deceptive and ground-skimming topspin reverse-corner, but too many of the late-stage errors that have heretofore kept this team from reaching their potential have come from his side. Bentley, now 39 and a highly decorated veteran of the WPSA and ISDA wars, no longer poses quite the power threat that he once did, but he still gets good depth, is excellent at choosing the right shot and strategy (which he frequently communicates to his partner in brief between-point exchanges), seems as hungry as ever and really wants to make this new formation succeed.

Michael Pirnak & Jamie Bentley - New team becoming dangerous (ISDA photos © 2002)

The first two ranking events of the season saw this new pairing lose both their first-round matches by a combined total of just four points; they became the last upset victims of Kay/Walker's charge to the semis in Denver when Pirnak tinned a three-wall attempt at simultaneous match-point, and they bowed to Horler and Leach a month later in Philadelphia, where they dropped the final three points from 12-all in the fifth.

However, they did sandwich a victory in the non-ranking Ben Saunders event in Toronto, dropping nary a game in the process, between these two quarter-final defeats, and they seemed to find themselves in Greenwich, where they played well in a quarter-final win over Scott Butcher and Brett Martin and even better in a hotly contested four-game defeat to Waite and Mudge in a match that was virtually even through the first three overtime games. This team may have found itself (if they have, watch out!) and it will certainly be interesting to see if their graph continues to point upwards when the season really picks up in January and beyond.

Todd Binns-Jeff Mulligan:
Mulligan is a former pole vaulting and then racquetball star who stepped into a squash court ostensibly just for a quick look-see six years ago and never looked back, while Binns, scion of a former Australian Davis Cup team member and North American Open finalist, has been playing squash virtually his entire life. Both are soft-spoken but extremely competitive, with the husky but surprisingly mobile Mulligan a classic right-waller in the sense that his game is predicated on power, while Binns, who teamed with the late Tom Page to form a dominant team throughout the late 1980's, can crank it as well but also has a potent short game, especially his southpaw three-wall, which he can wrist directly into the nick, just as he once did in singles, where he several times attained a No. 4 WPSA ranking and emulated his father Ken's feat 17 years earlier in advancing to the final of the 1988 North American Open. His footspeed has faded a bit in the several years since his fortieth birthday, but he makes up for it with good positioning and anticipation.

Todd Binns & Jeff Mullgan (ISDA photos © 2002)

A surprisingly successful autumn run has brought this veteran-filled team, which is now in their second full season of collaboration, to the semis of two of the three ranking events, resulting in the co-No. 9 ranking they share as the fifth-ranked team. Before Mulligan's home club fans at the Denver Club, they rallied from 12-14 to 15-14 in the fifth over Tyler Millard and Josh MacDonald, who was cleanly passed by a scorching Mulligan crosscourt on the evening's final point, then accentuated this victory the following day by winning in an unexpectedly easy three over the favored but flat Canadians Scott Dulmage and Dean Brown.

Then, at the North American Open in Greenwich, Binns/Mulligan again took advantage of a fortuitous draw a close five-game first-rounder and an uninspired second-match opponent when they subdued first Scott Dulmage and his infrequent partner Chris Deratnay and then Anders Wahlstedt and HIS infrequent partner, the aforementioned MacDonald, who never meshed and were unable to find a rhythm at any point during the three games. Their 4-3 main-draw record gives them highest main-draw winning percentage of any team composed of players ranked out of the top four, and all but the very top teams now know that anything less than their best effort against these quiet executioners may leave them ripe for an upset.

Scott Butcher-Brett Martin:
This is the first full campaign for this all-Aussie duo, who joined forces at midseason in 2000-2001, shortly after Martin progressed so quickly in his inaugural doubles salvo at the Cambridge Club event that he decided to give the ISDA circuit a whirl. He is a former PSA world No. 2, who still moves gracefully and creates amazing pace from his forehand flank though, unlike other right-wall blasters who seem to muscle the ball, Martin's action is more reminiscent of cracking a whip. Butcher, the more experienced doublist of the two, has a solid and well-rounded game, possesses all the shots and can hit plenty hard as well, though he is more selective with this tactic, often preferring to loft the ball over an opponent rather than try to hit through him.

Scott Butcher & former World PSA #2 Brett Martin (ISDA photod © 2002)

Especially in view of the dangers they were starting to pose to the top guns last spring(including in Baltimore, where the two games they took from top seeds Gary Waite and Viktor Berg were the only games the eventual champs lost the entire tournament), Martin and Butcher have not begun the current season as well as they had hoped. After qualifying for the main draw in Denver, they saw a 1-1, 12-9 lead in a winnable first-round match-up against Dave Kay and Chris Walker dissolve into a four-game defeat.

A mishap with their entries forced them to miss the Tom Page Invitational, and at the North American Open, after qualifying into the main draw and winning their first-rounder with James Hewitt and Doug Lifford, they saw their chance for a breakthrough win effectively disappear before it even began when Butcher incurred a serious left ankle sprain in a pro-am match less than two hours before a quarter-final they had been greatly looking forward to against Mike Pirnak and Jamie Bentley. Butcher played admirably through his pain, but the reduction in mobility was too great and they lost in four. So its been mostly frustration to this point, but Butcher has fully healed by now and this team is very hungry to finally have a big performance.

Scott Stoneburgh-Anders Wahlstedt:
Wahlstedt, one of the few players who has had success on both walls, is a strong volleyer, proficient retriever and excellent controller of the ball, especially with his nearly unvolleyable whirlybird off the back wall and his reverse-corner, which he angles nicely whether with the volley or off the ground.

Stoneburgh's fine shooting skills, especially his feathered drop shots, both straight and crosscourt, a shot he is a threat to hit even off the back wall, have their roots in the hardball excellence that brought him to three successive Canadian National championships in the early 1990's, and he is as agile in his court coverage as ever. They have been partners for a half-dozen seasons(their career highlights being the '96 North American Open crown and their upset over Waite/Mudge in the early rounds of last season's Wilmington event, which they also wound up winning)and their knowledge of eachother's games has stood them in good stead in recent years.

Stoneburgh's coaching commitments at Cornell have limited them to one tournament this fall, the Philadelphia tourney, where they were very sharp in a straight-game first-round win over James Hewitt and Doug Lifford before falling swiftly to a revenge-minded Gary Waite and Damien Mudge in their first meeting since that aforementioned Wilmington stunner almost ten months earlier. Both in that unhappy rematch this past October and on several occasions last spring, most notably the Mennen Cup, where they were swamped by Scott Dulmage and Dean Brown, they showed an inability to generate any response to an opponent's fast start. Both have fallen considerably in the rankings this autumn, and it remains to be seen whether they have either the desire or the energy to collaborate for one more run into contention in what has become a highly charged maelstrom in the top tier of the ISDA circuit.

To reach Rob Dinerman write to robd@squashtalk.com

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