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WAITE AND MUDGE TAKE BOTH EARLY JANUARY EVENTS

By Rob Dinerman, January 18 2002

The tour stops at the Wilmington Country and City Athletic Clubs in Delaware and New York respectively that inaugurated the 2002 portion of the ISDA Doubles season had several common characteristics: both events saw a number of substantial leads squandered by seeded teams, and in each case a makeshift team created by the unavailability of an established partner flourished to an unexpected degree.

Scott Dulmage (l) teamed with Dave Kay in Wilmington, with good success ISDA photos © 2001)

But the most significant aspect shared by these important early-January tournaments was that on each weekend, as in all ISDA ranking events this entire season, Gary Waite and Damien Mudge pounded their formidable way to the winner's circle.

They are now five for five in 2001-2002, six for six going back to the Mennen Cup last spring and 17 for 18 overall, with their only defeat occurring at last year's Wilmington event, when they were shocked in the first round by Scott Stoneburgh and Anders Wahlstedt, successful qualifiers who then proceeded to win the entire tournament in a career-highlight performance for both players.

DULMAGE AND KAY TAKE WINNERS TO FIVE
At the $30,000 U. S. Pro Championships at Wilmington, the eventual champs debuted with a routine straight-set win over the successfully qualifying Toronto-based team of Josh MacDonald and Chris Deratnay, but encountered considerably more difficulty in their semi-final with Scott Dulmage and David Kay. The latter has played throughout this past autumn with British softball star Chris Walker, who was committed to play in the U.S. Open in Boston, which was postponed after the September 11th terrorist attacks and rescheduled for early January.

A change of partner seemed to have a revitalizing effect on Dulmage, who has played for the last several years with Dean Brown. The duo experienced a great deal of success last season, including reaching the finals in Greenwich and the semis of the Mennen Cup, but they have been slumping as a team this fall and seem ready to go their separate ways, a notion that seems to have been enhanced both by the success Brown enjoyed when he teamed with Jonathon Power to reach the final of the non-ranking but prestigious Cambridge Club event in late November and now by what Dulmage accomplished with Kay on this occasion.

After sailing past Andrew Slater and Alan Grant (a last-minute substitute for Clive Leach when the latter was detained in England), who had won their first-round match over James Hewitt and Doug Lifford, Dulmage and Kay pressed Waite/Mudge all the way to a fifth game.

THE WILMINGTON COURTS
There are reasons why the top seeds, who are nearly invincible anywhere else, are vulnerable in this event: first, its occupancy of the first weekend of January spot means it occurs right after Mudge returns from a lengthy vacation break in his native Australia, which understandably raises both rust and jet lag issues, though this year, mindful of the highness of his tin count in last season's upset defeat, Mudge returned to New York a few days earlier.

Second, the main gallery doubles court on this site is cooler and better for shot-making than at most ISDA tour locations, and a shooter on a hot streak, like Stoneburgh last year and Dulmage this time can do real damage. But, just as they had done in the final of the most recent ranking event in Greenwich in November, when they were also forced to a fifth game against Willie Hosey and Viktor Berg, Waite and Mudge jumped out to a 5-0 lead and were never threatened en route to 15-11 and a spot in the finals.

There they faced Hosey and Berg at that stage for the third time this season, though getting there this time required an improbable comeback from deficits of 0-2 in games and 1-9 in the third against Michael Pirnak and Jamie Bentley, who then saw an 11-5 lead dissolve into a 15-12 loss and were hammered in a one-sided 15-6 fourth.

PIRNAK BENTLEY PROGRESS
The Pirnak/Bentley team, which reached this semi-final stage by defeating first unsuccessfully defending 2001 titlists Stoneburgh and Wahlstedt and then Todd Binns and Jeff Mulligan, is loaded with weaponry but has come up short in every close match they have played this season(which began with two first-round defeats by a combined total of four points), a discouraging trend which continued when a reprieved Hosey/Berg, who had seemed on their way to a blow-out defeat just 40 minutes earlier, won that game at 11 and won the first game of their Waite/Mudge final as well before losing the remainder in single figures.

Jamie Bentley & Michael Pirnak, semi finalists at US Pro Doubles (ISDA photos © 2002)

It must be said of the crestfallen semi-finalists that they recouped and played beautifully during the following weekend in midtown Manhattan, first in a dominant quarter-final win over Leach and Blair Horler(the highlight of which came when Pirnak dead-rolled a daring forehand reverse-three-wall on a ball that caromed off the back wall) and then manufacturing several late-game rallies from daunting deficits in their semi with Waite and Mudge.

Trailing 12-14 in the second, they tied it at 14 before losing the tiebreaker to go down two games to none; down 13-8 in the third and seemingly out of the match, they won five straight points and escaped with an 18-17 win when Pirnak hit winners on the last two points; and faced with a sobering 11-2 tally in the fourth, they drew to 10-12 before surrendering the match's final three points.

They have the most firepower of any of Waite/Mudge's opponents and at the $20,000 CAC event they showed that they may have righted themselves after an early season that saw they struggle wit their confidence. Certainly Waite and Mudge have no reason to question THEIR confidence, especially in their CAC final, where they were on a hot court and heavily favored to beat Wahlstedt and MacDonald, who in upsetting Hosey/Berg in five(from two games to love down)and upending Walker and Kay in three had already emphatically redeemed their sorry debut performance in a first-round loss to Todd Binns and Jeff Mulligan two months earlier in Greenwich and singularized themselves as the story of the tournament.

WAITE AND MUDGE AGAIN
For Wahlstedt, whose regular partner Stoneburgh had coaching commitments in Cornell, this final, held at his home club, marked an opportunity for him once again to follow a successful qualifying effort with a win over Waite/Mudge en route to an ISDA tournament title; for young MacDonald, it was his first appearance in the final of a ranking tourney and hence already a career highlight.

But history was not to repeat itself, as Waite and Mudge, a bit chastened by their lapses in the semis one day earlier, camped out in front of their over-achieving foes and blasted their way to a no-nonsense 15-9, 9 and 9 victory. They are an intimidating pair when they put the hammer down in this fashion, and by the evening's end they had left no doubt about their continuing supremacy atop the ISDA tour.

To reach Rob Dinerman write to robd@squashtalk.com

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