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Holleran and Butcher Regain USSRA Mixed Doubles Title

By Rob Dinerman, April 13 2002    

Keen Butcher and Demer Holleran regained the National Mixed Doubles title, beating out Boston's Jessie Chai and Doug Lifford.
(also: Historical Data for USSRA Mixed Doubles)

Demer Holleran - photo V Winchell © 2002

Displaying the racquet skill each has always possessed and the teamwork and communication skills they have acquired during the course of their nine straight trips to the final of this specialized event, top seeds Keen Butcher and Demer Holleran surmounted an early-tournament calf injury to Butcher and won the 2002 U. S. Mixed Doubles championship, which took place on the two outstanding glass-back-wall exhibition courts at the Shore Racquet Club in Ocean City, NJ on the first weekend of April.

HALL OF FAME RECORD
Champions a record seven consecutive times from 1994-2000 before they were dethroned last spring in Boston by Gary Waite and Jessie Chai, Butcher and Holleran reclaimed the title with a come-from-behind 9-15, 15-11, 15-8, 15-10 final-round victory over Chai and ISDA pro doubles tour veteran Doug Lifford, who won the first game and led 9-6 in the second before the eventual champs were able to wrest control of the match and garner this crown for the eighth time in the 34-year history of the event.

Holleran thereby won her second USSRA Open Doubles title in three weeks, since she had previously combined with Alicia McConnell to win the Women's Doubles tourney in New York for the seventh straight time in late March. Chai, partnered by Canadian Karen Jerome, had been Holleran's final-round victim in that event as well, but the similarity between those two finals and indeed between those two tournaments pretty much ended right there: the Women's event had been a pre-ordained and problem-free weekend for Holleran and her fearsome teammate, while by contrast she and her former Princeton contemporary Butcher were beset by adversity at every stage of their post-Easter odyssey to the winners circle.

WEST COAST HIGH FLIERS
It was midway through the third and final game of their otherwise fairly routine quarter-final opener with Cathy Carson and Peter Schreiber that Butcher pulled his right calf muscle, which began to tighten up on him shortly after the match's conclusion. After icing and receiving physiotherapy for the injury during the three hours between Saturday's quarter- and semi-final rounds, he and Holleran warily took the court against the Portland-based duo of Tony Catalan and Phoebe Trubowitz, who had showed their quality in their convincing four-game quarter-final win over the Philadelphia-based pairing of Dawn Grey and Tim Kent, who had stayed alive by eking out a 15-12 third game from 12-all but succumbed to several winning Trubowitz forehand reverse-corner winners in the final fourth game's overtime session.

Catalan had teamed with Kevin Jernigan to win the Consolation draw of the Men's Nationals 13 days earlier, while the recently married Trubowitz had been a finalist with Chai in the Women's Doubles in 1998. Her appealing on-court demeanor belies her competitive spirit, which she augments with an incisive racquet, a fearless approach to shotmaking and a degree of agility which has actually improved in recent years. Her partner is less expressive but equally determined, and possesses a strong backhand rail which he used to great effect both against Grey in this match and later on as well.

They were able to win the second game of their semi-final against the top seeds in what proved to be the match of the weekend. Butcher's immobilizing condition forced him to position himself several feet in front of the red line on his left-wall frontier, where he could use his exceptional handspeed to cut off what he could and leave to his partner anything hit over or behind him.

This meant that Holleran had to cover both the entire back of the court and the entire right side, to exceed her normal allotment of winners and to select her shots in a manner that took into account Butcher's injury-caused limitations. There is no question that in rising superior to the exigencies of this demanding environment she was forced to, and did, attain a degree of greatness far beyond what had been required of her two weeks earlier in the Women's event or, for that matter, in any of her previous baker's dozen USSRA Open Doubles titles.

Holleran and Butcher also had to deal with the psychological blow caused by their failure to cash in on the match-point opportunity they held in the fourth game, when Trubowitz made a lunging retrieval way up front of what looked like a winner off the racquet of Butcher, who then barely tinned a re-drop off a responding Trubowitz crosscourt drop shot. It was a fast cat-and-mouse exchange between these two near the front wall, with Catalan and Holleran no more than interested observers from further back, and when it was over, the match was tied at two games apiece and the deciding fifth game seesawed through a dozen evenly divided points.

At that stage, no one could foresee the eight-point match-clinching run that awaited, but a Catalan tin of the same low rail that had heretofore done so much damage was followed by a pair of shallow Holleran volley winners in front of a boxed-out Trubowitz, who then tinned a forehand volley to give the top seeds a cushion that continued to grow to 14-6, 15-8.

A disappointing fade-out at the end but a fine tournament for the fourth-seeded duo, the only representative from the West Coast in the entire 25-player combined field (15 of which contended for the 40-and-over Veterans crown), who the following morning won the third-place play-off in four games over third seeds Alex Eiteljorg and Jessica DiMauro.

This team had reached the semis via a three-game all-Philadelphia quarter-final win over Scott Brehman and Peggy Reed before losing, also in three (18-16 in the third) to second seeds Lifford and Chai, who, as noted, was a defending champion from last year's win with Waite. The latter spent this weekend in Denver, where he and his ISDA partner Damien Mudge added to their undefeated record in all 13 ranking events this season.

BOSTON PAIRING

DiMauro (above) and Chai - photos R Beck, V Winchell © 2002

No one can fully replace the man generally recognized as the greatest doubles player in history, but Lifford and Chai won the first game 15-9 and proceeded to that 9-6 advantage in the second, whereupon Butcher, knowing that this was his last match of the season and that he had months to heal, willed his damaged and painful leg to cover more ground than before and Holleran stepped up her attack as well. She had committed an uncharacteristic number of tins in the first game, perhaps as a reaction to the pressure of the added burden created by Butcher's injury, but throughout the final three 15-11, 8 and 10 games she evinced the patience required to avoid forcing the issue (often lobbing beautifully out of trouble) combined with the accuracy to bury winners when the opening presented itself.

They also drew some errors from Chai, who sometimes tried to cut her reverse-corner too close, and some impatience from Lifford, who seemed to grow more edgy as the match evolved and had several arguments with the referee in the last few games. Holleran and Butcher displayed their considerable mettle in conquering a very competitive field even after the substantial injury sustained by Butcher early on.

VETERANS HIGHLIGHTS
The fifth edition of the Veterans flight was won by the husband-wife team of Rich Sheppard and Sandy Worthington, with the latter showing the completeness of her recovery from a serious anterior cruciate injury to her right knee and the former completing a USSRA Veterans doubles "double" in the wake of the Men's 40-and-over title he and Gregg Finn had won in New York last month.

Though seeded No. 1, they dropped the first game and were down 10-5 in the third in their semi-final with the unseeded team of Joyce Davenport and Rob Dinerman, who had eliminated fourth seeds Molly Pierce and Nick Lepore 3-0 and were rolling along in this semi before, in an eerie reprise of Butcher's mishap just a few hours earlier, Dinerman pulled his left calf muscle. Though they were able to escape with that game in overtime, Dinerman was severely hampered during the last two games and the 60-year-old Davenport, who played beautifully all weekend, was unable to cover for him. Sheppard started smoking his drives and whirly-bird shots and Worthington, who had struggled in the first few games, suddenly found her touch on her forehand reverse-corner, which she hit a number of times for winners, even on serve-returns. Her marksmanship was a big reason for the the 15-4, 15-7 wind-up and continued through the next-day final as well.

Waiting for them there was the unseeded Denver-based team of Sara Luther and Fred Duboc, who had advanced that far with a pair of straight-set quarter- and semi-final wins over third seeds Nancy Bowden and Victor Harding and second seeds Tom Poor and Molly Downer respectively.

Harding won the Men's Doubles twice with two different partners in the early 1980's. Poor, while never realizing his career quest to win the Men's Doubles in several decades of trying, won the Mixed event five times with Jane Stauffer in the 1970's and Downer won the Mixed Veterans flights two years ago with Sandy Tierney. This history availed all of them naught in the face of the still-impressive short game that made Luther one of the top women's hardball players in the 1980's before her surgical knees gave out and the fitness and fleetness that characterizes Duboc's game.

The 15-8, 18-17, 15-13 tally of the final accurately depicts how close the teams were and how differently the match might have gone, especially if the simultaneous game-point at the end of the second had had the opposite outcome. Worthington by this time was wielding a hot racquet and Sheppard, whose covering on shots hit past his wife brought him to the right wall, where he always plays in non-Mixed events, was able to impose the game, experience and athleticism that had earned him three USSRA Men's Doubles titles in the late 1980's and early 1990's. This was the first significant doubles event to occur in the still relatively new Shore Racquet Club, which also hosted the Atlantic Coast hardball singles championships several months earlier, and the success of the weekend makes it highly likely that many such championships will be contested in this venue in years to come.

Results, USSRA National Mixed Doubles, 2002, Ocean City NJ

Open Final:
Keen Butcher/Demer Holleran d Doug Lifford/Jessie Chai 9-15, 15-11, 15-8, 15-10

Semis:
Butcher/Holleran d Tony Catalan/Phoebe Trubowitz 15-12, 12-15, 15-8, 14-15 , 15-8
Lifford/Chai d Alex Eiteljorg/Jessica Dimauro 15-11, 15-7, 18-16.

Veterans Final:
Rich Sheppard/SAndy Worthington d Sara Luther/Fred Duboc 15-8,18-17,15-13

Semis:
Sheppard/Worthington d Rob Dinerman/Joyce Davenport 8-15, 15-8,13-16, 15-4, 15-7;
Luther/Duboc d Tom Poor/Molly Downer 15-8,15-13,15-11.

To reach Rob Dinerman write to robd@squashtalk.com

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