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Waite and Mudge Overwhelming Again

By Rob Dinerman, April 23 2002    

Waite and Mudge Barely Escape the first game and play an amazing game three, win again.

Waite and Mudge Still Unbeatable in Third Straight Kellner Crown

[Kellner Draw]

In an overpowering display of power and teamwork, top-seeded two-time defending champions Gary Waite and Damien Mudge won their sixth final this season over second seeds Willie Hosey and Viktor Berg, who played beautifully but still fell in a competitive but convincing 80-minute battle by a score of 15-13, 11 and 7. It was the 16th consecutive ISDA tournament win for The Champs dating back to the season-ending 2001 Kellner Cup last spring, when they launched what has now become a 51-match winning streak.

Fifty-one and counting, too: based on the way they played this past weekend in barging through four opponents without losing a single game, Waite and Mudge seem well on their way to an undefeated 2001-2002 campaign, which they will accomplish if they are able to triumph this weekend at the Worlds in Toronto and next week in the final tour stop of the season in St. Louis.

Last night's action at the Racquet & Tennis Club in midtown Manhattan also marked the third straight final-round appearance in as many Kellner Cups by Hosey, who reached that round in each of the first two editions of this event with Jamie Bentley, whom he partnered to 19 out of a possible 21 ISDA finals over the previous two years before these two veterans, perhaps frustrated by their 2-17 record in these finals, decided to amicably part company at the end of last season.

Hosey's total of 25 finals over the past three years far exceeds that of any of Waite/Mudge's pursuers (Bentley is second with 21) and he and Berg successfully weathered an overtime-in-the-fifth scare in the quarters from Anders Wahlstedt and Scott Stoneburgh, then won in a solid four-game effort in their Sunday semi-final with Todd Binns and Jeff Mulligan.

In all three of his pre-final matches, Berg was able to harness his considerable firepower far more consistently than he had previously done this season. Two weeks earlier in Denver, he had been mainly responsible for his team's stunning collapse that saw a 2-1, 13-8 lead over James Hewitt and Josh McDonald dissolve into a pair of blown match-points in the ensuing tiebreaker and a tin-filled 15-13 fifth-game defeat.

In addition to showing up late for the match, Berg's unforced match-ending tin at 13-14 in the fifth had been preceded by an embarrassing gaffe on the second fourth-game match-point, when he actually hit his partner Hosey in the back with the ball on a shot he never should have attempted, eliciting a disgusted glare from his teammate at the time and a tongue-lashing back at the hotel several hours later.

INCANDESCENT GAME ONE
Chastened by these misadventures and determined to make amends, Berg had shown a dedication and resolve throughout this Kellner Cup that exceeded anything he had displayed earlier on, staying away from risky shot selection, communicating effectively with Hosey and bringing his extraordinary athleticism to the fore. His powerful forehand crosscourt was as effective a counter-weapon as Waite and Mudge encountered all season, his fitness and covering exuded an energy level that the pro-am final he had won just before the pro final clearly did nothing to deplete and his drops and corner shots accounted for most of the winners that the second seeds were able to amass in their gallant but uphill battle.

One of his winners, a crosscourt that nicked too severely for Waite to steer back into play, made the score 13-14 in the crucial first game. A mostly Mudge-led charge had enabled the defending champs to move from 9-10 to 14-11, but the wily Hosey had pounced on a Waite straight drop shot and responded with a well-disguised backhand roll-corner that Mudge never saw.

Hosey and Berg had played so well that game in surviving the opening barrage that Waite and Mudge often use to blitz their opponents that it seemed that they could not afford to expend that much effort and fail to come away with the game. Berg's winning crosscourt gave them a chance, but Hosey's drop shot off a severe Waite reverse-corner, a daring attempt to reprise the counter-punching winner he had engineered two points earlier, caught the top of the tin to the groans of a packed gallery eager for a possible upset.

INJURY
With that game in hand, however barely, Waite and Mudge then encountered another major roadblock at 3-all in the second game, when a Berg follow-through caught Mudge in the forehead with enough force to draw blood and, more importantly, to induce dizziness in his sturdy victim. There was a 15-minute stoppage of play while Mudge re-oriented himself, during which, as Waite later acknowledged, he was seriously concerned about whether his wounded partner would be able to continue.

As often happens in the wake of such an episode, the action was somewhat tentative when play finally resumed, only to be again interrupted eight evenly divided points later when the ball broke. These two incidents deprived the game of its normal rhythm, and a Hosey three-wall nick that made the score 9-8 was more than nullified by a 6-1 run that began with a rare Berg tin on a deep-court drop shot and a Hosey crosscourt that flew out of court and ended on a pair of consecutive Waite three-walls. The latter then tinned a three-wall to make it 11-13, but Mudge found a nick on an unexpected reverse-three-wall from way up front (in a situation in which he usually either blasts a crosscourt or plays a "Philadelphia shot", both of which wind up deep) and Waite nicked yet another three-wall to close out the game.

To the credit of the Hosey/Berg alignment, the disappointing two games to love situation they were by this time facing did nothing to staunch their unity or effort, and their resilience, augmented by a slight letdown by their opponents at the third game's outset, resulted in leads for the underdogs of 5-0 and 6-2. Their strategy of hitting the ball through the middle of the court was creating a few loose responses and Berg sprinkled three winning straight and crosscourt drop winners during this stretch. But he did catch the tin on yet another finely-carved finesse shot, and Hosey then hit a rail right back at himself for a "stroke" call.

This reversal was enough to rev Waite and Mudge up and the heights their game proceeded to reach resulted in an 11-0 run that sent an intimidating message of how hard to would be for any team to deny them their undefeated season and caused a 6-2 deficit to magically metamorphose into a 13-6 lead. Hosey and Berg did everything the could to hang on to the match, several times keeping the point alive with amazing retrievals and standing up to the attack they were under better than anyone could be expected to.

BRILLIANT FINISH
That they still lost those 11 straight points and 13 of the match's final 14 was totally due to the brilliance of their opponents, whether it was a pair of ground-hugging Waite reverse-corners or a trilogy of Mudge blasts that finally punctured Hosey's admirable match-long backboard. Mudge finished the tournament off with a scorching rail that whizzed past a diving Berg and died at the back wall, a fitting calling card for an awesome explosion that made him and Waite three-time Kellner Cup champions and seemed to eliminate the last major obstacle to the perfect season they are seeking.

To reach Rob Dinerman write to robd@squashtalk.com

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