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WAITE-MUDGE TAKE
HAMILTON CUP AS ISDA SEASON BEGINS IN DENVER
By Rob Dinerman
The 2001-2002 ISDA pro doubles season got underway during the closing days of September with the Hamilton Cup competition at the Denver Club. Even though a singles hardball was used, the effect on the ball of the mile-high altitude, augmented by the unseasonably warm weather, rewarded slugging and mitigated the effectiveness of shotmaking, causing a string of long, attritional points and a substantial delay in the start of many of the matches on the late-day schedule.
Although the top-seeded two-time defenders Gary Waite and Damian Mudge can either belt or finesse, this hyper-active environment was very much to their liking, and they moved to their 14th victory in 15 career attempts (dating back to the spring of '99) without the loss of a single game.
They were, however, pressed to two one-point games (the first and third) in their quarter-final opener against Blair Horler and Clive Leach, who steadily improved throughout last season and highlighted this progress in the final ranking event last spring, the $100,000 Kellner Cup in New York, where they followed a successful qualifying effort with a 3-2 upset win over the fourth seeds(and Heights Casino champs two months earlier)Michael Pirnak and Viktor Berg. Though they were undone on this occasion by Waite's brilliance on both simultaneous game-points(with Gary rifling a crosscourt winner past Leach in the first game and executing an ungettable backhand straight drop to seal the third), Horler and Leach proved they are a dangerous and still-improving team, and will definitely be a factor with the more malleable draws that presumably lie ahead of them.
Also a victim of some one-point quarter-final disappointment and also a team with many victories ahead of it was the newly-created pairing of the aforementioned Pirnak with longtime doubles superstar Jamie Bentley, who in each of the last two seasons teamed up so successfully with Willie Hosey that they were stopped short of the finals only once per season while forging an extraordinary 27-1 pre-finals record in 2000-2001. Hosey and his new teammate Viktor Berg(who partnered Waite to four of his nine ISDA wins last season while Mudge was sidelined for several months last winter by a severe wrist injury)won their quarter-final in three over James Hewitt and Doug Lifford, but an expected semi-final confrontation with his former partner Bentley was averted late Saturday evening when yet another new team, composed of '01 British Open finalist and longtime English softball star Chris Walker, in only his second ISDA career appearance and his first with David Kay, won their fourth match of the tournament (preceded by two qualifying efforts and a 3-1 main-draw win over the all-Aussie pairing of Scott Butcher and veteran softball great Brett Martin), 18-17 in the fifth, on a tinned Pirnak forehand three-wall.
It was a happy conclusion to a (by far) career best day for Kay, who also defeated both Berg and Mudge(in a brutal five)in the Hamil Cup singles competition between his two main-draw doubles matches, and thus found himself in the singles final and a doubles semi-final, having won a combined six matches in two days, four of them, two in each event, in that day alone! Understandably over-extended by the draining nature of these two-track achievements, Kay bowed in the singles final Sunday morning to Waite(who thereby annexed his fifth consecutive Hamil Cup in five editions of the event)and in his doubles semi that afternoon to Hosey-Berg, though he and walker did take the first game and demonstrated both Kay's staying power and the noteworthy swiftness of Walker's learning curve in doubles.
The top-half semi went quickly to the eventual champs over their opponents, Todd Binns and Jeff Mulligan, who had engineered some early-tourney heroics of their own in pre-semi wins over first Josh MacDonald and Tyler Millard(with Mulligan delighting his hometown Denver fans by capping off a comeback from 12-14 in the fifth with a crushed crosscourt winner past MacDonald at simultaneous match-point)and then the seeded and favored Canadian contingent of Scott Dulmage and Dean Brown, whose uncharacteristic torpor throughout their straight-game defeat was best exemplified by a game-ending double-fault off Dulmage's usually accurate bat at 12-14 in the first. Though it went the three-game minimum, it must be said that the final had its moments and may in fact constitute an augury of more diverse outcomes to follow.
Hosey and Berg pushed their formidable opponents to their third one-point game of the tournament in the first, whereupon Mudge hit a forehand crosscourt with such force that Hosey, an outstanding retriever, couldn't handle its pronounced ricochet off the back wall. Then, after a one-sided second game, Hosey and Berg made one more charge in the third, catching their opponents at 13-all before Waite and Mudge called "no-set", then justified their somewhat surprising selection of the shortest possible tiebreaker by knocking off both the ensuing pair of points for 18-17, 15-6, 15-13 and the first of what figures to be many championships this season for a duo that began the 2001-2002 campaign by successfully defending their Hamilton Cup title and giving notice that, until proven otherwise, they are still very definitely the team to beat.
This page will be covering and analyzing the ISDA Doubles tour, with results, updated rankings, photos, highlights and analysis throughout what should be a very exciting 2001-2002 season.
