Seeds Advance in Maryland
By Rob Dinerman; SquashTalk © 2005; all rights of reproduction reserved.
Oct 15 , 2005     

Top seeds Gary Waite and Damien Mudge, winners in both prior editions of the Maryland Club Open, began their title defense yesterday evening (and notched their 60th consecutive match victory in the process, only 16 short of the record 76 straight they compiled between April 2001 and February 2003) with a 3-0 quarter-final win over Scott Butcher and Josh McDonald.

Waite and Mudge will now face their foremost challenger last spring, namely third seeds Clive Leach and Michael Pirnak, in a semifinal rematch of the terrific San Francisco final these four staged in the last tournament of the 2004-05 ISDA season last May, which seesawed hair-raisingly all the way to 12-all in the fifth before The Champs were able to come away with the last three points and thereby preserve their imperiled spotless season-long slate.

The bottom-half semifinal will match Preston Quick and Ben Gould, second-seeded by virtue of their tour-leading five times as co-finalists to Waite and Mudge last season, against fourth seeds Viktor Berg and Chris Walker, a newly formed partnership that made an impressive debut yesterday afternoon with a 3-0 win over Bostonians Doug Lifford and Pat Malloy, who had eked out a 3-2 win in the last round of qualifying earlier in the day over Joe Pentland and Ayman Karim. In the other pair of quarterfinals, Leach and Pirnak eliminated David Kay and John Russell in four games and Gould and Quick did the same to qualifiers Chris Deratnay and Alex Pavulans.

The latter, who had been based at the University Club of New York the past three years before leaving last spring, flew over from his new home base in Latvia and plans to do the same this entire season, his third with Deratnay.

Their best career win occurred two years ago in the maiden edition of this $20,000 tourney, when they followed a successful qualifying effort over James Hewitt and Lifford with a major upset victory at the expense of Leach and Blair Horler, who had upended Mudge and Waite twice, in the Canadian Pro and Kellner Cup, just months earlier in the winter and spring of 2003.

This time Pavulans and Deratnay again survived the qualifying, rallying from 8-14 to 17-15 in the pivotal second game of their 3-0 ouster of Rob Dinerman and Greg Mathis (whose buried backhand-reverse at 14-all had averted a fifth game against Lefika Ragonste and Peter Heffernan one round earlier), and again came up with a good effort against Gould and Quick before eventually bowing out in four well-played games. Lifford and Malloy, as noted, had even more trouble getting through their qualifying bracket, as Pentland and Karim had in their opening qualifying match given notice of their capability in a 3-0 (two overtimes) win over Andrew Cordova, the tournament chairman and popular head pro of the host Maryland Club, and Dave Rosen.

INJURIES DEPLETE FIELD
Three teams had been forced to withdraw when one of their players suffered an injury. Willie Hosey, a finalist with Pirnak in this event in 2003, and Horler had been expected to be a significant force, but the latter's balky right knee made it advisable that he undergo some additional rehab, though he fully plans to be ready for the next ranking event, the Big Apple Open at the New York Athletic Club, whose final round Horler and Pirnak reached last year and which is scheduled in three weeks' time in early November. Paul Price, the PSA standout who made such a splash in ISDA competition last spring, was entered with Jamie Bentley, but the latter re-aggravated an old foot injury and is sidelined for a few weeks. And ISDA executive director Hewitt and Tyler Millard had to pull out when Millard hurt his shoulder.

McDonald, who reached the 2004 Maryland Club Open final with Berg, and Butcher, who along with Martin Heath won the non-ranking but highly competitive Monticello Open in Denver two weeks ago, were unable to derail the Waite/Mudge juggernaut which, as noted, now confronts Leach and Pirnak early this evening.
Whichever teams win today's semis will have a full day off (other than pro-am
matches) tomorrow, since for the first time ever, this tournament will be having a Monday night final.

Tournament Recap:
Qualifying:
Chris Deratnay/Alex Pavulans d Dirck Bartlett/Doug Hoffberger, 3-1;
Greg Mathis/Rob Dinerman d Lefika Ragonste/Peter Heffernan, 3-1;
Joe Pentland/Ayman Karim d Dave Rosen/Andrew Cordova, 3-0;
Doug Lifford/Pat Malloy d Wade Johnstone/Lucky Odeh, 3-0.
Deratnay/Pavulans d Mathis/Dinerman, 3-0;
Lifford/Malloy d Pentland/Karim, 3-2.

Quarters:
Gary Waite/Damien Mudge d Josh McDonald/Scott Butcher, 3-0;
Michael Pirnak/Clive Leach d John Russell/David Kay, 3-1;
Chris Walker/Viktor Berg d Lifford/Malloy, 3-0;
Preston Quick/Ben Gould d Deratnay/Pavulans, 3-1.

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