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Walker/Leach Sweep To Maryland Club Open Title 
By Rob Dinerman, Oct 23, 2007    
Squashtalk Independent News; © 2007 SquashTalk LLC

For the second time in as many weeks, fourth seeds Clive Leach and Chris Walker overcame a palpable deficit against No. 1 ranked Paul Price and Ben Gould en route to capturing an ISDA championship. Last week, the two British stars came back from the near-dead (down 2-0, 14-9) with an 8-0 game-ending run in a St. Louis semi that gave them too much momentum for Damien Mudge and Willie Hosey to withstand in the subsequent three-game final. Then this past Sunday afternoon in the final round in Baltimore, Leach and Walker trailed defending champs Price and Gould two games to one, only to capture the 15-12, 15-11 remainder, by the end of which the demoralized Aussies, whose run to the No. 1 2006-07 ISDA end-of-season ranking had ironically begun on this same white-painted-floor Maryland Club exhibition court a year ago (when they recorded the first of their four-straight wins over perennial No. 1’s Mudge and Gary Waite), were reduced to taking their frustrations out on their respective racquets: Gould hurled his 40 feet to the front wall after his tin at 9-13 had effectively sealed his team’s imminent defeat, and Price smashed his in the alcove just outside the court in the match’s immediate aftermath, an act clearly audible to the gallery, where its splintered shards lay until they were swept up by a janitor several hours later.

In thus concluding their three-match march to this title, Walker (who in eight days doubled his ISDA title total, his previous pair of conquests having been with Viktor Berg in the ’06 Cleveland and ’07 Denver tourneys) and Leach, playing in only their second and third events ever as partners, made it two for two this season, consolidated their St. Louis triumph and the transformation of the ISDA competitive landscape it entailed and emphatically announced themselves, at least to this still very early juncture of the current season, as the best doubles team on the tour.

Only two of the 10 main-draw matches played prior to the final went more than the three-game minimum, none in the quarters, which latter fact seems to prove the distance between the top four teams and the rest of the ISDA field. Scott Butcher and James Hewitt, first-time partners, defeated qualifiers Rob Dinerman and Tom Harrity, then bowed to Leach (Butcher’s partner throughout their very successful 2006-07 season) and Walker in the quarters. Another newly formed team, Mike Pirnak and Mark Chaloner, was thought to be capable of challenging Preston Quick and John Russell, especially after a 3-0 round of 16 win over Andrew Cordova, head pro of the host club, and Tim Porter, but Russell and Quick had too much weaponry, as did Price and Gould against Matt Jensen and Jeff Mulligan and Mudge and Berg against Mark Price and Joe Pentland, first-round winners over Dave Rosen and Doug Lifford, who had won an exciting qualifying final-round match in five games against Jamie Crombie and Michael Puertas.

In the semis, Russell’s on-fire short game and the string of winners it produced in front of Paul Price accounted for the first game and helped lead to a pivotal overtime best-of-five session to conclude the second. But Price and Gould prevailed, three points to one, which carried them through the third game and (barely, via another tiebreaker) the fourth as well. In the bottom-half semi, Walker and Leach controlled most of the action and were able to capitalize on the fact that Berg, who had missed the St. Louis event after pulling his right hamstring during an exhibition match that he and Simon Parke had played in Vancouver earlier this month, was slightly favoring the still-recovering muscle and hence lacked the amazing foot speed that is normally one of his foremost traits. Several times he winced after a strenuous point and there were just enough usually retrievable balls that he failed to reach to make a difference, most notably at simultaneous-game-point in the third and final game, when Walker sneaked a forehand cross-court drop shot to the right-front that Berg was unable to track down.

Tournament Recap

Rd of 16:
Paul Price/Ben Gould bye;
Matt Jensen/Jeff Mulligan d Ayman Kerim/Ben Howell, 3-1;
Michael Pirnak/Mark Chaloner d Tim Porter/Andrew Cordova, 3-0;
ohn Russell/Preston Quick bye;
Chris Walker/Clive Leach bye;
James Hewitt/Scott Butcher d Rob Dinerman/Tom Harrity, 3-0;
Joe Pentland/Mark Price d Dave Rosen/Doug Lifford, 3-0;
Damien Mudge/Viktor Berg bye.

Qtrs:
Price/Gould d Jensen/Mulligan, 3-0;
Russell/Quick d Pirnak/Chaloner, 3-0;
Walker/Leach d Hewitt/Butcher, 3-0;
Mudge/Berg d Pentland/M. Price, 3-0.

Semis:
Price/Gould d Russell/Quick, 3-1;
Walker/Leach d Mudge/Berg, 3-0.

Final:
Walker/Leach d Price/Gould, 3-2.

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