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Silver Racquet Semis: Late-Game Rallies Put Clothier/Rosen In Final
By Rob Dinerman, Nov 5, 2007    
Squashtalk Independent News; © 2007 SquashTalk LLC

Silver Racquet Semis: Late-Game Rallies Put Clothier/Rosen In Final

Hammered throughout most of the first game, and several points behind in the closing stages of that game, as well as the third and fourth, second seeds Morris Clothier and Dave Rosen nevertheless managed to garner each of those games with unstoppable rallies in the last few points and came away with a highly entertaining 16-15 16-14 8-15 18-16 victory over third seeds Greg Park and Rob Whitehouse early this afternoon in the semifinal round of the Silver Racquets Squash Doubles Invitational at the Racquet & Tennis Club. While thousands of runners streamed up First Avenue to roaring crowds just a few blocks north-east, these two teams battled equally ferociously in a much more tranquil setting, in some ways disappointingly so, given how few spectators made their way to the host club’s spacious gallery to view the extremely high-quality action.

Park was returning to the same arena in which he and his father, Steve, had won the Open portion of the U. S. Father & Son tournament six months ago last spring, defeating defending champions Scott and Will Simonton in the final. His power, combined with Whitehouse’s early sharp-shooting, got them to a fully safe-appearing 12-5 advantage in the opening frame. But a few careless errors then crept into their game, and Rosen and especially Clothier (whose uncharacteristic hard-serving caught his opponents off guard, eliciting loose returns) seized this opening and embarked on an 8-1 run that knotted the score at 13-all. He then committed a rare error and Park blasted a cross-court past Rosen to give the Philadelphians a triple-game-point in the best-of-five tiebreaker, but Park then tinned a forehand roll-corner and Clothier caught a dead-nick in front of Whitehouse to even the score and regain the serve, which he hit with such force that a flailing Whitehouse over-hit his return, which sailed just over the back wall to give Rosen/Clothier that game.

As noted above, this first-game pattern of Whitehouse and Park leading most of the time only to surrender the game at the very end prevailed throughout the remainder of the match, the one exception being the third game, in which they never allowed their opponents the opportunity to stage a comeback. Leading 13-11 in the second, Park made the mistake of letting his hard serve carom too far off the back wall, which gave Clothier just the room and angle he needed to stick a beautiful inside-out backhand roll-corner that landed way in front of Park. A Rosen backhand reverse-corner then tied the game, leading to another best-of-five call, which Clothier dominated with his pair of winners, including the shallow forehand drive he hit at game-ball.

Then in the fourth, after Whitehouse and Park had rallied from 7-11 to 12-all, then 13-all, they proceeded to a 3-1 advantage in the best-of-nine session, again and as in the first and fourth games ahead by two points and just two points from the game. They seemed to have luck on their side as well at that juncture, as that third point had come on a Park mis-hit that just trickled over the tin. But a Rosen front-side backhand cross-court, followed by a Park drop-shot tin, evened the count at 3-all, at which stage, as he so often seems to do, Clothier rose to the fore with first a reaction reverse-corner volleyed winner off a front-court exchange, and then a remarkable over-the-head backhand drop volley that sped into the front-left nick before Whitehouse had time to react, a fitting conclusion to a match in which his acumen and accuracy were the key to the outcome.

This semifinal had been preceded by the 15-12, 8 and 7 victory by top seeds and ’05 Silver Racquets champions Whitten Morris and Michael Ferreira over Dylan Patterson and Hamed Anvari, who were at their most successful when, as happened during much of the first game (in which they held small advantages before a five-point Ferreira/Morris run from 9-11 to 14-11 accounted for that game) and the first half of the second, they kept the ball deep and prevented the No. 1 seeds from creating the fast-paced action at which they excel. By beginning the second game with parabolic lobs (especially off Patterson’s racquet) and then jumping in with incisive shot-making when the court opened up, Patterson and Anvari led 4-0, 6-2 and 8-6.

But Morris started generating too much pace with his scorching cross-courts for Patterson to handle, and suddenly he and Anvari found themselves buried under a Ferreira/Morris avalanche that landed that game’s final nine points (as well as the first two points of the third game) in their column in fewer than five minutes. It will be interesting to see whether Clothier and Rosen are able to weather this quick-strike capacity that is such a major part of the Ferreira/Morris repertoire. Certainly an increasingly flustered Patterson and Anvari were unable to do so, as Ferreira swept to an 11-4 lead in the third, which they closed out decisively to attain a final round Sunday afternoon in which Ferreira and Clothier, who partnered each other to the winner’s circle of this event a year ago, will now be facing each other as opponents later today.

Semis Recap:
Michael Ferreira/Whitten Morris def Dylan Patterson/Hamed Anvari, 15-12, 8 and 7
Dave Rosen/Morris Clothier def Rob Whitehouse/Greg Park, 16-15 16-14 8-15 18-16.

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