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Silver Racquet Final: Ferreira and Morris Prevail  
By Rob Dinerman, Nov 5, 2007    
Squashtalk Independent News; © 2007 SquashTalk LLC

Trailing 14-7 in the first game of a final-round clash between the tournament’s top two seeds, Michael Ferreira and Whitten Morris saved eight consecutive game-balls against them and made that reversal stick by proceeding to a 15-14, 12 and 8 victory yesterday afternoon over Morris Clothier and Dave Rosen to capture their second Silver Racquets title in the past three years. It was actually the third consecutive trip to the winner’s circle of this annual autumn invitational for Ferreira, who won it with Clothier last year while Morris was recovering from left-knee surgery.

The victory also concluded a very productive though hectic stretch for Morris, who had also entered the ISDA Big Apple Open with Trevor McGuinness, with whom he advanced to the quarters by defeating first Andrew Cordova and Ben Howell in the qualifying and then James Hewitt and Tyler Millard in the main-draw round of 16. Morris therefore wound up playing two matches a day for each of three straight days, going a combined 5-1 with his pair of talented left-wall partners.

For Clothier and Rosen, whose several near-winners at game-ball all were thwarted by some spectacular Ferreira/Morris retrievals and who never fully recovered from the loss of that opening game, this match was an unwanted mirror image of their semifinal win several hours earlier over third seeds Greg Park and Rob Whitehouse. The latter pairing led 12-5 in the first game (and later 13-11 and two-love, set-three in the ensuing best-of-five tiebreaker), 13-11 in the second and 3-1, set-five in the fourth-game best-of-nine tiebreaker, only to wind up losing each of those games

Surprisingly in view of how much more grueling, tense and difficult that semi had been than the balancing 3-0 Ferreira/Morris victory over Dylan Patterson and Hamed Anvari, Clothier and Rosen had been the team that came out of the blocks fast in the final, throughout almost all of whose first game they had been fully as dominant against Ferreira/Morris as Whitehouse and Park had been against them in the first game of that semifinal. Clothier, who had conjured up all of the end-game winners during the semis with his creativity and accuracy, was maintaining his very high level and Rosen was playing better than at any time all weekend.

But Clothier’s touch betrayed him at simultaneous-game-ball, when his attempted down-the-middle backhand drive caught the tin, culminating the Ferreira/Morris game-saving 8-0 run and permanently changing the match’s dynamics. The second game did seesaw along all the way to 12-all, but when Ferreira and Morris made off with the subsequent three points they were on the clear, pouring it on throughout the decisive third game and exuberantly sprinting across the finish line. They are always a treat to explode on an extended spurt (like the 11-0 charge beginning midway through the second game against Patterson and Anvari Sunday morning that sealed that outcome) and they may be ready to do some damage this coming weekend in the ISDA tour stop in Chicago.

Finals Recap:
Michael Ferreira/Whitten Morris def Dave Rosen/Morris Clothier, 15-14, 12 and 8.

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