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Knee Injury Sidelines Bentley, Prevents Namesake Title Defense
Nov 13, 2007    
Squashtalk Independent News; © 2007 SquashTalk LLC

Plagued by a recurrence of the right knee injury that, along with arm problems, has forced him to withdraw from all of the ISDA events he entered last spring and throughout this past fall, ISDA icon Jamie Bentley announced this morning that he will not be able to participate this weekend in the Jim Bentley Cup, named after his father and held at the Cambridge Club in downtown Toronto, where the younger Bentley is the current head pro. Bentley had won this event last year with Paul Price, the THIRTEENTH partner (a record by a wide margin) with whom he had won a pro doubles tournament over the past 20 years, and he had planned to play this year with Willie Hosey, with whom Bentley had earned the No. 2 ISDA team ranking in both 1999-2000 and 2000-2001, the first two years of the ISDA tour. Hosey will now play with Josh McDonald, who will be making only his second appearance in ISDA competition in the past two years.

Bentley, 43, whose most recent ISDA performance had come when he and Hosey had unexpectedly reached the semis of the Briggs Cup early last February (defeating fourth seeds John Russell and Preston Quick in the process), had planned on retiring from ISDA play after this upcoming event, and he now needs to decide if he wants to stick with that decision in light of this withdrawal. This fall has become a period of transition for a number of decorated ISDA veterans: Gary Waite, who with Damien Mudge has formed the No. 1 team for the seven-year period from 1999-2000 through 2005-06 until they were finally displaced by Price and Ben Gould last season, had said he was finished with ISDA competition at the end of last season (which concluded with The Champs winning the season-ending event in Long Island in mid-April), but he is in the non-ranking round-robin six-team draw this weekend with Quick as his partner, and is entered as well in the ranking Vancouver event early next month with Jeff Mulligan. What Waite decides to do in the post-Christmas portion of the season remains to be seen, and might hinge on his results in that pair of impending Canadian tourneys.

Another long-time ISDA performer, and three-time finalist (with Price at the ’05 Canadian Pro and with Clive Leach in the ’06 Bentley Cup, where they led Price/Bentley 2-1, 12-9, and in the ’07 U. S. Nationals, which they reached via an 18-17 fifth-game semi over Hosey/Gould, who held triple-match-ball in that tiebreaker), who announced his retirement earlier this month is Scott Butcher, who will be moving back at the end of this calendar year to his native Australia, where he and his wife are expecting their first child later this winter. Butcher pinch-hit for Bentley as Hosey’s partner in the Big Apple Open, where they followed a rallying win over Joe Pentland and Mark Price (who led two games to one) with a 3-0 quarterfinal win over fourth seeds Quick and John Russell.

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