Conway and Wimmer win Silver Racquet Doubles Tournament
By Rob Dinerman © 2003; all rights of reproduction reserved.
Nov 11, 2003      

Second seeds John Conway and Noah Wimmer dethroned top-seeded defenders Beau Buford and Jessie Sammis 11-15 15-12 15-8 15-10 earlier today to win the Silver Racquet Invitational, held as always concomitantly with competitions in racquets and court tennis singles and doubles at the Racquet & Tennis Club in mid-town Manhattan.

Wimmer's first-ever open doubles tournament win, complemented by the exploits last week in Baltimore of his two University Club of New York professional colleagues Damien Mudge (who won the Maryland Open with Gary Waite) and Alex Pavulans (who partnered Chris Deratnay to a huge first-round upset of third seeds Blair Horler and Clive Leach), has made it already a memorable November for the latter club.

It also prevented Buford and Sammis from mounting a successful defense of the title they had won last year. They have lived dangerously in this event, saving two match-points against them in the quarter-finals last year before winning the final over Sam Halpert and Ted Bruenner in five, and trailing 2-0, 7-3 in yesterday's semi-final to Jeff Stanley and Mac McAndrew before managing to turn that match around by lifting their game and avoiding Stanley's lethal racquet down the stretch.

But this time they went to the well once too often, falling behind 12-3 in the third game and 5-0, 9-3 and 11-4 in the fourth before staging rallies that were in each case too little, too late. As indicated by the foregoing, Buford and Sammis are a very streaky team, in both directions, and when one is either on or off his game, the other seems inevitably to follow.

In the first game it was Buford who was leading the way, knocking off backhand reverses in front of Conway, twice hitting rails that clung too tight to the left wall for Conway to scrape back and showing no ill effects in either his stroking or his movement from the disc operation he had undergone last spring after being injured in an automobile mishap. Sammis was also pressuring Conway with strong cross court volleys and Wimmer was caught out of position several times when he drifted too far over to try to cover the front left.

But after stepping out smartly to 7-3 and 11-4, Sammis and Buford seemed to let
up a little with the game well in hand, a costly lapse, as they never really
regained the efficiency and rhythm that had characterized their opening foray. They did, however, have more than enough of a cushion to capture that
first game, which they did on a Buford blast down the middle at 14-11 that
caught both Wimmer and Conway leaning too far to their respective walls to get a
racquet on the ball. The second game drifted to 7-all, whereupon two
consecutive Sammis tins (one of a tinned volley cross court drop and the other on an overhit into the gallery) and a Wimmer three-wall winner made the score 11-8
and gave the Conway/Wimmer pairing the margin they needed to even the score at a game apiece. Buford and Sammis had saved two game-balls against them, but on the third at 14-12, Conway passed an unsighted Sammis on a well-angled backhand cross court to seal the game.

As noted, the third game got away from Buford, who perplexingly had stopped hitting his reverse-corner even though he had been scoring well with it, and Sammis, whose normally solid game went terribly sour, especially in a mid-game stretch in which he ended three consecutive points by hitting balls out of
court. By the time this trilogy was over, so pretty much was their chances of
winning the game, though an out-of-the-blue five-point rally brought them
back to 8-13 before a Sammis tin and a Wimmer three-wall that caught both of his
opponents backpedaling gave him and Conway a two games to one lead.

Sammis and Buford appeared determinedly aware of the urgency of their situation when the fourth game began. But a knifed Wimmer forehand reverse-corner
on the first point seemed to unsettle them, and before they knew it they were
behind 5-0. They crawled back to 3-6, but then fell victim to a 5-1 run keyed
by two errors, a Wimmer drive past Sammis on the right wall, and two Conway
reverses, one of which fell for a winner and the on the other of which
Buford tinned a responding drop. Now down 11-4 and with their situation rapidly
becoming hopeless, Sammis and Buford courageously summoned up one final
charge which began on a ground-hugging Sammis forehand reverse-corner, continued when Buford hit a rail that Conway could only foul-tip and picked up additional steam on a bad unforced Wimmer tin and a front-court winner each from Sammis and Buford.

Suddenly they had closed to 9-11, the possibility of yet another successful Silver Racquet comeback (which would have been their fourth in these last two years) now very real. The pace of the play, which had been somewhat ragged and even desultory in the early going, had by this stage really picked up, and another point in the Buford/Sammis column might have made their eleventh-hour run unstoppable. But Wimmer blasted a cross court past Buford, then semi-nicked a low forehand volley in front of Sammis to expand the lead to 13-9. A Wimmer drop shot that Buford was unable to react to gave him and Conway five match-balls, the second of which they salted away when Conway nailed a ball that careened off Sammis's racquet, sailing well over the left wall and into oblivion.

Wimmer and Stanley had been slated to be partners this weekend in the ISDA
pro doubles tour stop at the Philadelphia Racquet Club. So had R & T pros Jeff Osborne (who instead played in the Silver Racquet with Matt Sharnoff) and
Scott Butcher, a 2000 (with Morris Clothier) and 2001 (with Buford) Silver Racquet champion who played this event with Josiah Hornblower. All four had been forced to change their plans when the Philadelphia event was cancelled late last
month.

Stanley and McAndrew defeated Osborne and Sharnoff in five before their five-game semi-final loss to Buford and Sammis. Clothier and Andy Walter won
their quarter in four over Jim Ardrey and Ryan O'Connell before losing, also in four, to Wimmer and Conway.

But the match of the tournament was, ironically, the only match prior to the quarters in the nine-team field. Yasir Kamel and J. D. Hill engaged eventual Wimmer/Conway quarter-final victims Ted Duff and John Burke in a five-game,
four-overtime thriller that was a testament to Kamel's racquet firepower and
2002 USSRA 65-and-over finalist Hill's staying power. After dropping the
first game by one point, this pair actually WON the second game from 7-14 down!
They then took the third easily before losing the fourth in a 3-1 tiebreaker
before rallying late in the fifth to knot the issue at 13-all. Though they
didn't win a single point in the ensuing best-of-nine tiebreaker, Kamel and Hill
exited the court as heroes and got the 2003 Silver Racquet Invitational off
to a rousing start.

Tournament Recap

Preliminary: Ted Duff/John Burke d Yasir Kamel/J. D. Hill, 3-2.

Quarters:
Beau Buford/Jessie Sammis d Scott Butcher/Josiah Hornblower, 3-0;
Jeff Stanley/Mac McAndrew d Matt Sharnoff/Jeff Osborne, 3-2;
Andy Walter/Morris Clothier d Ryan O'Connell/Jim Ardrey, 3-1;
John Conway/Noah Wimmer d Duff/Burke, 3-0.

Semis:
Buford/Sammis d Stanley/McAndrew, 3-2;
Conway/Wimmer d Walter/Clothier, 3-1.

Final:
Conway/Wimmer d Buford/Sammis, 3-1 11-15 15-12 15-8 15-10

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