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Anderson & Moran in Quarters Upset Win
By Rob Dinerman © 2002; all rights of reproduction reserved.
Feb 2 2003

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Todd Anderson and Peter Moran, the two best amateur doubles players in Wilmington, pulled off an upset five-game win over their seeded Philadelphia-based opponents Nigel Thain and Michael Koep in the quarter-final round of the 2003 Philly Boast event at the Philadelphia Racquet Club. As a result of their 10-15 15-11 15-12 14-17 15-9 victory yesterday morning, Anderson and Moran will now face top seeds RobWhitehouse and Rich Sheppard in the semis Sunday morning, with the winner to play in the afternoon final against whichever team emerges from the balancing semi between second seeds Geordie Lemmon and Jamie Heldring and Steve Park and former WPSA pro stand-out Alan Grant, whose sharp shooting was in evidence throughout his and his partner's straight-game win in their quarter with Sam Halpert and Mike Noll.

The exploits of Anderson and Moran enlivened what was otherwise a very quiet rainy day at the host club, whose atmosphere was muffled by both the dreary weather and the sobering news of the Columbia space shuttle tragedy early in the day. Koep and Thain are an established team just a few weeks removed from a solid four-game win over Scott Brehman and Addison West during the William White Invitational at the Merion Cricket Club. That match ended when Koep and Thain rallied from 11-14 to 17-14 in the final fourth, and they appeared strongly positioned to prevail through a similar fourth-game comeback this time as well when they saved two match points (the first on a bad Moran tin on an open forehand blast and the second when a Koep rail clung too tightly to the left wall for Anderson to return) and won the ensuing tiebreaker.

But near the end of that game Thain had lost his composure in a vociferous argument with the referee after being denied what seemed an obvious stroke call when Moran crossed in front of him on a loose forehand rail. Chastened, it appeared, by his unseemly eruption, the normally solid Thain played well below his usual standard throughout the fifth game, in which Moran and Anderson, aided by close to a dozen mis-hit winners, jumped so far ahead that a trio of match-point tins weren't nearly enough to prevent them from triumphing.

The other Saturday results were more routine, though Lemmon and Heldring were required to save a combined five game-points in the first and third games of their 18-17 15-8 18-17 match against Rob Dinerman and his Baltimore-based partner Stan Dorney, a former lacrosse star at the University of Virginia whose flat-out diving retrievals prolonged many a rally and for a time seemed to frustrate his opponents. Lemmon and Heldring had shocked the heavily favored Morris Clothier and Beau Buford in three games in the quarter-finals of the Gold Racquets Invitational two months ago and ultimately led Tom Harrity and Steve Scharff 14-12 in the fifth game of the final before yielding that game 15-14.

This time, however, the one-pointers landed in their column, the first on a controversial let-request denial and the second on a careering crosscourt
that Dorney couldn't excavate from the back wall. Lemmon and Heldring also made up four-point deficits in both games prior to the tiebreakers, and their main concern in their upcoming semi-final should be dealing with the shot selection and accuracy of Grant, who pretty much controlled the action against Halpert and Noll and who combined with Andrew Slater to defeat first John Churchill and Ben Gould and then Philadelphia Cricket pro colleagues Shane Coleman and Doug Whittaker to qualify into the main draw of a sanctioned though non-ranking ISDA pro doubles tour stop on the same court three months ago. Grant won three consecutive North American Open Doubles titles with Ned Edwards from 1989-91 and, though now in his early 40's and a full decade removed from those glory days, he still possesses a formidable arsenal of reverse-corners and drop shots from his left-wall position.

The A singles will pit Whitehouse against second seed Bob Clothier, a stand-out of the early-1080's varsities at Princeton, which won the '81 and '82 Ivy League title during his undergraduate career and took a big step towards doing the same yesterday afternoon in New Haven, when they defeated Yale, five matches to four on the strength of a match-ball-saving win at the No. 1 position. The second-seeded Clothier routed Ed Gross 9-4, 2 and 0 in the semis following the latter's four-game win against Halpert, an unpleasant match during which Gross frequently appeared to deliberately quick-serve Halpert and then accuse him of stalling when Halpert, who on at least two occasions was wiping his glasses when Gross served, understandably declined to attempt a return.

The best singles match of the day occurred in the top-half semi-final, in which Whitehouse and Duncan Pearson (whose younger brother Eric contributed a
key point in Princeton's narrow win over Yale) battled for well over an hour
before Whitehouse eked out the fourth and final game 10-9. Whitehouse had
earlier won in three over Margaret Elias, who played exceptionally well and
demonstrated the skills that had made her an all-American at Harvard, where
she was team co-captain last season. Her departure, as well as those of fellow class of 2002 alumnae and top-four team members Carlin Wing and Colby
Hall, was keenly felt by her alma mater, which fell in Cambridge yesterday afternoon to Trinity, eight matches to one, in what will probably turn out
to be the determining team meet for this year's national CSA championship.

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