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Tops Seeds Take William White Doubles
By Rob Dinerman © 2002; all rights of reproduction reserved.
Jan 26, 2003

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The No. 1 seeds triumphed in both the men's and women's open draws at the
2003 William White Doubles Championships, held as is traditional during the
first weekend in January at the historic Merion Cricket Club in Haverford, PA.
Byed to the quarter-finals of the strong 15-team draw by virtue of their
top-seeded standing, Geoff Kennedy and Eric Vlcek then proceeded to win three
straight matches without losing a single game, as did Jessica DiMauro and
reigning National Women's and Mixed Doubles champion Demer Holleran, who
proved themselves to be by far the class of the eight-team women's field.

It was widely thought going into the women's final that the second-seeded all-Aussie pairing of Melissa Vacca Martin and Narelle Tippett Krizek would pose a serious challenge to Holleran and DiMauro. Krizek won the 2002 Maryland State Open title with her husband Rob, the head pro at the Baltimore Country Club, surmounting a big late-match deficit to defeat Kennedy and Nat Otis in the final, and Martin, whose husband Brett was ranked as high as No. 2 in the PSA world rankings a few years ago, are athletically gifted and experienced competitors who formerly played on the WISPA pro singles circuit. In their pre-final pair of victories, and especially in the dominant last two games of their five-game semi-final win over Kat Van Blarcom and Lissen Tutrone, they also seemed to be meshing as a team to a far greater degree than they had in their first foray at the USSRA Nationals ten months ago, when Martin's unfamiliarity with doubles had been a far cry from the competence she displayed this weekend at Merion.

The Australian duo looked to be peaking coming into the final, but DiMauro and Holleran, her former coach at Penn, rode the momentum they had generated in prior wins over first Sarah West and 2002 Harvard captain Margaret Elias and then Dawn Grey and Amy Milanek. Holleran's typically exceptional shot making accounted for many winners, but perhaps even more important were her devastating high lobs that consistently pushed Martin and Krizek to the deepest regions of the court and cramped them with the back and side walls. Forced to frequently excavate the ball from those invidious positions, they kept serving up vulnerable responses which Hollerand and DiMauro converted for winners throughout what turned out to be a very convincing trio of games.

Right from its Friday night beginning, during which Sam Halpert and Nat Taylor almost capsized Tom Harrity and Greg Zaff, the men's tournament was filled with upsets and five-gamers. After dropping the first two games, Harrity and Zaff then rallied to win in five, but several other highly regarded teams were not nearly as fortunate. Beau Buford and eight-time USSRA National Doubles champion (and two-time White winner) Morris Clothier of the Racquet & Tennis Club lost the first two games of their quarter-final with the Eiteljorg brothers, Eric and Alex, both by a single point, one on a desperation fluke winner of Eric's racquet and the other on a stroke call against Buford. The New Yorkers, who had been upset in their first round at the Gold Racquets four weeks earlier, then lost a close fourth game to the Eiteljorgs, who also won their semi-final the following morning in four games against Zaff and Harrity.

The latter had won three of the previous four White doubles events ('99 and 2000 with Rob Whitehouse and last year with Vlcek), and he would recover
from this defeat to win the 40's hardball singles final 75 minutes later over
two-time White Open singles winner Rob Dinerman. But by the fourth and last
game of their clash with the second-seeded Eiteljorg brothers, both he and
his partner (and former early-1980's Williams College teammate) were showing
signs of fatigue, especially Zaff, who also reached the semis of the 40's event (where he and co-Boston denizen Jamie Fagan lost to the eventual and now three-time champs Gregg Finn and Rich Shepherd), which meant that he wound up playing SIX doubles matches and 22 combined games between Friday evening and mid-morning on Sunday. Zaff had intended to only play the 40's, for which he became eligible just a few weeks ago, but when Harrity's prospective partner Jamie Hickox injured a hamstring muscle several days before the tournament began, he enlisted his long-time friend to do double-duty, a bit of bravado that an exhausted Zaff vowed not to reprise going forward.

Mike Koep and Nigel Thain rallied from 14-11 down in the fourth game against Scott Brehman and Addison West to seal a good round-of-16 win by taking that game in overtime. Jamie Heldring and Dave Proctor trailed San Franciscans Keen Butcher (a former White winner in both single and doubles) and Kevin Jernigan two games to one but managed to win in five. Both of these teams were a little drained by their respective comeback efforts by the time they faced Vlcek and Kennedy, though Proctor and Heldring did hold a 14-12 lead in the first game before a Kennedy reverse-corner winner and a tinned Heldring straight drop necessitated a tiebreaker session, from the losing of which they never recovered. Vlcek and Kennedy had devastated Koep and Thain by going from 2-4 to 14-4 in the opening game of that match and cruised in after that shooting spree.

The best opportunity the Eiteljorgs garnered to win a game in the Sunday
evening final came in the third, which they led 12-9 before bowing to a final
Vlcek/Kennedy blitz that sealed the 15-9 15-10 18-15 outcome. Vlcek has now
the last three editions of this event, each with a different partner (2001
Clothier, 2002 Harrity, 2003 Kennedy) while Kennedy is now also a three-time
three-partner champion, having preceded this year's title with wins in '91
with Neal Vohr and in '97, a perfect six-year bisection, with Joe Fabiani,
Harrity's partner when he won the first of his four White doubles crowns in
'92.

Furthermore, Vlcek and Kennedy consolidated this championship performance
just five days later at the ISDA pro tour stop in Wilmington, where they
pulled off a great win in the final round of the qualifying over the redoubtable team of Preston Quick and Jamie Bentley to reach the main-draw quarter-final before losing to second seeds Viktor Berg and Josh McDonald. They were joined in the winner's circle by, as noted, Holleran and DiMauro, as well as by Shepherd and Finn (who for the third straight year defeated Doug Rice and Andy Nehrbas, their co-finalists as well in last year's National 40's, in the final), Palmer Page and Joe Swain, both on whom learned the game at Merion before starring at Penn, who won the 50's over top seeds Gordy Anderson and Malcolm Davidson, Marylanders Sandy Martin and Joe Fitzpatrick, who won the 55's by upending the top-seeded Bostonians Len Bernheimer and Tom Poor, and Joyce Davenport and Sara Luther, who weren't seeded No. 1 but clearly should have been, as they proved by knifing through the eight-team draw without dropping a game, including in their final over top seeds Molly Pierce and Jennifer Edson.

The softball flight was won by No. 1 seed Imran Khan, whose three-match nine-game run concluded with a final-round win over Dominic Hughes. Hughes had conquered second seed Johnny Wilson of Canada in four in his semi-final, while Khan defeated recent Williams stand-out Win Tanjaitrong in the other semi.

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