Walker and Berg Charge into NAO Finals
By Rob Dinerman; SquashTalk © 2006; all rights of reproduction reserved.
Jan 21, 2006     

What would have been a possible change in the No. 1 ISDA pro doubles ranking was thwarted this afternoon when Chris Walker and Viktor Berg saved a total of six game-points against them and defeated second seeds Preston Quick and Ben Gould 16-15 15-10 17-15 this evening at the Greenwich Country Club in the semifinal round of the $ 50,000 North American Open Doubles championship.

Berg and Walker, who lost to Quick and Gould in the Wilmington final two weeks ago, will now face five-time defending champions Gary Waite and Damien Mudge, who won the balancing semi in three over Jamie Bentley and Paul Price earlier in the afternoon. This was the first time in the six ranking events so far this season that Quick and Gould have been stopped short of the final, and it means that, rather than control their own destiny, they have to hope that Waite and Mudge lose tomorrow in order to wrest away the top ranking from The Champs, who have never been ranked anywhere below No. 1 in the six-plus years that the ISDA has existed.

Quick and Gould led 2-0, set-three in the opening game before losing the tiebreaker when Quick tinned a backhand reverse-corner on simultaneous game-ball. They later attained a 14-11 advantage in the third game before another unstoppable late-game Walker/Berg surge forced another best-of-five overtime session, which ended when Gould, scuttling over to the front-left to retrieve a delicate Walker straight drop, may or may not have been able to successfully scrape it back: the referee called it down, one of the lines judges thought it was "up", but when the second judge said he was unsighted (the gallery was absolutely packed, and there were too many bobbing heads in his line of vision), the referee's decision became final.

Walker and Berg were up two games to love on Mudge and Waite in the semis of the Big Apple Open in New York in early November and almost won the third game as well before eventually bowing in five. But, as witness the Wilmington/Greenwich turnaround this first-year pairing just engineered vs Quick and Gould, they seem well positioned to seek a second revenge in as many days when the clash with the five-time defenders at 1:00 tomorrow afternoon.

North American Open
Round HIll Club, Greenwich
Semifinals:
[1] Gary Waite/Damien Mudge def Paul Price/Jamie Bentley, 3-0;
Chris Walker/Viktor Berg def [2] Preston Quick/Ben Gould, 3-0.

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