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Top Two Seeds Reach Casino Doubles Crown
By Rob Dinerman, Feb 24, 2007    
Squashtalk Independent News; © 2007 SquashTalk LLC

Five-time defending champions Gary Waite and Damien Mudge will try to finally get on the scoreboard this afternoon in Brooklyn against their this-season nemesis and top seeds Ben Gould and Paul Price, who have taken all four 2006-07 match-ups between these two elite pairings, including the early-February Briggs Cup final, the most recent ISDA tour stop.

Waite and Mudge remained undefeated against the rest of the field in hectic Saturday action with a quarterfinal 3-0 victory against Matt Jensen and Jeff Mulligan (five-game round-of-16 winners over Doug Lifford and Ayman Kerim) in the early afternoon and a taut but still straight-set 17-16 15-12 18-17 semifinal tally at the expense of fourth seeds Chris Walker and Viktor Berg. That latter match didn’t FEEL like a 3-0 score; in fact, an observer who wasn’t monitoring the score might just by watching the action have been forgiven for concluding that Walker and Berg were winning, as the more spectacular shots mostly came off their racquets.

They saved four game-balls against them in the one-point opening frame and gained two game-ball opportunities of their own in the third, but the first game ended on a well-disguised Mudge forehand roll-corner that Walker never saw, and the third concluded when Walker caught the tin when he attempted a backhand cross-court drop shot in front of Waite. Those reversals to some degree exemplified the current campaign for Walker and Berg, who, as the latter acidly noted in a brief post-match interview, have had trouble closing close games out this season (they led Scott Butcher and Clive Leach 14-10 in the fifth of their torrid Briggs Cup quarter, only to lose 15-14), in contrast to the success they enjoyed on that front in their initial season as partners a year ago.

Both bottom-half quarterfinals (in Walker/Berg’s case, over Michael Pirnak and Tyler Millard) went the three-game minimum, but both top-half quarters went the full five games, as did the ensuing semi. Gould and Price, seeded first for the first time this season in a tournament in which Waite and Mudge were entered, had a strange last three games against Butcher/Leach after the evenly divided opening pair of games. The top seeds won the third game 15-5, lost the fourth 15-6 and won the fifth 15-3, as neither team could even come close to surmounting the early deficits that they took turns facing. Butcher and Leach had a similar experience on this same Brooklyn court last year in their Waite/Mudge semi, in which they raced through a one-sided fourth game but were held to five points in the fifth.

Gould and Price then faced third seeds Preston Quick and John Russell, finalists this season in Baltimore, Vancouver and Boston, who had eked out a 16-15 fifth game of their  quarter with Mark Chaloner and Willie Hosey (on a Quick cross-court drive that dead nicked on the back wall behind Hosey) in which they trailed 10-4, which successful desperation late-game rally was preceded by the second game, in which they went from 7-13 to 18-17.

Russell and Quick then grabbed a 2-1 lead in their semi against Price/Gould on an audacious and perfectly struck Quick forehand reverse-corner at 14-13, but the potential momentum his shot presented faded swiftly when he and Russell fell behind 4-0 and 7-1 in the fourth game. This set up the deciding fifth game, the second of the day for both duos, and it buzzed energetically and evenly along to 9-9, at which stage first Price and then Gould smashed consecutive serve-return winners to make it 11-9.

Russell responded with a serve-return winner of his own, and his nick-finding cross-court backhand a few points later saved the first match-ball of the day and brought the score to 13-14. But Price (who had left the court at 4-14 in the second game, refusing to play the final point of that lopsided stanza) rose to the occasion, as he has done so often this season, with a wall-hugging backhand rail that died at the back wall and defied Russell’s attempt to dig it out, a dramatic ending to a 15-12 4-15 13-15 15-8 15-13 classic that could, for better or worse, significantly influence the course and outcome of Sunday’s 2:00 final.

Quarters Recap: Paul Price/Ben Gould d Scott Butcher/Clive Leach, 3-2; John Russell/Preston Quick d Willie Hosey/Mark Chaloner, 3-2; Chris Walker/Viktor Berg d Michael Pirnak/Tyler Millard, 3-0; Gary Waite/Damien Mudge d Matt Jensen/Jeff Mulligan, 3-0.

Semis: Price/Gould d Russell/Quick, 3-2; Waite/Mudge d Walker/Berg, 3-0.

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