Quick & Krizek Each Wins 2nd Doubles Title
By Rob Dinerman; SquashTalk © 2006; all rights of reproduction reserved.
May 1, 2006     

Narelle Krizek and Preston Quick, who had teamed up to win the world mixed tourney this past Wednesday evening, each garnered their second world doubles title in five days, one on each wall in both cases, by combining with their respective partners to win the world women's and men's events yesterday afternoon at the Toronto Cricket Club. Krizek and Steph Hewitt, who had opposed each other in a five-game Mixed semifinal (when Hewitt and husband James dropped a close decision including several mid-match one-point tiebreakers), handily out-played 2006 Canadian women's champs Jessica Dimauro and Seanna Keating with surprisingly decisive scores of 15-9, 13 and 5, while Quick and Chris Deratnay out-lasted 2006 Canadian men's winners Jamie Bentley and Scott Stoneburgh in five games, the last four of which had to be resolved with a tiebreaker session.

Neither Dimauro (whose Sunday setback, coming as it did after she and Scott Dulmage had dropped the Mixed final in four, represented her second worlds final-round loss this week) and Keating nor Krizek and Hewitt came close to losing a game prior to their final. In the semis, Keating and Dimauro repeated their final-round Canadians win over Karen Jerome and Caro Paskulin, while Hewitt and Krizek repelled what had been thought would be a stiff challenge from No. 1 seed and 2005 and 2006 U. S. women's doubles champions Alicia McConnell and Pochi Holdefer, a rare doubles loss for McConnell, who won nine straight U. S. crowns with Demer Holleran from 1996-2004 before Holdefer became her partner last year. Throughout their dominant three-match sprint through the draw, Hewitt and Krizek put forth a focused, disciplined attack while meshing with a degree of seamless chemistry that belied the fact that this was only their second tournament together, their first having come in mid-January when they became the first-ever women's team to enter the qualifying draw of the North American Open!

The tally of the Quick/Deratnay men's final vs. Stoneburgh/Bentley was
9-15 17-15 16-18 18-14 18-15. As Krizek had done in switching from the right-wall post she had filled in the Mixed event to the left-wall position she held in the Women's event, Quick successfully moved in the opposite direction when he partnered up with Deratnay, and their ability to grab and keep early leads in those pivotal overtimes spelled the difference in their narrow victory.

Though he has always been on the left wall during the past four seasons (the first two with Bentley prior to his last two years with Ben Gould) in ISDA professional play, Quick has played plenty of right wall as well, most notably in combining with Eric Vlcek to win the 2003 and 2004 U. S. Doubles, and he will be on that wall as well in the ISDA season-ending event in San Francisco in a few weeks when he partners up with John Russell. As Krizek had done in the women's final, Deratnay scored frequently with shallow backhand rails, and his three-wall pressured Bentley enough to mitigate the latter's power as this draining route-goer moved along.

The Men's 30's final came down to a rematch of the thrilling five-game Canadian Nationals Open semifinal seven weeks ago which Scott Dulmage and Richard Thomson, trailing two games to one, had rallied to win 15-12 in the fifth over Paul Deratnay and Taylor Fawcett. This time Dulmage/Thomson fell even further behind (two/LOVE as opposed to two/one) but again managed a successful comeback, improving each game along the way to a 10-15 12-15 15-12 15-10 15-9 victory that represented a solid companion-piece for Dulmage to the Canadian Mixed title that he and Dimauro had annexed in early February.

The only other of the nine age-group men's finals to go five games besides the 30's was the 60's, in which the fabled Boston pairing of Len Bernheimer and Tom Poor had a third-game match-ball opportunity against Tony Swift and Molson Robertson, who however escaped from that predicament and never looked back in controlling the last two games by scores of 15-10, 15-7. This eleventh-hour rally by Swift/Robertson marked the second time in as many months that the Poor family had reached a national/world championship-point juncture but been held at bay: Poor's wife Jessie Chai and ISDA superstar Gary Waite had seen a fourth-game pair of match-balls get away in their U. S. Mixed final versus Quick and his sister Meredeth, who then went on to win the fifth game.

Additional men's age-group winners were Ken Flynn and Brendan Clarke in the 40's in four over tournament chairman Pat Richardson and Bart Sambrook; Peter Derose and Al Hunt, also in four, over Doug Rice and Greg Lloyd in the 45's in a repeat of the Canadian 45's final; Jay Gillespie (who had previously won the Mixed 50's with Leslie Freeman) and Graeme Duff, the Canadian 50's champs, 3-0 over Malcolm Davidson and Stan Dorney in the 50's final; Brian Murray and 1981 North American Open singles finalist and longtime WPSA top10 Aziz Khan over John Boynton and Tim Griffin in four (with a 17-16 second for the winners after they had dropped the opening game) in the 55's final; Don Mills and John Amos in four over David Bogert and Michael Wilson in the 65's final; Charle Stehle and Ritchie Bell at the expense of Robin Logie and Howie Rober in a straight-set 70's final; and David Brown and Scott Fraser, also 3-0, in their 75's final against Michael McBean and Paul Fisher.

There were three women's age-group draws as well---FOURTEEN flights in all, encompassing slightly more than 200 teams, triple the 67 entries in Philadelphia the last time this biennial event was held two years ago, in what should constitute a sobering message for a USSRA that has come under criticism from several fronts of late. In the 40's, top seeds and recently crowned U. S. 40's champs Joyce Davenport and Sara Luther led Freeman and Robbin Morrison two games to one but narrowly lost the last two games, 15-14 and 15-13; the Philadelphia team of Jen Edson and Molly Pierce won in four over Ontario residents Susan Underwood and Susan Douglas; and in the 50's Canadian 50's winners Sibylle Witt and Jennifer Brown persevered to a 15-13 12-15 15-12 16-15 final-round win over Lolly Gillen and Jane Mitchell.

In a remarkable though somewhat double-edged return to the competitive fray this season after missing the previous two years due to having to undergo a total knee replacement that several doctors had wrongly predicted would end her squash career, Gillen competed yesterday in her SIXTH age-group final of the season, having reached that stage of the Ontario mixed and women's, the Canadian mixed and women's and the World mixed and women's. None of those finals, three of which, all in the Mixed, were in the 40's flight even though she will be turning 52 in a few weeks, wound up landing in her column, but this was still a praiseworthy comeback season for Gillen, who is one of the game's most dynamic enthusiasts and protagonists on this continent.

Squashtalk.com All materials © 1999-2005. Communicate with us at info@squashtalk.com.
Published by Squashtalk LLC, 409 Massachusetts Ave, Suite 102, Acton, MA 01720 USA, Editor and Publisher Ron Beck,
Graphics editor Debra Tessier Send comments, ideas, contributions and feedback to the webmaster.
Copyright © 1999-2005 SquashTalk, all rights reserved, may not be reproduced in any form except for one-time personal use.