USA Doubles 2005: Boomtime and ...
looking back: 2002 Marked a Sea Change
By Rob Dinerman and Ron Beck; SquashTalk © 2005; all rights of reproduction reserved.
Mar 27, 2005  

2005 New York: NATIONALS PREVIEW
When some 140 doubles teams take to the court this weekend in New York for the US National Doubles tournament, all eyes will be on the Open Doubles event, where Gary Waite will be reunited with Morris Clothier, the partner he teamed with in 2002, bringing back memories of the memorable final that year that Waite and Clothier staged against Clive Leach and Eric Vlcek.

This unlikely pairing (since Gary Waite has steadfastly stuck to his long time doubles partner Damian Mudge, with whom he has enjoyed unprecedented success and a virtual lock on the pro doubles circuit for the past five years) can be traced back to the decision in 2002 by the National Doubles committee to approach the ISDA pro tour to encourage participation of the top pros in the USSRA Nationals and at the same time strongly request those pros to select amateur partners rather than their normal pro partners.

This decision resulted both in a resurgence of the National Doubles event, as evidence by this weekend's 280-some participants, and some extremely memorable matches.

This week, Waite will for the first time since 2002 go for the gold with Clothier. Some other interesting parings include, Blair Horler with Shawn Atkinson, Vlcek with Alex Pavulans, and Preston Quick with Steven Scharff. Waite and Clothier have to be prohibitive favorites to win.

A Retrospective Of The 2002 U. S. National Doubles Championship
The last time the U. S. National Doubles championships were held in New York, only three years ago (making this year's tourney a marked contrast to the consecutive 23-year gaps between the 1956, 1979 and 2002 hostings), history was made, by far the greatest draw in the to-that-point 69-year period since the tournament's 1933 inception was assembled, at least one formidable ISDA partnership was formed, several careers had significant benchmarks and a memorable five-game final culminated what became the complete revitalization of an event that had been gradually but steadily drifting into irrelevance and obscurity.

The desultory eight-team amateurs-only 2001 Portland draw became instantaneously transformed into a bulging and talent-laden 26-team extravaganza composed of some of the best players and most legendary figures in the history of squash on this continent. Furthermore, the intensity and quality of the four-day competition is a tribute to the cooperation extended by the International Squash Doubles Association (ISDA), which left the weekend open on its schedule and urged its players to support this first-ever Open nationals, and the perspicacity and resourcefulness of the tournament committee.

The dynamics of the on-court competition were in large part defined by the committee's decision to allow top ISDA pros to participate, while at the same time insisting that any elite pro have either a lower-ranked pro or an amateur as his partner. This two-part decision was designed to dramatically upgrade the talent level from recent years and at the same time preserve to some extent the competitive character of the event, give the amateur base that had supported the Nationals so fully for so long a continuing significant presence and prevent a top ISDA team from running through the event the way an NBA team would do if let loose on a local playground.

To be sure, the co-presence of an ISDA partner was still vital for anyone hoping to survive the opening round of the tournament, and of the eight quarter-finalist teams, seven featured an ISDA present or recently former top-10 rankee. There were unquestionably a number of solid all-amateur teams who either as a form of protest or in recognition of their competitive limitations in such a significantly changed atmosphere (or in reaction to the record $175-per-person entry fee) decided to sit this Nationals out. But this group was decidedly in the minority, as the buzz generated throughout the weekend by the dynamism that suffused the Open matches, especially from the quarter-finals onward, generated large appreciative crowds and a level of enthusiasm that even seemed to have a carry-over effect onto the concomitant age-group flights.

RIVALRIES RECONFIGURED
Morris Clothier and Eric Vlcek, who had won this event throughout the preceding four-year period from 1998-2001, both perceived the importance of responding to the new eligibility definition by playing with ISDA partners, a move whose wisdom was emphatically borne out when they wound up meeting in the final. Clothier's partner, Gary Waite, with whom he was teaming up for the first time in their careers, was by the late-March Nationals date well along in a 2001-2002 season that may well go down as the best in hardball history. By season's end, he had won all 17 ISDA ranking tournaments with partner Damien Mudge and all four pro hardball singles tournaments held during that span, as well as the World Mixed Doubles with Jessie Chai and the Cambridge Club Doubles with PSA star Mark Chaloner. That the closest and most competitive of the 24 finals Waite played was the one he and Clothier would (barely) win Sunday evening (over Vlcek and Clive Leach) after first surviving a taut four-game (two one-pointers) semi the previous afternoon, compellingly confirms the splendor and magnitude of the 2002 National Doubles draw.

Unlike Waite, who as noted came into this event riding the momentum of an unblemished host of triumphs on every competitive front, Clothier had not played in a single pre-Nationals tournament all season in deference to the November birth of his first child. The pre-tournament speculation was that this prolonged hiatus and/or his 37 years might have either caused his racquet to have lost some of its well-known potency or, more plausibly, have negatively impacted his conditioning level to a degree that might catch up with him as the weekend moved along.

Moreover, both the pressure and the motivation levels had to have been heightened by Clothier's professed awareness of what an esthetically perfect close-out to his career an eighth National Doubles title (three in the mid-1990's with Jon Foster having preceded his quartet with Vlcek), this one on his home Racquet & Tennis court in front of his friends, family and fans, would constitute.

Given a bye due to their top-seeded status and an easy second-round match, this duo then won in three over Geoff Kennedy and Andrew Cordova to earn a spot in the semis. There they were confronted by another first-time team, namely ISDA legend Jamie Bentley (winner of pro events with TWELVE different partners over nearly two decades, including Waite, with whom he formed the No. 1 pro pairing for several mid-1990's seasons) and rising singles and doubles star Preston Quick. Bentley and Quick had dispatched former North American Open singles and (and with Alan Grant) doubles champion Ned Edwards and J. D. Cregan in the quarters, and they came as close as possible to doing the same to the eventual champs, or at least to forcing a fifth game, before grudgingly ceding a brutal 18-17 13-15 15-14 15-12 decision that pretty much hinged on the scorching cross court winners Waite was able to conjure up on each of the two simultaneous-game-points that arose.

Though Bentley is a notorious bottom-liner who had to have noticed the several costly Quick racquet errors in the first-game tiebreaker and late in the pivotal third stanza, he was nevertheless sufficiently impressed by the latter's athleticism and upside to subsequently invite him to be his partner for the 2002-03 ISDA tour. Quick accepted and the inter-generational pair would surmount the much larger-than-usual 14-year age gap to become over the next two seasons a top-tier ISDA team and a 2004 Canadian Pro finalist.

Meanwhile, in the bottom half, Blair Horler and Rob Dinerman rode the former's power to a three-game first-round win over ISDA partners Scott Denne and Mark Eugeni and a 15-8 first-game tally in their second-round match against Beau Buford and Scott Butcher before Buford/Butcher, champions five months earlier in the Silver Racquet Invitational, prevailed in the next three games and strode to a two games to one lead over fourth seeds David Kay and Steve Scharff in their subsequent quarter-final. Kay and Scharff, who seemed in complete retreat at the break, managed to rally to an exhausting five-game comeback victory, but the marked contrast between their lengthy quarter and the manner in which their semi-final opponents, second seeds Vlcek and Leach, had swiftly routed Mac Carbonell and Tim Chisholm may have played a role in the straight-set semi between these two pairings that ensued.

MEMORABLE 2002 FINALS
So the Sunday afternoon final, delayed more than two hours by some five-game preceding age-group finals, pitted former national-champion partners Clothier and Vlcek against each other, with each playing a supportive role to superstar ISDA protagonists (Waite and Leach) who were developing an intense rivalry of their own. After coming up just short in a 15-12 first game that had a turf-war feeling to it, Clothier and Waite settled down and utilized their superior chemistry and tinning spells in each game by their opponents to notch identical 15-8 victories in the second and third games.

They led 11-8 in the fourth as well, seemingly set to close it out, but by this time Leach was starting to find the range with his piercing short game, and he and Vlcek were really working Clothier, who contributed several errors to a rally that knotted the score at 13-all.

The Waite/Clothier "no-set" call looked like the right option when Vlcek badly tinned a volley to give the top seeds a double-champion-point, but Vlcek atoned for his mistake first with a hard serve that hit the back wall and ran along the left wall for a service winner at the expense of a nonplussed Waite, and then with a severe cross court volley (the same shot he had tinned two points earlier) that this time dead-rolled out of the right-wall nick well in front of a disbelieving and dismayed Clothier.

The fifth game of what ultimately became by far the most entertaining doubles match of the entire season (including all ISDA events) seesawed almost conspiratorially along, with the tension steadily building through a series of maddeningly frequent and prolonged play stoppages due variously to broken balls, popped racquet strings, numerous lets and several messy ball- and racquet-striking-player episodes. Vlcek, relentlessly battling for left-wall position against the greatest player in the game's history, became the cover boy for the immense stresses and strains this highest-ever-quality USSRA Open final exacted: by match's end his shirt had been bloodied by a follow-through to the lip and the outside of his left leg looked like it had been tattooed purple, which in a sense it had by the trio of crushing backhand rails Waite had added to the green and yellow mementos previous hits had already left.

Clothier, fully disproving any pre-tournament speculation there might have been about possible ring rust, age or conditioning shortcomings, may have played the best match of his career (certainly the most fulfilling), responding strongly to the salvos Leach and Vlcek fired at him throughout the climactic fifth game and counter-punching with telling effect when drawn up front. But down the stretch it was Waite who made the difference, as he always seems to do, battering his opponents with his hard serve, covering behind his partner whenever the need to do so arose, savagely ripping his storied ground strokes and following up a brainy Clothier cross-court drop shot winner by conjuring up a perfect three-wall from a nearly impossible angle deep in the court to make it 10-7.

A few points later, a disheartening pair of consecutive serve-return winners (a Waite backhand reverse-corner followed by a well-masked Clothier forehand three-wall) brought the score to 13-10, seemingly curtains. But a daring Leach drop shot off the back wall froze Clothier, followed by a Vlcek groundie that in fact hugged the floor so tightly that Waite requested that the ball be checked, narrowed the score to 12-13. Vlcek, who as noted had been the biggest part of the end-game action in the fourth, then committed a racquet error (12-14), following which there was an exchange during which the ball unmistakably did break, as three of its predecessors, including one earlier in the fifth game, had already done. Three lets later, the classic finally ended, slightly more than two dramatic hours after it had begun, when Vlcek tinned a three-wall volley, the last of many attempts, most of them in vain, to exploit Clothier up front.

WHAT'S NEW?
Much has changed in the three short years since the memorably epic struggle that took place that March 24th afternoon/evening, and much has remained the same. Clothier and Waite had planned to enter the 2003 and 2004 National Doubles championship in Denver and Chicago respectively, but Waite had to withdraw on both occasions, first when his third daughter was born a little earlier than expected and then when he sustained a fluke skateboarding wrist injury.

Butcher pinch-hit for Waite in 2003 and Waite's ISDA partner Mudge did the same in 2004, but in both cases Clothier (who implicitly did NOT follow through on whatever retirement plans he had tentatively formed after his thrilling 2002
achievement) and his talented substitute partners lost close finals to Vlcek and Quick, who won in a tight four games two years ago and in a fifth-set tiebreaker last year.

Thirteen months after coming up just short in this 2002 National Doubles final, Leach enjoyed the highlight of his career on the same Racquet & Tennis court when he and ISDA partner Horler came back from two games to love down to win 15-13 in the fifth over Waite and Mudge in the final of the Kellner Cup, one of the most prestigious events on the ISDA calendar, all of whose three previous editions (as well as the 2004 sequel) Waite and Mudge had captured.

Waite and Mudge completed an undefeated 2001-2002 slate before finally having what had swelled to a 24-tournament, 76-match, 22-month undefeated ISDA skein finally snapped by Horler and Leach in February '03 in the Canadian Pro final, a prelude to the Kellner Cup comeback result that awaited two months later.

But Waite and Mudge, undefeated so far in 2004-2005 as of this early-March writing, have lost only twice in the 23 months since then, once in a fifth-set tiebreaker in January '04 in Boston when they let a 14-12 lead get away against Josh McDonald and Viktor Berg and then last spring when a badly wrist-injured Waite was greatly hampered in a Big Apple Open loss to Leach and Willie Hosey, who became Leach's partner when Horler suffered a serious knee injury in midseason. Injuries, some of which have required surgery, have sidelined not only Horler but also Buford (back), Kennedy (knee), Bentley (foot), Edwards (knee) and Cregan (knee) for considerable periods of time, but Kennedy won the '03 BIDS and William White events with his 2002 Nationals partner Cordova and Vlcek respectively, and, while the futures of Edwards and Cregan are uncertain, Bentley, Horler and Buford are all back on the competitive scene.

Following his two productive seasons with Bentley, Quick, winner of the
'03 and '04 S. L Green national singles championships, and his new partner Ben Gould have exploded this season into the hottest team on the current ISDA tour, finalists on several occasions, and arguably the biggest threat, especially given their relative youth, to the ISDA tour domination that Waite and Mudge have enjoyed for the past half-dozen years. Quick will not be trying to win a third consecutive National Doubles title with Vlcek, however, opting instead to enter with his former Round Hill colleague Scharff and leading (temporarily) to a Vlcek reunion with Leach and a possible three-years-later finals rematch against Clothier and Waite this weekend---an alluring prospect that was snuffed abruptly out earlier this month when Leach suddenly withdrew, leaving the six-time (and two-time defending) co-champion Vlcek stranded until Pavulans became available right at the entry deadline.

After opposing each other three straight years from 2002-2004 in the Nationals Doubles finals and partnering each other to victory in each of the four years prior to that, Clothier and Vlcek reunited for two tournaments this past winter, an amateur event, the Gold Racquets in Cedarhurst, which they won, and an ISDA tour stop, the Briggs Cup in Rye, where they lost a fifth-set tiebreaker first-round qualifier, an outcome disparity that graphically points up the chasm that has developed in recent years between the pro and amateur levels.

O'Connell has won two amateur invitationals this past fall, the Silver Racquet with James Ardrey and the Morris member-guest at Apawamis with Rick Bradt. And both Butcher (with Jeff Osborne and later with Martin Heath) and Pavulans (with Chris Deratnay) have formed solid ISDA partnerships, with several semi-final appearances and noteworthy quarter-final upset wins over Horler and Leach in both cases to their respective credits. Many of the foregoing will be participating this weekend in New York in their quest to add the 2005 U. S. National Doubles championships to their legacies. This figures to be an even stronger draw than that of three years ago, but whether these protagonists can duplicate, much less exceed, the sheer drama that imbued that early-2000's weekend very much remains to be seen.


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