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Changing Partners Mark New ISDA Hardball Doubles Season
By Rob Dinerman, Sept 22, 2006    
Squashtalk Independent News; © 2006 SquashTalk LLC

As the International Squash Doubles Association (ISDA) gears up for the October to May 2006-07 season, the eighth of its highly successful existence, the opening portion especially of the 16-stop tour (which kicks off with the Maryland Club Open early next month) will likely be characterized by a turbulent jockeying for position among a claque of top-tier players many of whom are joining up with new partners this fall.

So advanced is this latter phenomenon that Scott Butcher and Clive Leach, who played in only five tournaments last winter/spring after partnering up in February, are thereby the third longest-serving present partnership on the entire tour! The only pairings ahead of them in this regard are Chris Walker/Viktor Berg, whose partnership began on Opening Day last autumn, and the dominant tandem of Gary Waite and Damien Mudge, whose seven years together have produced seven No. 1 team rankings, 71 ranking-tournament titles (in 78 attempts), 76 final-round appearances and a well-deserved standing as the greatest doubles team in the history of the sport.

Seven of those trophies were captured by The Champs last season, during which however, they also lost one semifinal (in Cleveland in mid-winter at the hands of eventual champs Walker and Berg) and one final (15-14 in the fourth in early November in New York to Preston Quick and Ben Gould, who lost a final-round rematch in Toronto one week later on a Quick tin at simultaneous championship-point) and took a several-tournament hiatus from the tour in order to reload. This Waite and Mudge successfully accomplished to the extent of rejoining the tour in late January just in time to notch their sixth consecutive North American Open title, the ninth straight and 10th overall for Waite, who annexed this prestigious crown with Scott Dulmage in '94 and with Mark Talbott in 1997-99 before he teamed up with Mudge for the 1999-2000 campaign.

But some fissures began to appear in the Waite/Mudge skein of invincibility last season that may well carry over into this year. In addition to being pressed to five games late last season by Butcher/Leach in a Brooklyn semifinal, by Jamie Bentley/Paul Price in the U. S. Nationals final in St. Louis and again in a Kellner Cup semi by Butcher and Leach, who surrendered only eight combined points in the third and fourth games. Furthermore, Waite turned 40 earlier this month and Mudge, who similarly celebrated a milestone birthday when he turned 30 last spring, badly injured his shoulder while surfing early this past summer, opting to undergo extensive physical therapy in lieu of an operation. And the Walker/Berg team may constitute the most formidable threat to displace them from No. 1 that Waite and Mudge have ever had to confront.

Price will be teaming up with his Aussie compatriot Gould this season, as will Quick with John Russell. They are four of the 13 of the top 19 ranked players on the ISDA computer who will start the season with partners whom they have previously played with either never or only once. Not included in this group are the oldies-but-goodies team of Willie Hosey and Bentley, who were ranked second behind Waite/Mudge in the early 2000's and who will be rejoining forces after several years during which each thrived with a number of different partners. A potential real wild-card in this year's tour will be Blair Horler, a three-time ISDA tour title winner with Leach in 2003 (Toronto, Long Island and the Kellner Cup), who underwent what appears to be successful knee surgery, his second such procedure, just a few weeks ago and plans to resurface with his physical style and extraordinarily powerful backhand blasts by midseason.

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