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Tiebreakers Mark Big Apple First Round
By Rob Dinerman, Oct 3, 2006    
Squashtalk Independent News; © 2006 SquashTalk LLC

The fourth annual Big Apple Open at the New York Athletic Club got off to a sizzling start this evening when, in the first of four round-of-16 matches in this talented 12-team ISDA draw, Michael Pirnak and Martin Heath were pushed to the brink by qualifiers Joe Pentland and Steve Scharff en route to their rousing 8-15 15-14 18-16 16-15 victory. Pirnak and Heath, semifinalists in their lone prior co-appearance at the season-ending tour stop in San Francisco this past May, were forced to repel a total of five game-balls-against in those two one-point games in which that saw all three tiebreaker sessions conclude on winners off Pirnak's racquet.

Still riding the momentum from a pair of qualifying round triumphs, Pentland and Scharff thoroughly controlled the single-digit opening frame and moved confidently to a 14-12 advantage in the second. After dropping the next two points, Pentland/Scharff opted for "no-set", only to see this third consecutive opportunity to garner a two-games-to-love lead vanish on a wall-hugging Pirnak forehand rail that Pentland was unable to scrape back into play.

In both the third and fourth games, Pirnak and Heath were unable to close out small late-game leads, as their Connecticut-based opponents played their more famous and higher-ranked Toronto-based counterparts to a standstill.

Pentland was getting consistent depth and occasionally attacking with his power drives, while Scharff was volleying fearlessly and frequently tallying with well-chosen and sharply-angled reverse corners.

After fighting from behind for most of the third game, Pentland and Scharff tied the score at 13 and promptly seized the first two points in the best-of-nine tiebreaker. A swift 4-0 Pirnak/Heath run was briefly interrupted by an audacious Scharff on-the-run reverse-corner winner that Heath never saw, but on the following exchange Pirnak again hit a forehand rail the clung too tightly to the left wall for a stretched-out Pentland to return.

Again in the fourth game, Pentland and Scharff were able to prevent Heath and Pirnak from breaking away, again they were able to generate a late spurt that tied the score at 13-all. Four consecutive semi-forced errors, two each from Pentland and Heath, led to a simultaneous game-ball, and again it was Pirnak who rose to the fore, this time by knifing a lethal reverse-corner winner from behind Pentland, thereby saving a second consecutive game-ball-against and averting what would have loomed as a dangerous fifth game.

Pirnak and Heath will now face third seeds Paul Price and Ben Gould, who won the ISDA 2006-07 season opener, the Maryland Club Open, early last month. Gould and Preston Quick won last year's Big Apple Open when they toppled defending champions (and current No. 1 seeds) Gary Waite and Damien Mudge, 15-14 in the fourth in the final.

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