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Price and Bentley Overtake Leach and Butcher in Toronto
By Rob Dinerman, Nov 29, 2006    
Squashtalk Independent News; © 2006 SquashTalk LLC

Just three points from a four-game final-round defeat, Jamie Bentley and Paul Price rallied from 9-12 to win the Cambridge Club Doubles with an exciting 16-13 12-15 8-15 15-12 15-3 victory over Clive Leach and Scott Butcher Monday night in Toronto. Price has now won the last three editions of this fabled tournament, having triumphed (by one point in the fifthcgame) with Damien Mudge over Martin Heath and Viktor Berg two years ago before their successful defense last fall against Leach and Preston Quick. The comeback victory marked the 10th anniversary of Bentley's last Cambridge Club crown (with Gary Waite as his partner) and Price became the 13th player with whom Bentley has now captured a sanctioned pro doubles tournament, a record by a wide margin.

In addition, Price has now made it to the winner's circle in three of the first four ISDA sanctioned events on the 2006-07 tour schedule, having partnered Ben Gould to that stage in both the season-opening Maryland Club Open and the Big Apple Open in New York before he and Leach were stopped by eventual champs Waite and Mudge in a Vancouver semi earlier this month in a tournament that neither Butcher nor Gould were able to attend.

Of the six team entries in this two three-team round-robin tourney, the only one composed of a current ISDA tandem was the Butcher/Leach combo, semifinalists in five of their last six ranking-tournament forays, and the chemistry they have formed helped get them through a testing opening match against Berg and Willie Hosey, who led 2-0. 10-5 before Butcher and Leach were able to force a best-of-nine tiebreaker, which they managed to win before controlling the final pair of anti-climactic games. This was another in a number of narrow setbacks in this tournament in recent years for Berg, who, as noted, fell just one point short in the '04 final and also had a match-point get away in '02 when he and Heath were on the verge of defeating eventual champions Waite and Stewart Boswell.

Berg, who was struggling with a back problem that the long first match aggravated, and Hosey then lost, again in five, to Waite and Jonathon Power, who wound up winning the third-place playoff 15-10, 14 and 14 at the expense of Heath and Chris Walker. That latter pairing dropped the deciding match in their bracket to Bentley and Price, with both these teams having recorded 3-0 wins over Mudge and John Russell.

After dropping the best-of-five tiebreaker in the opening game of the final, Butcher and Leach controlled the action throughout the second and third frames and well into the fourth. Butcher, who ironically had reached his only prior sanctioned ISDA tournament final, the '05 Canadian Pro, with his Monday-night left-wall opponent Price as his partner, was evincing his usual rock-solid style, while Leach was scoring heavily with his shot-making and creativity.

He was also increasingly engaging in some repartee with Price which became more acerbic as the match progressed, to the point where Price actually walked over to where Leach was standing in between points at a crucial 12-all fourth-game juncture and a brief shoving match ensued.

This episode could have escalated the contention that had already arisen between these two prideful, talented and occasionally volatile warriors, especially given how charged up the crowd had become by that time. Instead, a kind of uneasy order was restored, and Price and Bentley, finalists in the U. S. National Doubles last March during their brief tenure as partners, garnered the ensuing three points to win that game, jumped out to an early 5-0 lead in the fifth and never looked back. The tour now moves to Wilmington later this week before taking a month-long holiday-season break and resuming in mid-January in Greenwich with the North American Open, which Waite and Mudge will be trying to win for a seventh consecutive time.

Tournament Recap
Bracket A:
Paul Price/Jamie Bentley d Chris Walker/Martin Heath, 3-1;
Walker/Heath d John Russell/Damien Mudge, 3-0;
Price/Bentley d Russell/Mudge, 3-0.

Bracket B:
Scott Butcher/Clive Leach d Gary Waite/Jonathon Power, 3-0;
Butcher/Leach d Willie Hosey/Viktor Berg, 3-2;
Waite/Power d Hosey/Berg, 3-2.

Third Place:
Waite/Power d Walker/Heath, 3-0.

Final:
Price/Bentley d Butcher/Leach, 3-2.

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