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Tigers Letourneau & Wong Win College Doubles Event
By Rob Dinerman, April 7, 2008    
Squashtalk Independent News; © 2008 SquashTalk LLC

In a captivating display of athleticism and teamwork, Princeton torch-bearers David Letourneau and Kimlee Wong surged to a 15-8 15-9 17-16 final-round victory this afternoon over Yalies C. J. Plimpton and Ethan Oetter to win the Intercollegiate Doubles Championships, hosted as has been the case for the past several years by the University Club of New York. This solid companion-piece to the Ivy League and Howe Cup crowns that Princeton’s men’s and women’s teams had earned respectively this past winter capped off what has turned out to be a highly successful year in Tigertown.

Ketcham Doubles: (photo Yale vs Princeton: ©2008 Frank Plimpton)

The tournament, originally the brain-child of the late William (Treddy) Ketcham, in whose honor the champion’s trophy is named, debuted exactly 20 years ago in ’88, when similarly Princeton, represented that year by Keen Butcher and Roy Rubin, defeated Elis Alex Dean and Eric Wohlgemuth, the current California state champions, in the final at the nearby Racquet & Tennis Club.

Tournament Chairman Will Osnato, himself a winner of this event five years ago with Dent Wilkiins, seeded the Bowdoin entry of Chris Nehrbas and Peter Cipriano No. 1 in deference to Cipriano’s tournament-winning effort a year ago with then-senior Alex Linhart over their Bates opponents in an all-Maine final. But it was evident from the start that this year’s draw was noticeably stronger than in ’07, possibly a reflection of the growth of doubles as a whole in recent years, and after a fairly routine straight-game opening-round win over Devin Gorman-DaRif and Evan Lodge of Wesleyan, Nehrbas and Cipriano were convincingly out-played in the semis by Plimpton and Oetter, who were still riding the considerable momentum that they had generated for themselves when they ran away from their Cornell opponents Christopher Sachvie and Dillon Aldrich in a 15-4 fifth-game culmination to what had theretofore been a dead-even though seesaw quartet of games.

The draw’s bottom half was similarly characterized by competitive quarters followed by a one-sided semi, as the Calgary-bred Letourneau, whose doubles sophistication, markedly superior to that of anyone in the tournament, belies his status as a freshman, and Wong, the No. 2 singles player on the Princeton varsity, took a match to find themselves before overwhelming Elis Mike Maruca (who, like many entrants, had never played doubles prior to this weekend, but showed an amazing learning curve) and Todd Ruth, who is a major counterexample to the foregoing, as witness the host of U. S. junior doubles titles that he and Trevor McGuinness compiled during the early portion of this decade.

The domination that the tall shot-maker Letourneau and his fleet right-wall partner established in the Saturday afternoon semi carried them through the first two games of the final against Plimpton and Oetter, who mistakenly attempted to force the pace, only to find themselves seriously out-gunned throughout the first two single-figure games. Letourneau was establishing front-court position well in front of the tee, taking advantage of his considerable wing-span and angling deft reverse-corners and cross-court drops to catch his Yale counterparts off guard, while Wong was controlling the right-wall exchanges and creating havoc with his severe rails and three-wall nicks.

Chastened by the 15-8, 15-9 tallies that were swiftly mounted against them, and realizing that a change in tactics was warranted, Plimpton and Oetter began the third game by slowing the play down, lobbing Letourneau and thereby forcing him to retreat to the back wall, where his ability to do damage was significantly reduced. One additional benefit of this strategy was the impatience it induced in the Princeton pair, whose tin count rose and whose loose balls Oetter and especially Plimpton converted into enough winners to garner an 11-7 lead when Letourneau contributed his fifth tin of the game (when he cut a delicate cross-court backhand drop shot too close) to Yale’s point total.

Ketcham Doubles: (photo Yale vs Princeton: ©2008 Frank Plimpton)

From 9-12, Princeton evened the count at 12-all on a tin by each Yalie preceding a shallow Wong forehand drive that Oetter couldn’t scoop back. Three consecutive tins, by (sequentially) Wong, Letourneau and Plimpton, all on nervy shot attempts, made it 14-13, Yale, but after the ball broke at the end of a long all-court point, Plimpton misjudged a playable lob on the first point with the new ball, which therefore died at the back wall behind him. The evenly-divided first four points of the ensuing best-of-five tiebreaker – a tin and a reverse-corner winner, both by Letourneau, who then hammered a winner past Oetter, who responded with a reverse-corner winner of his own to repulse the first championship-point --- created a simultaneous-game-point situation, which ended spectacularly when Plimpton’s serve from the right box caromed off the back wall, only to be deftly and creatively cross-court drop-shot returned by Letourneau, whose brainy salvo softly angled into the nick in front of a nonplussed Oetter, who, like everyone else both on court and in the gallery, never saw it coming.

There is plenty of potential for a rematch of this final a year from now (as happened in ’04 and ’05 with Yale stars Julian Illingworth and Trevor Rees splitting their pair of consecutive final-round clashes with Harvard’s Will Broadbent and Garnett Booth), as none of the four participants are seniors. Oetter and Wong are both juniors and Plimpton (for whom this event represented his only salvo of a season largely lost to an autumn hamstring pull followed by a winter bout with mononucleosis) and Letourneau, as noted, are freshmen. As is also true in singles, intercollegiate doubles is growing stronger with every passing year, and the future looks extremely promising for future editions of this tournament.

Tournament Recap: Qtrs: Chris Nehrbas/Peter Cipriano (Bowdoin) d Devin Gorman-DaRif/Evan Lodge (Wesleyan) 15-2, 2 and 6; C. J. Plimpton/Ethan Oetter (Yale) d Christopher Sachvie/Dillon Aldrich (Cornell), 15-7 9-15 17-15 6-15 15-4; David Letourneau/Kimlee Wong (Princeton) d Aaron Fuchs/Naishadh Lalwani (Yale), 15-3 15-9 12-15 15-9; Michael Maruca/Todd Ruth (Yale) d John McCarthy/Omar Mangalji (Cornell), 15-13 15-13 10-15 15-11.

Semis: Plimpton/Oetter d Nehrbas/Cipriano, 15-11, 7 and 11; Letourneau/Wong d Maruca/Ruth, 15-8, 9 and 5.

Final: Letourneau/Wong d Plimpton/Oetter, 15-8 15-9 17-16.

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