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Schwartzes Rally Pas Vlceks as Seeds advance to Semis
By Rob Dinerman, April 19, 2008    
Squashtalk Independent News; © 2008 SquashTalk LLC

Playing with the verve and confidence that carried them to the winner’s circle a year ago, top seeds Steve and Greg Park strode into tomorrow morning’s semifinal round with a 15-9 15-12 17-16 win over John and Coly Smith this afternoon in the Open division of the fourth annual U. S. Father & Son National Championships, held in New York City. The Parks will face Taylor and Preston Quick, who defeated William and Michael Strong in one semi, while in the other, Bill and Will Broadbent, finalists in the inaugural ’05 tournament and straight-set quarterfinal winners earlier today against Sandy and Josh Schwartz, will go up against ’06 champions and ’07 runners-up Scott and Will Simonton, who survived the best-played and closest quarterfinal of the day when they edged out ’05 17-and-under champs Simon and Dillon Aldrich by a count of 12-15 15-9 15-9 8-15 15-11.

Forty-nine teams, a record turnout for an event that has seen its numbers increase during each year of its existence, competed in a total of five categories (namely the Open plus a 13-and-under, a 15-and-under, a 17-and-under and a Century), 23 of which were in the Open flight, and a number of matches took on lives of their own. The Smiths, for example, lost the first two games to Steve and Ben Mandel before deciding to switch walls, a maneuver that enabled Coly Smith, a former Intercollegiate champion during his early-2000’s years at Trinity, to dominate the play from his new vantage point on the left wall. The Mandels were clearly caught off guard by the changed scenario and never broke into double figures in any of the three remaining games.

After then losing each of the first two games with their new alignment against the Parks, the Smiths then switched BACK to their original positions (with Coly back on the right wall) and actually led 14-10 in the third game, but were unable to convert any of their five combined game-balls and fell 17-16. They were one of two teams to successfully surmount a two-game round-of-16 deficit, the other being the Schwartzes, who stunned the favored Vlceks, John and Eric, en route to a 17-15 fifth-set tiebreaker close-out. In ’06, the Vlceks annexed the inaugural Century tourney with a five-game final-round win over James Zug Sr. and Jr., but were prevented from defending that title last year due to Eric rupturing his left Achilles tendon a few months earlier during the Briggs Cup, one of the premier stops on the ISDA professional doubles circuit. The latter recovered so well from this serious injury (qualifying into a number of ISDA events this season with his partner Yvain Badan) that the Vlceks decided to take a shot at the Open event this year rather than play in the Century, but, as noted, their high hopes and early-match advantage were both dashed by the determined Schwartz comeback effort, which, however, left them too drained to hold off Will Broadbent (a former Intercollegiate Doubles champ during his stellar Harvard career) and his father.

Preston Quick, a three-time U. S. National Doubles champion currently ranked in the ISDA top eight, is the best player in this tournament, and he and his father, a former USSRA President, reached the semifinal stage of this event in each of their previous appearances, namely in ’05, when they led eventual champs Robert and Noah Wimmer two games to one, and in ’06, where they held double-match-point on the eventual champion Simontons in the fourth game before losing in five. In their four-game quarterfinal win this afternoon over the Bill Strong (a ’72 New England Interschols runner-up) and his son Michael, they employed the unusual stratagem of having Preston play the right wall except when he was serving from the left box, in which instance he remained on the left throughout the ensuing point. He and the power-hitting Greg Park should have an interesting exchange of fireworks tomorrow morning; they last faced each other in the ’07 U. S. Mixed semis, where Preston and his sister Meredeth defeated Park and Dana Betts in a highly entertaining three before barely losing the final (18-17 in the fourth) to Narelle Krizek and Paul Price.

The last quarter, between the Aldrich and Simonton pairings, featured each team running off a big mid-game spurt in every game but the close-throughout first, though in the fifth game the Aldriches, after falling well behind, got the score back to 6-9, with Simon having an open reverse-corner with both his opponents way out of position. It was his clutch execution on this type of situation that has played a big role in several close family wins in this tournament in years past (notably their fifth-set tiebreaker win in the 17-and-under final vs. Rob and Robbie Berner in ’05 and their 15-13 fifth-game quarter a year later against Jack and Tim Wyant), but this time he caught the top of the tin, presenting the relieved Simontons with a 10-6 advantage (as opposed to 9-7) that they were able to maintain through the closing portion of the match.

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