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ISDA 03-04 Tour Update: Vancouver Out
Sponsorship Hiccup
By Rob Dinerman © 2003; all rights of reproduction reserved.
August 28 2003      

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James Hewitt, the Executive Director of the International Squash Doubles Association (ISDA) confirmed in an August 26 email to the membership that the mid-October tour stop in Vancouver, the second event listed on the 2003-04 schedule, has been cancelled due to sponsorship withdrawal.

FALL TOUR DROUGHT
As a result, there will be a month-long gap between the early-October season
opener in Denver and the early-November tournament at the Maryland Club in
Baltimore. The remainder of a fairly light autumn schedule will consist of mid-November events in Philadelphia and Toronto and an early-December stop in Montreal before the schedule really picks up after New Year's Day.

This is the first time in the history of the ISDA, which had heretofore been leading a charmed life throughout its four prior years of official existence, that such an occurrence has befallen one of its tournaments, and this unfortunate incident constitutes an uneasy backdrop to a forthcoming season that may be attended by other changes as well, both on and off the court.

Although there have been substantial expansions in the number of tour
events and the depth and quality of the player pool and prize money level
with every passing year, the new season was regarded even before the Vancouver
pull-out as a crucial time for a consolidation of these steady gains. The record-setting presence of a $100,000 purse at the inaugural Briggs Cup at the Apawamis
Club in Rye, NY this past February was regarded as an important milestone
and psychological breakthrough, and the practice begun at this event (and
subsequently emulated by others last spring) of establishing an official
tournament charity that made each donation tax-deductible was a stroke of genius that transformed the dynamics of running a major squash championship.

CHANGED PECKING ORDER
There were significant on-court alterations of the prevailing long-time status quo as well, notably the ending of undefeated streaks of 24 ISDA ranking tournaments and 78 matches by Gary Waite and Damien Mudge and the corollary ascension of their twice-conquerors Blair Horler and Clive Leach to the top of the list of challengers to the lengthy Waite/Mudge domination. And a quartet of other contenders, namely the Michael Pirnak/Willie Hosey, Josh McDonald/Viktor Berg and Scott Butcher/Jeff Osborne and Preston Quick/Jamie Bentley duos, all of which debuted during the 2002-2003 season, all experienced sufficient success (enlivened in each case with moments of true stardom) to make this past summer the quietest and most continuity-driven in recent years, and a welcome change from the frenzied partner-switching that has characterized the last several off-season periods.

Waite and Mudge, whose two losses to Horler and Leach (in the finals of the Canadian Pro and Kellner Cup tournaments) doubled their previous total, still won 10 of the 14 overall tour stops last season, with Mudge pocketing an 11th when he and Pirnak took the Briggs Cup while Waite was playing with Hosey in a one time partner-swapping arrangement. Horler and Leach won all three remaining events (as well as the non-ranking Philadelphia tourney last fall) but lost three times in the quarter-finals; Butcher and Osborne engineered two of those three upsets suffered by Horler/Leach in reaching the semis of the Briggs Cup and Philadelphia Elite; Berg and McDonald advanced to three finals and reached at least the semis of all but one ISDA stop; Quick and Bentley beat Horler and Leach in Boston and got to the semis both there and later on in Brooklyn; and the Hosey/Pirnak total of six final-round performances was by a wide margin the most of any of the teams pursuing Waite and Mudge.

RELOCATIONS
The recent relocations by Leach and Berg to Florida and Vancouver respectively will obviously keep them from the practice sessions with their partners that played such a helpful role last season in each team's success, and the advent last May of the 40th birthday for Bentley (who fell short of reaching at least one pro doubles final last season after nearly 20 consecutive years of doing so) may have an impact on what happens this year, as likely will the cut-down schedules of long-time partners Todd Binns and Jeff Mulligan (who plan to enter only half of the events after playing virtually the entire schedule for each of the past three years) and that of Dave Kay, a five-time finalist with Pirnak during the winter and spring of 2002, who missed almost all of last season with an early-October Achilles tendon rupture and who will be studying for his MBA and coaching the men's team at the University of Rochester this academic year.

But there are encouraging signs of fresh and positive developments as well, both in the tour schedule (which includes the return of ranking events in Baltimore and at the Philadelphia Racquet Club, in each case after a one-year hiatus last season) and in some potentially significant new team entries, namely those of Eric Vlcek with Ben Gould and Alex Pavulans with Chris Deratnay.

Though understandably chastened somewhat by the disappointing news they just
received from Vancouver, the ISDA administrators certainly have cause for
optimism that this relatively small setback will prove an aberration, a bump
in the road in what has generally been a steady upward climb in their ongoing quest
to establish the ISDA as a major and successful professional sports
organization.

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