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McGuinness And Morris Capture William White Invitational 
By Rob Dinerman, Jan 8, 2008    
Squashtalk Independent News; © 2008 SquashTalk LLC

 Trailing two games to one in their quarterfinal match in the William White Invitational at the Merion Cricket Club Saturday afternoon after losing both the second and third games badly, second seeds Trevor McGuinness and Whitten Morris responded like champions, grinding their way through a pair of 15-12 close-out games against recent top-15 ISDA rankees Steve Scharff and Eric Vlcek to create a level of momentum that they then rode through a pair of very impressive Sunday victories over first Morris Clothier and Noah Wimmer and then ’06 William White champs Bill Doyle and Alan Grant. It was the third time in as many appearances on the U. S. Squash circuit that Morris and McGuinness had hoisted the winner’s trophy (preceded by the Philly Boast and BIDS titles last February), and also the third consecutive month on whose opening weekend Morris (who had previously prevailed in both the early-November Silver Racquets and early-December Gold Racquets Invitationals, both times with Michael Ferreira as his partner) had won a significant tournament, thereby matching what Clothier had done a year ago when he won the Silver Racquets with Ferreira, the Gold Racquets with Scott Stoneburgh and the White with Preston Quick.

The White weekend has become a true highlight of the U. S. Squash season, what with the distinguished setting of the Merion environment, the inclusion of a high-level Women’s Open Doubles, a host of fully subscribed men’s age-group doubles draws, both hardball (Open as well as age-group) and softball singles events and, most importantly, the outstanding quality of the 22-team Men’s Open Doubles draw, which is likely to exceed that of even the U. S. Nationals in a few months. For years the White weekend has constituted a true celebration of squash and a gathering of the clan (there were nearly 200 entrants all told), but this year’s Men’s Open Doubles tourney deserves to be most remembered both as a changing-of-the-guard moment (Vlcek, Clothier, Eric Eiteljorg, Tom Harrity and Geoff Kennedy, all of whom have won the White at least three times, in each case with at least two partners, and all of whom were entered this weekend and accompanied by excellent partners, were all stopped short of the finals, the first time that had occurred in 18 years; only Clothier made it to the semis) and, at least possibly, as the coming-out party for the 19-year-old McGuinness, who after years of being viewed as a precocious youngster with an unlimited upside managed in one six-hour period (from 10 AM Sunday morning, when his semifinal began, to 4 PM that afternoon, when the 15-7, 6 and 7 final ended)  to emphatically make the transition from talent-laden prodigy to genuine superstar.

In the opening game of the semis, McGuinness embarked on a shot-making tear that enabled himself and his partner to launch a riveting 10-0 run that turned a 7-14 deficit into a 17-14 win and resonated the similar rally from 8-14 to 15-14 that Morris and Ferreira had made against Clothier and Dave Rosen in the first game of the Silver Racquets final nine weeks ago. Clothier and Wimmer were able to win the equalizing second game but McGuinness generated a host of winners in both the ensuing 15-9 games, especially the close-out fourth, which began and ended on his reverse-corner winners (the last from off the back wall, an absolute dart which neither Wimmer not Clothier ever saw coming) and had at least a half-dozen McGuinness winners in between. Morris contributed mightily to the outcome as well, especially with his amazing retrieving, virtually total freedom from the tin and a host of explosive penetrating drives, many of which forced Wimmer into retreat, leaving the front-left open for McGuinness to then exploit.

Morris spent most of the match in front of Clothier, thereby at least partially blunting the latter’s ability to change the course of the match, as he has done so many times over the years in building his legendary record. Ultimately, the decision that Clothier and Wimmer made to focus the match on the left wall (thereby avoiding Morris’s imposing weaponry) represented a gamble that McGuinness’s incandescence would eventually burn itself out and metamorphose into a rash of tins (as had happened several times in recent months, including when he tinned late-match leads away in both the Jimmy Dunn and U. S. Pro events in late November in Philadelphia and Wilmington), a gamble that boomeranged on them on this occasion.

McGuinness and Morris were playing so well by Sunday afternoon that it might not have mattered what had happened in the other semifinal between Rosen/Ayman Karim (who defeated No. 1 seeds Quick and Addison West 3-2 in the quarters) and Grant/Doyle, but it certainly didn’t help the latter pairing of mid- to late-forty-somethings when their 11-8 fourth-game lead gave way to a 7-0 run against them that necessitated what turned out to be a lengthy, grueling and close (15-12) fifth game. Grant and Doyle actually led 10-3 in the fifth, but the score eventually tightened to 11-13 before Rosen top-of-the-tinned what would otherwise have been a winning drop shot up front, then was unable to return a careening Grant drive at his feet that ended the match two points later.

It was to be the parting shot for the clearly weary Grant/Doyle duo, who could never muster the energy they would have needed to counter the exuberance, growing confidence and eye-catching firepower that was being directed their way from both flanks that afternoon in the final. It was all over in well under an hour, as Morris and McGuinness seized control of the play right away, never let up and sprinted across the finish line, a remarkable turnaround for both of them from a year ago, when McGuinness was out in the round of 16 (while also suffering a 27-0 whitewashing at the hands of Thad Roberts in the softball singles event), and Morris was sidelined while rehabilitating from left-knee surgery the prior summer.

Demer Holleran (pregnant at the time with her second child) missed the ’07 White as well, during which Margaret Rux had to default the 40’s final (which she and partner Jen Edson were losing badly anyway against Joyce Davenport and Sara Luther) when Edson injured her left lower leg midway through the third game. Seeded third in this year’s women’s open doubles, they saw a total of seven match points drain away unconverted in the fourth (in which they led 14-10) and fifth games (14-11) of their semifinal against second seeds Amy Milanek and Dawn Gray, yet managed to win that fifth-set tiebreaker 17-15. They then got swamped 15-3 in the first game of the ensuing final vs. top-seeded Lee Belknap and Narelle Krizek, yet were able to climb back into the match by avoiding Krizek as much as possible and slowing the pace enough for Holleran to impose her formidable shot-making skills. After taking the next two games in this fashion and dropping the fourth, Holleran and Rux got a big break when Krizek, the reigning U. S. Mixed champion (with Paul Price) and clearly the best player on the court, had a winner on her racquet at 10-8 that would have given her team a late three-point cushion had it not instead hit the tin.

Thus reprieved by this fortuitous turn (as well as by a few more tins in the last half-dozen scrappy points), Holleran and Rux moved to 14-11, at which point Holleran finished things off with a winning drop shot. This marked the second time in a little over nine months that Krizek had suffered a fifth-game final-round disappointment on the Merion exhibition court – she and Steph Hewitt had several championship-points in the U. S. Nationals final early last April, only to lose on simultaneous-match-point to Meredeth Quick and Fiona Geaves when Geaves hit a winner on the final exchange

The men’s portion of that ’07 Nationals weekend had seen Preston Quick and John Russell triumph over Scott Butcher and Clive Leach in the final. Quick had also won both the ’07 White doubles (as noted, with Clothier) and hardball singles, in which he had rallied from love-two down to overtake West. Though as mentioned Quick’s career undefeated skein came to an end this past weekend when he and West lost in the quarterfinals, he did manage to successfully defend his singles crown, again at West’s final-round expense, after Quick had defeated Rich Repetto and Dylan Patterson and West had done the same to two-time (2000 and 2001) White singles winner Rob Dinerman and McGuinness in their respective round-robin pools. West, who also was a finalist in the ’06 singles, when he lost in five games to Kevin Jernigan, won the first game against Quick, but the ISDA top-10 star then surged through the next three games in a match featuring amazing athleticism, scorching angles and extraordinarily high-paced action.

Much the same could be said about the Men’s Open softball final between former Penn captain Gilly Lane, now on the PSA circuit, and just-graduated-last-spring Trinity star Jacques Swanepoel, who saved three match-balls against him in the fourth game of their two-hour-plus marathon and moved to a 6-1 lead in the fifth, only to see Lane determinedly overtake him in the closing laps of his 7-9 9-4 9-6 9-10 9-6 victory. It was a vindicatory moment for Lane, who had to default a month earlier in his first-round Gold Racquets match with a knee injury, and who will be playing in the Tournament Of Champions in New York this week. The women’s final went to Suzie Pierrepoint, who out-played Yale captain Miranda Ranieri throughout their well-played but convincing three-game match.

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