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Krizek-Holleran win Women's Tour Event
By Rob Dinerman, Feb 12, 2008    
Squashtalk Independent News; © 2008 SquashTalk LLC

Building on its impressive debut appearance in Greenwich in mid-November, the Women’s Doubles Squash Association (WDSA) moved just two MetroNorth train stops south for its second event, the $ 25,000 Briggs Cup, hosted by the bustling Apawamis Club in Rye, NY, where tournament namesake honoree Peter Briggs is the long-time head pro. Narelle Krizek, who with her husband Rob founded the WDSA this past summer in order to ensure that the host of fine women doubles players in North America would finally have a proper forum in which to showcase their skills and the sport, combined with Demer Holleran to defeat Greenwich champs and No. 1 seeds Natalie Grainger and Jess Dimauro 15-9 10-15 15-8 15-12 in an entertaining 70-minute final.

For Holleran, who had taken a three-year break from the game from January 2005 to January 2008 to both swell the population and open the Fairmount Squash & Fitness Club in suburban Philadelphia, the victory made her two for two in her return to the competitive arena, preceded as it was by the William White title that she and Margaret Rux achieved (over Krizek and Lee Belknap in the final) at the Merion Cricket Club last month. And for Krizek, who along with Steph Hewitt had dropped that Greenwich final three months ago, it marked her second tournament win in as many weeks, given the successful foray that she (playing the right wall on that occasion before moving over to the left this time) and Dave Rosen had made in Boston the prior weekend in the U. S. Mixed Doubles.

Dimauro and Grainger are both superbly proportioned athletes, and their initial strategy seemed to be to force Holleran (who is nearly a decade older than the three 31-year-olds who were on court with her) to move from front to back, on the plausible-sounding theory that this would both tire her out and deprive her of the time she needs to execute her well-known and deadly shot-making skills. The problem with this approach, as was made repeatedly clear while Holleran and Krizek were building a 12-5 first-game advantage, was that the former was not only getting to the balls sent her way but putting them away both from mid-court with her volleys and when drawn up front.

Chastened by the costly lesson they had absorbed during that opening stanza, Grainger and Dimauro stopped focusing so much of their attention on Holleran and began pressing an all-court attack that maximized their superior athleticism. Dimauro, Holleran’s right-wall counterpart (and previously her star pupil on the late 1990’s Penn teams that Holleran had coached, a lingering relationship which might have subtly influenced the course of the final), played her best squash of the day in that second game, launching her stinging corner-shots and volleying aggressively, as was Grainger, who by that stage had put behind her tentative start. That was also the only game in which Holleran’s racquet-work betrayed her, to the tune of a number of tins en route to 6-12 and, shortly thereafter, an equalizing 15-10 tally.

But early on in the third, Holleran, her touch once again on display in creating a 5-2 lead, and Krizek, who consistently nullified Grainger in their left-wall rail exchanges and kept several points alive with remarkable “emergency gets,” broke open what had been a close game with an 8-2 burst from 4-3 to 12-5, during which they repeatedly out-positioned and out-thought their increasingly demoralized opponents with a display of teamwork that was all the more noteworthy for this being their first salvo as partners. One combination that worked more than once was Krizek’s rails forcing a beck-pedaling Grainger to throw up a shallow cross-court that Holleran would then volley gently into the open front-left area, where it died before Grainger could recover enough to track it down; another was when Krizek’s whirly-birds circled treacherously past Dimauro, eliciting a rail response that Holleran straight-dropped for winners. Dimauro is perhaps the fittest and scrappiest player on the WDSA circuit, but especially during the last half of this match, she seemed alternately out of sorts and/or out of synch, leaving more of the burden to fall onto Grainger, a current WISPA top-five who, however, is relatively new to doubles, a shortfall that Krizek (who nailed a forehand winner down the right wall while covering behind Holleran at game-ball) and Holleran were both able to exploit.

Just as had happened during the third game, Krizek and Holleran moved inexorably ahead in mid-game, from 5-4 to 11-5. Krizek opened this spurt with a backhand shallow rail serve-return winner, after which Holleran hit another cross-court front-left angle that a blocked-out Grainger didn’t see and followed that with a volley straight-drop off a loose Dimauro rail, after which a clearly distraught Dimauro tinned her serve-return to make it 9-5, Krizek/Holleran. Trailing, as noted, 11-5, Grainger and Dimauro made one last stand, a gallant one for sure, but even as they slowly crept to 8-12, then 9-13, making a series of desperation-fueled gets and knifing a few winners as well, the rally had the “feel” of coming too late, and with their opponents a bit too close to the finish line to be kept at bay.

And indeed when Holleran hit a ball right at Grainger, who had become trapped up front after a great get and whose attempted reflex volley landed just above the right-wall out-of-bounds line to make it 14-10, Holleran and Krizek had four championship-points at their disposal. A Grainger cross-court that was hit too high for Holleran to play and then bounced too erratically for Krizek to field saved one match-ball, and a second went by the boards on a scramble play up front in which Krizek’s shot hit her partner Holleran, who had dived to the floor on the front-left and was unable to avoid Krizek’s ball. This closed the score to 12-14, but Krizek determinedly terminated any hopes her opponents may by this stage have been harboring of forcing a tiebreaker when she buried a backhand rail that died precisely at the back wall at a dismayed Grainger’s feet. It seemed fitting that the match would end in this manner, for while Holleran scored the majority of her team’s winners with her brainy shot-selection and near-flawless execution, it was Krizek whose all-around game and wonderfully complementary role-playing largely accounted for the well-earned outcome.

Earlier on Sunday, Grainger and Dimauro had straight-gamed reigning U. S. National champs Fiona Geaves and Meredeth Quick (who saved four match-balls-against in the third-game best-of-nine tiebreaker only to have Dimauro finish off that 18-17 game with a forehand drop-shot winner) in one semi, while Holleran and Krizek did the same to the Belknap twins, Mary McKee and Berkeley Revenaugh, in the other. The latter pairing had engaged in the most exciting match of the tournament (and the only one in the main draw other than the final to go more than three games) in their quarterfinal Friday night against their 14-months-older sister Lee Belknap (in what is believed to be the first time that three sisters were ever involved in an Open-level doubles match) and Emily Lungstrum, who led two games to one and were dead-even through most of the fourth game before the twins came away with that game and asserted themselves in the fifth. The WDSA tour resumes in three weeks’ time in Denver, where an ISDA pro men’s doubles tour stop is also taking place, and where a Mixed competition will accompany the men’s and women’s draws.

Tournament Recap
Qtrs: Natalie Grainger/Jessica Dimauro d Suzie Pierrepont/Amy Milanek (who qualified 3-0 over Lauren Doline/Audrey Duboc), 3-0; Meredeth Quick/Fiona Geaves d Marci Sier/Orla O’Doherty, 3-0; Berkeley Revenaugh/Mary McKee d Lee Belknap/Emily Lungstrum, 3-2; Narelle Krizek/Demer Holleran d Catherine MacLeod/Marie Vlcek (who qualified 3-2 over Hope Crosier/Joyce Davenport), 3-0.

Semis: Grainger/Dimauro d Geaves/Quick, 3-0; Krizek/Holleran d Revenaugh/McKee, 3-0.

Final: Krizek/Holleran d Grainger/Dimauro, 3-1.

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