World Doubles 2002 April 27:        < Mens Draw >  < All Draws >

Semis Set for Worlds Event by Rob Dinerman.

TORONTO- Undefeated top seeds Gary Waite and Damien Mudge survived a scare in their quarter-final round last night and recorded their 48th consecutive win by a score of 10-15, 15-9, 14 and 11 over Todd Binns and Jeff Mulligan in the bi-annual Worlds hardball doubles competition, which this year is being hosted in Toronto.

WAITE AND MUDGE ESCAPE
Waite and Mudge saw an 11-2 third-game cushion yield to a shocking 12-1 spurt before a pair of points tied the game at 14-all and a Waite three-wall nick on the ensuing "no-set" point gave them a two games to one lead. They then jumped out to 7-0 in the fourth, dropped nine straight points, but won eight of the match's last 10 points to cap off a pair of extraordinarily roller-coaster final games.

Waite has already won two finals this week, the Kellner Cup with Mudge over Viktor Berg and Willie Hosey last Monday night at the Racquet & Tennis Club in midtown Manhattan, and the World Mixed Doubles with Jessie Chai in a five-game final over Berg and Leslie Freeman this past Wednesday evening. In each of those events, he was defending titles he already held with the partners with whom he had co-won them, but this is not the case with the World Open, which was won by Hosey and Jamie Bentley the alst time it was held two years ago in Philadelphia over Waite and the now-retired Mark Talbott.

HOSEY AND BERG IN THE HUNT
Hosey and his season-long partner Berg are still in the hunt for this year's prize by virtue of their four-game victory last night over Tyler Millard and Shane Doherty, who successfully qualified into the main draw earleir yesterday via a five-game win over Dean Brown and Andrew Slater.

They will face fourth seeds Blair Horler and Clive Leach, who stumbled out of the gate in a first-game loss to Eric Vlcek and Preston Quick before righting themselves and taking the next three games. Vlcek and Quick have successfully qualified their way into the last four ISDA events-in Denver, Long Island, New York and now Toronto---and in each case caused plenty of trouble for their higher-ranked opening-round opponents, twice in fact going five games, but have not been able to make a breakthrough. They will definitely be a team to keep an eye on when the 2002-2003 season begins next autumn.

BEST RIVALRY OF THE YEAR
The Hosey/Berg vs Horler/Leach rivalry has been dead-even this season, with Horler and Leach winning in the semis in Philadelphia in October and Greenwich in January and Hosey and Berg responding in the quarters of the North American Open in November and the semis of the Baltimore event in March. The latter duo has clinched the No. 2 end-of-season ranking due to their six final-round appearances (as compared to two for Horler and Leach), but there is no clear favorite going into their season's rubber match this afternoon.

BENTLEY RISES LIKE THE PHOENIX
The lone team not seeded in the top four to reach the semis is the recently-formed pair of Torontonians Jamie Bentley and Josh McDonald, who repeated the two-week-old win they had engineered at the same quarter-final stage of the Long Island event over third seeds David Kay and Michael Pirnak, though, unlike that prior four-game outcome, this upset took only three games to complete. After and initial burst in which they reached four finals (Brooklyn, Chicago, Buffalo and Denver) in their first six events since the formation of their partnership in early February, Kay and Pirnak have now lost three of their last five matches, and it will be interesting to see how they rebound at the tour's last 2001-2002 stop next week in St. Louis and what results they will attain next season.

In addition to the possibly somewhat distracting effects of the 30th birthday party Kay celebrated with his friends yesterday, there is an intriguing dynamic when these teams meet that seems to work in favor of Bentley and McDonald, who followed their Long Island win with a four-game semi-final victory over Berg and Binns and who now face their Kellner Cup straight-game quarter-final conquerors Waite and Mudge in the semi-finals this afternoon.

Bentley and Pirnak began the current campaign as partners, but lost to Kay and Chris Walker in the first round of the opening event in Denver by one point in the fifth game and never regained their equilibrium in four subsequent months plagued by under-achievement, growing friction and a predilection for finding a new way to lose from one week to the next. After this arrangement was mercifully ended in late January, Pirnak happily and successfully joined up with Kay while Bentley tried several different partners before settling on McDonald, who was Kay's partner for all of last season. Whether there are any lingering resentments when this quartet of recent former partners enters the court is a matter of speculation; suffice it to say, that Bentley and McDonald have evinced a high level of motivation throughout both of their April wins over Kay and Pirnak.

Both semis will take place this afternoon (Saturday, April 27) at 4 pm, with the final scheduled for 4 pm on Sunday.

WORLD DOUBLES SELECTED RESULTS:
Men's Open Quarter-finals:

Mixed Doubles Finals:


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