World Doubles 2002 April 28:        < Mens Draw >  < All Draws >

Waite and Mudge Reach 50 Win Milestone at Worlds

by Rob Dinerman.

TORONTO- Top seeds Gary Waite and Damien Mudge earned the 2002 World Open hardball doubles championship yesterday afternoon with a competitive but convincing 15-12 15-10 12-15 15-8 victory, their 50th of the season against no losses, over their most persistent and dangerous rivals this season, the fourth-ranked team of Blair Horler and Clive Leach, whom they have now defeated in 10 of the 16 ISDA ranking events in a season that will end this coming weekend with a tour stop in St. Louis.

Three of those matches-in Philadelphia in mid-October, Greenwich in late January, and now Toronto at the end of April---have been in finals, and all of the others save at the season-opening event in Denver eight months ago have been in the semis, which latter fact points up both the consistency that has characterized Horler/Leach's season-long performance and the lucklessness that has landed them so frequently in the draw's top half, especially during the last half of the schedule.

The last two weekends in two of squash's meccas---the easily tour-leading $80,000 Kellner Cup in New York and this biannual event in Toronto---have both been exceptions to the foregoing phenomenon, but Horler and Leach had squandered the golden opportunity their Kellner draw had bestowed on them by stumbling in the quarters, where they suffered their only loss this season to Todd Binns and Jeff Mulligan, 15-13 in the fifth. Binns and Mulligan had then fallen in four games in their ensuing semi-final match to Willie Hosey and Viktor Berg, who thereby reached their sixth ISDA final of the season and consequently clinched the season-end No. 2 team ranking.

HORLER/LEACH — BERG/HOSEY FIREWORKS
Due to the enormous point value the Kellner Cup possesses by virtue of the prize money it offers, Leach and Horler might well have occupied the coveted second slot had they attained the final round. Frustrated by their fumbling of that possibility and by their consequent consignment to the No. 4 position (behind four-time ISDA finalists Dave Kay and Michael Pirnak), Horler and Leach were determined to at least win their 2001-2002 rubber match in their semi-final against Hosey and Berg after both teams had advanced to that stage with first-round wins over the qualifiers Eric Vlcek-Preston Quick and Shane Doherty-Tyler Millard respectively.

Their eagerness for this match almost caused their undoing, as both Horler and Leach were too impatient early on, attempting to attack their opponents with short shots before the opportunity was really there and paying a price for this oversight in the form of tins and counterpunch winners from the brainy Hosey and the mercurial Berg, who had both played so well in their gallant though unsuccessful Kellner Cup final five days earlier in Manhattan.

MIXED TOO
Berg had also teamed with Leslie Freeman to reach the Worlds Mixed Doubles final 48 hours after the Kellner Cup, a feat even more noteworthy for their first meeting occurring just moments before they took the court for their first-round match. They had lost that final in five to Jessie Chai (who four days later would lose the Women's Open final 3-0 with Karen Jerome to Alicia McConnell and Demer Holleran) and the ubiquitous Waite in a match that saw both men roam over much of the entire court, especially Berg, whose over-zealousness may have finally caught up with him in the 15-8 fifth game.

Berg and Hosey allowed a 14-11 first-game lead to disappear but won that game 15-14 when a Hosey rail was too tight on the left wall for Horler to return. They then pressed this advantage in the second game, which they won 15-8, with Berg in particular befuddling his opponents with the series of straight and crosscourt drops with which he responded to their short game.

TACTICAL TURNAROUND
Realizing that their impatience was costing them the match, Horler and Leach then started going for length and pace and gained the discipline that had been lacking in the first two lost games. They surged to 14-8 in the third game, dropped four straight points, but won that game 15-12 to get back into the match. By this time, the atmosphere between these two rivalrous duos had become palpably contentious, and the arguments over calls and increasingly physical jockeying and elbowing for position creating a level of antipathy that even extended to the between-games trips to the water fountain, which became a site for confrontation and trash-talking.

Hosey and Berg went downhill in the face of both the unpleasantness and the increased pace of their opponents, who were several points ahead throughout the eventual 15-11 fourth game and closed out their comeback by going from 8-8 to 12-9 in the fifth, whereupon a Berg tin of a Leach lob serve pretty much sealed the 15-9 outcome. The balancing semi-final between the top seeds and Jamie Bentley and Josh McDonald was much more orderly and rancor-free.

Bentley and McDonald had already had a fine tournament by virtue of their straight-game quarter-final win over Kay and Pirnak, and seemed to recognize that that achievement would likely be the end of their upset-causing exploits, at least for this weekend: 15-10, 8 and 7 for The Champs, who thus entered the court for the final well rested and on a 53-match roll extending to the season-ending Kellner Cup last April. The first of their 49 wins this season prior to the Worlds final had come at the expense of their final-round opponents in this event, who had shown even in their 18-17 15-4 15-14 defeat on September's last weekend in Colorado how tough a pairing they have become. Two of their 10 matches against Waite and Mudge this campaign have gone the full five games, the Greenwich final and the Denver Athletic Club event just three weeks ago, where they had actually assumed a 9-6 lead in the fifth, the severest statistical threat of the season to the undefeated slate Waite and Mudge are seeking, before bowing to a match-closing 9-3 charge.

But Waite and Mudge, with the 50-win milestone right in front of them and the finish line to a perfect season finally in clear sight, were too focused to allow this match to become as exciting as that one had been. They trailed briefly in the early stages of the first two games, but took them both at 12 and 10. They did fall behind 7-1 in the third, rallied to 9-10, but lost it 15-12, though even then they seemed in control of the final outcome.

All four players were performing well, but someone needs to over-achieve for their to be any realistic hope of an upset over Waite and Mudge, who have now won all but one of their 29 career ISDA events together over the past three years. Leach especially seems to appreciate the need to go a little "outside the box" in order to pull off an upset win, and his arsenal has also expanded in this his first full season on the ISDA circuit. His crosscourt drops and three-walls are an excellent complement to his deep game, and both of those shots have the added benefit of winding up short in Waite's region, where he is sometimes vulnerable. Waite was very mobile this day, however, that strategy was abandoned when he resresponded with several crosscourts that passed Leach and died for winners behind him, especially in the fourth and final game, where he and Mudge broke out to 7-1 and cruised on to 12-4, 13-5 and 15-8.

PEERLESS SEASON
It was the third tournament win in seven days for Waite; counting his Cambridge Cup win with Mark Chaloner, his National Doubles win with Morris Clothier, his World Mixed win with Chai, his four singles wins in as many attempts and his 16 ISDA ranking wins with Mudge, Waite has now won all 23 hardball singles and doubles tournaments he has entered in what has to be, both statistically and in fact, a single-season hardball performance that will rank with the greatest in the history of squash.

< index of Rob Dinerman's articles >

DOUBLES PAGES
  Doubles Home
  02-03 Preview
  02 Season Review
  01-02 Statistics
  Doubles Calendar
  Origin of Doubles
  Doubles Archives

COLLEGE USA
Schedules
Team previews

DEPARTMENTS
Latest news
Tournament Calendar
Bronstein Global Gallery
Player of the month
Videos
History
Pakistan Squash
School Squash
Camp Index
Features Index
Player Profiles
Worldwide Clubs
Worldwide Links
Rankings
Jobs

More Good stuff:
About Squash
   Just starting
Books
Juniors Squash
Women's Squash
Regional Reports