2002 Hardball Nationals New York

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Waite Wins USSRA Hardball Open

— letter to the editor on this article —

Clark Rejoins the Hardball Fray

Displaying the extraordinary combination of athleticism and skill that has made him the greatest hardball singles and doubles player in the world for nearly a decade and arguably ( in view of the top-15 PSA world softball ranking he also attained in the late 1980's) the greatest all-around squash player of all time, ISDA superstar Gary Waite swept to victory at this year's national hardball championships, which were hosted at the Harvard Club of New York.

Byed to the semis of a strong seven-player Open field by virtue of his top-seeded status, Waite then defeated Rob Dinerman in four games and proceeded to a 15-7, 10 and 8 final over co-Harvard alumnus Marty Clark, whose pre-final Saturday victories over former champions Tom Harrity and Rob Hill may have been the story of the tournament.

CLARK IN FINALS DEBUT

Though he won the softball counterpart to this title, the S. L. Green, four-times in the six-year period from 1995-2000, the 30-year-old Clark had never previously cleared the semi-final round of the hardball nationals, reaching that stage in 1991 and 1993 as a Crimson undergraduate. His absence from hardball competition for more than a half decade made him a real question mark coming into the weekend, as did his pursuit of a medical career at Columbia, where he is in his residency stage and which has severely limited his available time to play squash.

Harrity and Hill, both longtime regulars on the WPSA pro singles circuit before that tour vanished in the mid-1990's, have been co-finalists for the immediately prior four Nationals editions from 1998-2001. Harrity won in 2000 on his home Merion Cricket Club courts and Hill entered this event as a four-time and defending champion. The fact that Clark was able to defeat both of these players on the same day, in four games in each case, is a tribute to his tenacity and fundamentals, which in the case of his early-morning Harrity match had to come in spite of a deafening backdrop of constant drilling in the building immediately adjacent to the host club.

DOUBLES IMPACT
Harrity had endured a late-night and a disheartening defeat Friday evening at the Johnson Doubles at Heights Casino, where he and partner Eric Vlcek had seen a two games to one lead over second seeds Willie Hosey and Viktor Berg dissolve into a five-game loss that wasn't complete until after 10 p.m.

Still feeling the effects, both physical and psychological, of that strenuous setback, he didn't show his usual energy or court coverage, fading in the last pair of games after barely eking out the 15-13 second. Harrity did recover to win the two subsequent matches that brought him the 35-and-over title, losing fewer than 10 points in any game of his final with second seed Greg Burton.

The return of this flight after a hiatus of several years was an encouraging sign for hardball's future, as was the increase in total player participation from 72 last year to 76 this weekend. Both Hill and Dinerman rebounded from Thursday evening defeats in the qualifying round of the Johnson Doubles to win their Friday evening Nationals quarter-finals at the Yale Club, which is located on Vanderbilt Avenue, just two blocks east of the Harvard Club.

POWER VERSUS YOUR REPORTER
Hill won in a competitive though fairly decisive four over '95 New York States finalist Rich Wahlstedt, another WPSA tour alumnus, but Dinerman's 3-1 quarter with ISDA power-hitting star Jeff Mulligan was a classic battle between the latter's awesome slugging and his opponent's savvy and shotmaking. The two had met 10 months earlier at the University Club, where Mulligan had prevailed, also in four, on the softball court on which that hardball event had been held, but in this regulation-court venue, Dinerman's angles (especially this roll-corner) and selection, as well as his three decades of accumulated hardball experience, which have led to a career total of 51 hardball Open titles, were just enough to nullify Mulligan's fearsome firepower, by revealingly close scores of 15-13, 14-15, 15-8 and (from 11-all) 15-11.

At times it seemed like Rob was tending goal and Mulligan was blasting slap shots at him, but he lobbed his way out of trouble and kept the ball as tight to the walls as he could. Ironically, had Dinerman and his partner Yasir Kamel won their qualifying match against Ned Edwards and Greg Zaff, they would have faced Mulligan and Todd Binns in their first main-draw round at 3 o'clock that afternoon. Given how exhausted Dinerman appeared in the final taut points of his singles match Friday evening, his qualifying loss in the doubles event the previous afternoon may well have been a blessing in disguise. As noted, Dinerman lost in four Saturday afternoon to Waite, who noticeably let up in the third after blasting and double-boasting his way through the opening pair of 15-5 games in a match whose outcome had a pre-ordained feel throughout.

No such aura prevailed in the balancing Clark-Hill semi, during much of which the ball and the players were all over the court and eachother, resulting in numerous arguments, tie-ups at the tee and appeals. The lanky Hill intentionally creates havoc with his "anywhere" smashes and Clark is known to grimly hold his ground; the midcourt area became a no-man's-land and the site of constant contention, with great squash interspersed with the physicality. Clark survived, 15-11 in the fourth, but never came close to preventing Waite from establishing control of either court position or the scoreboard in their noon final the following day. Waite then traveled to Heights Casino, where he completed his ambitious weekend "double" by teaming with Damien Mudge to win the Johnson Doubles in a close four-game final over fourth seeds Michael Pirnak and David Kay in Waite's sixth and last match in less than 48 hours!

The Waite-Clark final was the eighth and last of a hectic Sunday morning on the Harvard Club's trio of white-painted pumice-filled courts. After Harrity had opened the age-group finals action with his victory over Burton, Hastings Griffin won the four-player 80-and-over round-robin. All five of the other age-group flights had straight draws. Merion's Charlie Baker, who along with the host club's Charlie Kimball did a wonderful job as Tournament Co-Chairmen, lost his 75's final to Bowdoin swimming coach Charlie Butt

FAMILIAR AGE GROUP FACES
Perennial age-group National champion Henri Salaun, a four-time winner of the Open event during the 1950's and early 1960's, was age-eligible for the 75's but instead "played down" in the 70's, but this stratagem was foiled when he lost the final of that younger division to another frequent age-group champion in the smooth-stroking Bill Wilson.

Palmer Page, an Intercollegiate champion in '71, Nationals semi-finalist in '76 and frequent top-five rankee during the 1970's, romped through the 50-and-over draw in his age-group debut, his final victim being San Francisco's Jim Gibbons, who had pulled off a five-game opening-round upset over top seed Bill Giese. Lucky Young had an easier time in his dominant 60's final over Warren Young, but the other two age-group finals, the 55's between multiple age-group champion John Frazier and doubles specialist Sandy Martin and the 65's matching the extremely fit defending champion Dan Dudas against Boston's wily John Wheeler, both went the full five-game limit.

Wheeler had won his semi over Pete Bostwick and appeared to be well positioned after taking the fourth game from Dudas, while Martin actually led Frazier, two games to one, at the break. But both these stalwart players saw their hopes dashed in the closing laps, with Dudas jumping out to an early lead in his 15-11 fifth and Frazier riding his shotmaking prowess to victory in both of his last two games with Martin.

Age-group winners Frazier, Wilson, Harrity, Griffin and Page are all either current or former Merioners who no doubt will be looking forward to the 2003 Nationals, which are scheduled to return to their home club for the fourth time since '95.

COURT SIZE DEBATE
The advisability of hosting this event in well-known venues and high-profile cities, as opposed to moving it around to smaller sites to help promote the hardball game in those locales was debated at the Saturday night dinner, as was the degree to which hardball play should be propagated on the 30-inch-wider, higher-tinned softball courts.

To this point, of the recognized invitationals, only the Atlantic Coast tourney was switched to these court dimensions this season in the wake of that event being evicted from its normal Resorts International location by that hotel's management, but as more and more hardball courts are eliminated or converted, that scarcity might force additional sites to confront that unhappy option. No one doubts that the hardball game is much better, both to play and to watch, when played on a regulation hardball court, but a growing number of players are having difficulty getting access to one, and if this trend continues, further adjustments may have to be considered.

Whatever the future holds, everyone agreed that the 2002 edition of an event that began in 1907 was a major success, especially with the presence of perhaps the strongest Open draw in several decades, a fact noted both by Baker in his speech Saturday night and by Carter Fergusson, who was asked to make the trophy presentation in recognition of his record 55th consecutive playing appearance in this event.

BARNABY TRIBUTE
Clark graciously congratulated his conqueror, noted how much he enjoyed returning to hardball after his long absence from the tournament and paid an emotional tribute to Harvard's legendary coach Jack Barnaby, who led the Crimson for 44 glorious and championship-filled years and who had died just 11 days earlier at the ripe age of 92. Waite, whose last hardball defeat occurred seven years and 10 tournaments ago, movingly dedicated his victory to the memory of Arthur Peters, an elderly gentleman and hardball enthusiast to whom he had given hardball lessons to for years, and who passed away last spring, just before the end of Waite's four-year tenure at the University Club.

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