After 1 Year, Castilla's Revenge
by Rob Dinerman © 2003; all rights of reproduction reserved.
Dec 30, 2003      

Javier Castilla photo © 2004 Debra Tessier

Top seeds Javier Castilla and Lilien Rosenthal, the No. 1 players of their respective varsities at Denison and Brown, surged to victory in the men's and women's Cummings Cup championships, a three-day college invitational hosted as always by the University Club of New York during the holiday break. Each had lost in the final of the 2002 event, Rosenthal to the now-graduated Adrian Ellman (Williams) and Castilla to Will Broadbent, a defeat the Colombian native was able to avenge yesterday afternoon, weathering a first-game tiebreaker loss and gradually wresting control en route to a highly satisfying 8-10 9-5 9-2 9-7 victory that devolved into a battle more of wills than skills.

Chastened by his lanky Harvard rival's straight-set triumph in last year's final, Castilla resolved that in this rematch he would force Broadbent to the front of the court and engage him in the kind of lengthy exchanges that might make the latter tire as the match wore on. This seemed an especially viable plan in light of the five-week lay-off that a knee injury had imposed on Broadbent this past autumn, and in light of how deadly Broadbent has proved he can be when given the time and room to execute his highly proficient ball-control attack. Even though he has developed some bad habits in the wake of his enforced squash hiatus (often hitting his deep backhands off the wrong foot, for one, in order to protect his still-recovering patellar tendon), Broadbent's hands are so good, and his shooting touch, especially on his drop shot, so refined, that he can still feather or snap the ball with remarkable accuracy even when slightly off-balance and with his legs not fully under him.

Castilla's game, much improved from their last meeting a year ago, has more inventiveness and flash than that of his much-taller and more deliberate opponent, and features late wrist-flicks, occasional look-away forays and a definite predilection to the flashy shot. His emotive self-presentation also was in marked contrast to Broadbent's reserved approach, but what both players seemed to share was the absolute conviction that he could win this match by concentrating the play on the left wall. The resultant "dueling backhand rails" theme caused many of the points to become a "can-you-top-this?" waiting game in which whoever was the first to hit a tight enough rail to extract a loose return gained control of the point.

It also, unfortunately, severely delimited the space within which the bulk of the action occurred, leading to much jostling for position and far too many lets; neither player was motivated to clear any more than necessary, and neither had much incentive to do so, what with a referee who was emphatically loath to award strokes.

As a consequence, many lengthy exchanges ended in unsatisfying do-overs, a frustrating development frequently exacerbated by long gaps between points. Castilla has a habit of walking to the front wall after a point to mentally prepare himself for the next exchange, and he often bounces the ball as often as a dozen times before serving, while Broadbent, clearly irritated both by the delays and by the way the score began turning against him, eventually resorted to some time-consuming tactics of his own in response.

Neither player was stalling, but the lets and between-points time lapses kept the
match from acquiring any discernible rhythm or flow. Both players displayed remarkable levels of shot-making, court coverage and ball placement, but the match itself did not live up to the talents or output of those playing it. After rallying from 4-8 to 8-8, Castilla lost the ensuing tiebreaker on a tinned drop shot and an off-balance backhand cross court lob that drifted out of court. This reprieve seemed to put Broadbent in control, especially when he then took leads of 2-0 and 4-2 in the second. But a flurry of forehand winners off Castilla's racquet and a few Broadbent tins got
Castilla to 8-4 in just two hands, and he closed out that game 8-5 when Broadbent
erred on a forehand drop shot.

The potentially pivotal third game meandered painfully along, with many lets and hands-out; after 15 minutes the score was only 4-2, Castilla. But Broadbent was by this time starting to fade under Castilla's unrelenting pressure. The Harvard star had perhaps too easy a ride to the final, whereas Castilla had toughed out a testing four-game semi the day before against Trinity's Pat Malloy, which may have better prepared him psychologically for this final than Broadbent, whose understandable rust from having missed so much time probably contributed to his swift capitulation (from 2-4 to 2-9 in just two hands) late in that third game and to the 5-2 deficit that soon confronted him in the fourth.

Throughout this time, Castilla was on a hot streak, jumping on loose balls, making acrobatic gets and loudly exhorting himself as the finish line drew closer. If anything he may have been TOO conscious of that finish line and the wonderful sense of vindication he would get from crossing it after his ragged performance in last year's decisive 3-0 final-round loss, for a sudden reappearance of the lost-concentration syndrome that has occasionally dogged his intercollegiate career created an out-of-the-blue swoon at the end of which Broadbent had garnered a 6-5 advantage and with it a possibly permanent hold of the match's momentum. It would have been awfully difficult for Castilla, for whom it was now-or-never if he was ever going to win this title given his impending graduation this spring, to have absorbed the loss of a fourth game in which he led 5-2 and still prevailed in the fifth.

It is to his credit that when it counted most he was able to re-locate his temporarily misplaced focus and repulse Broadbent's charge. A nick-finding cross-court re-drop got Castilla started, and at 7-all he trapped Broadbent on right wall and banged a winning forehand cross court to get to 8-7, match-ball. Fittingly, the match ended where such a majority of it had been played, on the left wall, with a Castilla backhand straight drop that a lunging Broadbent was unable to scrape back into play. There is no doubt that both players will benefit greatly from this match when the intercollegiate season resumes in the next few weeks, Castilla from the Cummings Cup champion status this victory confers and Broadbent from the crucible this battle doubtless provided in accelerating his return to top match condition following the knee injury he suffered in late October.

SPARSE WOMEN'S DRAW
A total of 41 players (not counting Dartmouth's Cam Fortin and Will Hiltz, both of whom were unannounced no-shows) participated in the men's singles competition.

The women's draw, now in only its third year, had 14 contestants, by far the highest ranked of whom, the eventual champion Rosenthal, enjoyed nine- and 10-spot advantages respectively over her final- and semi-final round opponents, Yale freshman Lauren McCrery and Bowdoin junior Nicki Clement. In Rosenthal's final with McCrery (a walkover winner in her semi over the flu-ridden Harvard freshman Lydia Williams), she displayed a bout of nerves in mostly tinning away a 6-0 lead. But at 7-all it was McCrery who tinned the game away on a backhand drop and a forehand overhead volley. She fell behind right away in the second, 4-0 in a single hand and 6-0 before a backhand drop shot got her on the scoreboard.

But following that 9-1 stanza, and adhering to the between-games advice she received from her older brother TJ (a semifinalist in the men's event) and a gaggle of her Yale teammates, McCrery started hitting everything hard in the beginning of the third game, an approach that both restored her stroking rhythm and, more importantly, kept Rosenthal away from the front-court area where she had been most successful. McCrery was able to stay even with her more experienced opponent to 5-all, but in the latter part of that game Rosenthal was able to return the play to the front-court, where she cat-and-moused McCrery out of position and drove the ball deep for winners. A shallow forehand cross court closed it out and enabled a relieved Rosenthal to claim the crown that had eluded her a year ago.

SMITH-MALLOY WIN KETCHAM CUP
As if Trinity hasn't dominated men's college squash enough during the
last half-dozen years, what with five consecutive Potter Cups (emblematic of the
intercollegiate team championship), its representatives also for the third
time in the last five years won the Intercollegiate Doubles title, named in honor
of Treddy Ketcham, who along with Keen Butcher and the late Russell Ball
donated the permanent trophy when this event was revived in the late 1980's after
a hiatus of several decades. Malloy, who as a freshman won this event three
years ago with Duncan Pearson, this time teamed up with sophomore Coly Smith in
a decisive 15-7, 11 and 6 termination of the upset-filled heroics that had
brought Penn freshman Will Simonton and Ben Ende to the final.

The latter duo had defeated Princeton's Will Osnato and Nate Beck (the No. 1 seeds) in the quarters and Harvard's Broadbent and Asher Hochberg in the semis. But they were never able to play on even terms with Smith and especially Malloy, a finalist (with Sandy Tierney) in last spring's Massachusetts States and an experienced campaigner who pretty much controlled the on-court action with his powerful cross courts, tight forehand reverse corner and thoughtful shot selection. Simonton and Ende had a shot at the second game when the southpaw Simonton lashed several shallow rails past Smith, the last of which enabled him and his teammate to close to 11-12. But an unexpected Malloy serve return winner and a semi-forced Ende error made it 14-11, at which point Simonton mis-read a sliced Malloy serve that ran along the left wall after bounding off the back, and the demoralization that resulted from that game's close-out carried into the third.

Safely in the saddle by mid-game, Smith and Malloy ran off the last seven points, but the surprise advance to that stage of the youthful Penn stars can only augur well for their prospects during the remaining three years of their varsity careers. The finalists all received their trophies from the 84-year-old Ketcham, who was on hand for the finals and whose highly popular presence was appreciated by everyone present.

Tournament and University Club Athletics Chairman Bill McDonough, whose daughter Abbie, a senior at Yale, played in the tournament, was ecstatic about the size of the turn-out and the quality of the play. This tripartite event continues to grow every year, and it has long sin