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Hyder Open - Finals
by
Rob Dinerman © 2002 SquashTalk
May
19, 2002 © 2002
Mudge,
Patrick win 2002 Hyder Cup Opens
By the time this afternoon's action had concluded, third-seeded Australia native Damien Mudge and top-seeded Canadian Katie Patrick had become champions of the men's and women's open draws respectively of the 34th annual Quentin Hyder Invitational, the oldest continually running softball event in America. Patrick surmounted a two games to one deficit and won the fifth game going away against Julia Beaver, her nemesis during their recent intercollegiate careers, while Mudge rebounded from a late collapse in the first game against top-seeded British-born Julian Wellings and dominated the remainder of his four-game triumph.
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| Katie Patrick, file photo © 2000 Debra Tessier |
Patrick graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 2000 and played a major role in the Quakers' first-ever collegiate team title her senior year. These team accomplishments notwithstanding, she had been able to win only one of her half-dozen prior head-to-head matches in dual-meet and tournament play against the taller Beaver, who won the Individual Intercollegiate title during her sophomore, junior and senior years from 1999-2001. This psychological edge was nullified by the tournament-tough state that a year spent playing in the qualifying rounds on the demanding WISPA pro women's tour has imbued in Patrick, in contrast to which Beaver was forced for health reasons to miss the entire 2001-2002 season and was therefore just returning to action after this lengthy lay-off.
JULIA GRABS THE INITIATIVE
After winning the first game of the final 9-6, Patrick struggled through
a pair of lost 9-4 stanzas, during which she tinned frequently, especially
on her backhand drop shot and, by her own admission, "lost her length,"
and thereby presented Beaver with plenty of open balls to attack in midcourt.
Patrick also seemed somewhat flustered by several close calls that went
against her and played below her level at the end of each of those games.
PATRICK FORCES FATIGUE
To her credit, after falling behind 4-2 in the fourth game, she surged
to 7-4 in one hand and won that game 9-4. During this stretch, which in
retrospect proved to be the decisive stage of the match, she regained
her width, volleyed fearlessly and, most importantly, forced the action
and ran Beaver all over the court, inducing a level of physical and mental
fatigue from which she never was able to recover. Beaver's length enables
her to stretch for balls other women wouldn't be able to retrieve, but
when she gets tired, her footwork begins to suffer and the precision and
overall effectiveness of her entire game is significantly affected.
This is what happened throughout the second half of the fourth game and the entire fifth, during which Patrick pressed her momentum, her confidence growing as her lead increased, and sprinted exuberantly to the tape, winning that game 9-1 and liberating herself from the burden of all those college defeats. A well-deserved championship for Patrick in the 23rd women's Hyder tourney, but a fine performance for Beaver as well in her return to competitive squash, one which will likely serve her well when the team trials to determine the composition of the U. S. Pan American Federation games squad take place next month.
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| Damian Mudge, file photo courtesy ISDA |
CONTRAST IN STYLE
The subsequent men's final between the sturdy Mudge and the smooth Wellings
was a contrast in styles and a tribute ultimately both to Mudge's softball
game and to the confidence the undefeated season he and his partner Gary
Waite just completed on the ISDA pro doubles tour has instilled in him.
This invincible pair also were co-finalists in both of the pro hardball
events that were piggybacked onto the ISDA doubles tour stops in Baltimore
(on an American court) and Long Island (on an international court) this
past spring, and Mudge throughout his solid trio of pre-final wins over
Josh Miller, Richard Chin and Kerim Yehia transferred to the softball
arena the athleticism and shrewdness that has been so evident in his hardball
accomplishments in both singles and doubles.
MUDGE DEFT TOUCH
In contrast to the manner in which he bludgeons his opponents into submission
in the two hardball disciplines, Mudge possesses a surprisingly deft touch
in his softball game, especially in his backhand drop shot, which is also
one of Wellings's primary strengths. The latter had barely survived a
pair of testing four-game battles against Mudge's ISDA colleagues Preston
Quick and Clive Leach, his compatriot and virtual contemporary who, in
an analagous situation to the Beaver-Patrick match-up, has historically
dominated their rivalry over the years. While Leach's immersion in the
extraordinarily hectic ISDA tour this spring may have blunted the potency
of his softball game, the same phenomenon seemed to enhance the quality
of Mudge's game, which catapulted him to a 13-15 15-4 15-10 15-6 victory
and possession of the large and gleaming permanent Hyder Trophy, which
was placed just outside the glass backwall before the final as a quite
visible reminder of the reward that awaited the winner.
Wellings, a recent world No. 48 who has been based in Cincinnati since late last autumn, looked like he might be that person when he engineered a six-point game-winning rally from 9-13 in the first game, but that contretemps served to galvanize rather than deflate Mudge, who, as he did so often during a 53-0 ISDA season, seized the match by the throat early in the second game and never let go. Each of the final three games was defined by a huge Mudge run that broke it open: 3-all to 15-4 in the second game, 5-all to 13-6 in the 15-10 third game and 3-all to 13-5, 15-6 in the clinching fourth game. Wellings did appear to have a bit of a letdown in the second after playing perhaps his best squash of the entire weekend in stealing that first game, but he entered the third game ready to regain control only to be overwhelmed by his stronger and more confident opponent.
Although Mudge's stroke execution on his backhand lacks the classic quality that the renowned British team coach Neil Harvey has instilled in Wellings's game, the solidly-built Australian was able to alternate his drop shots with a beautifully arcing and near-unvolleyable crosscourt lob that constantly chased Wellings to the back recesses of the court and forced emergency responses that Mudge could pulverize. Wellings was forced at least a half-dozen times per game to return the ball by hitting it into the backwall, where Mudge had every option to select. But an even more set of match-defining characteristics was Mudge's extraordinary hand speed (doubtless acquired from doubles, where he is known to stand well up in the court and dare opponents to pass him), which enabled him to reflex volley attempted Wellings winners with demoralizing winning responses of his own, and the otherworldly ability he possesses for a man of his considerable dimensions and musculature to reverse direction when he is wrong-footed and still explode to the ball.
His game also exudes a flamboyance that is relatively rare in softball, and all of these factors asserted themselves to ever-increasing degrees as the rout evolved. By the end, Wellings was discouraged and exhausted, too far behind to have a chance of catching up and too depressed to make a serious effort to do so, and Mudge had capped off his memorable 2001-2002 campaign by claiming yet another victim. True, his path to the final (especially the walkover he received midway through his Yehia semi-final when the Egyptian's second-game left thigh muscle pull became too severe at 1-1, 1-8 for him to continue) had been much less strenuous than that traveled by Wellings, but the firepower he displayed throughout the weekend, particularly in the one-sided last three games of the final, made it clear that Mudge was the class of the 24-man field and a real threat to repeat as champion next year when this storied event will celebrate its milestone 35th edition.
Summary of the final round:
Men's: Damien Mudge(3)
d Julian Wellings(1) 13-15 15-4 15-10 15-6
Women's: Katie Patrick (1) d Julia Beaver 9-6 4-9 4-9 9-4 9-1
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