El Hindi and Razik advance      

Wael El Hindi reaches the Hyder finals (photo ©Debra Tessier)

Wael El Hindi and defending champion Shahier Razik, the No. 1 and 2 seeds respectively, overwhelmed their respective semifinal opponents, Damien Mudge and Stefan Castelyn, this evening, setting up a High Noon Sunday showdown in the Quentin Hyder Invitational final that will represent the first real test of the weekend for both players, neither of whom has yet come close to dropping a single game in their six combined pre-final matches.

El Hindi followed a fairly well-contested 11-8 opening game by dominating the 11-1, 11-4 remainder, while Razik similarly cruised to his 3-0 triumph at the expense of Castelyn, the recent Pro level National Skill Levels champ a few months ago. El Hindi and Razik are both current touring pros, and the unrelenting steadiness their games have acquired over the years on the tough PSA pro circuit were in each case noticeably superior to their respective opponents, both of whom, especially Castelyn, a former PSA late-1990’s No. 7, have competed on that tour as well, but only rarely in recent years.

The two finalists utilized slightly different approaches tonight, with El Hindi applying constant offensive pressure against Mudge, whom frequently he wrong-footed with his late wrist-flicking action while working his powerful Australian adversary mercilessly around the court to a degree that eventually exhausted ISDA doubles star and reduced him in the end to hitting everything as hard as he could in a vain attempt to reverse the course of the play. Razik, on the other hand, specializes in DEFENSIVE pressure, gliding effortlessly to everything an increasingly frustrated (and fatigued) Castelyn hit, sometimes acting almost as a backboard, teasing his opponent with the apparent prospect of a winner, only to then rip that opportunity away with yet another successful retrieval and maddeningly tantalizing lob return.

This style, buttressed by some excellent counter-punching and smoothly-hit nick-finding angles, has already served Razik well in his prior pair of victorious Hyder finals, those coming in 2003 against Peter Genever and last year vs. his Canadian compatriot Graham Ryding, who in fact led two games to love before eventually falling apart in a tin-filled fifth game. The final should therefore feature an intriguing contrast in styles, and, with both protagonists reasonably fresh in light of their abundantly solid and fairly swift wins prior to their match-up, both should be ready to bring their full formidable arsenal to bear as they vie for possession of the longest continually running softball title in America.

Semis Recap
Wael El Hindi d Damien Mudge, 3-0;
Shahier Razik d Stefan Castelyn, 3-0.