Trailing two games to love and 14-9 in the third yesterday afternoon against the No. 1 team on the ISDA pro doubles tour, Chris Walker and Clive Leach pulled off an amazing rally back from the dead, rolling off eight straight points to salvage that game, completing this noteworthy semifinal comeback victory over Paul Price and Ben Gould by winning a fourth-set tiebreaker (again 17-14) and a never-looking-back 15-8 fifth, then punctuating and consolidating that outcome with a 16-15 15-7 15-8 final-round victory a few hours later against Damien Mudge and Willie Hosey to get the 2007-08 ISDA season off to a rousing start.

It was Leach’s first ISDA tour title since he and Hosey had combined to annex the 2004 Big Apple Open three and a half years ago, and those five squandered consecutive match-points marked the third time in as many ISDA events going back to last spring that Gould (who along with Hosey had fifth-game triple-match-points get away first against Leach and Scott Butcher at the U. S. Nationals in Philadelphia and then two weeks later against Walker and Viktor Berg at the Creek Challenge Cup in Long Island) saw multiple-match-point opportunities (each time in the semis) evaporate into defeat. A bottom-of-the-tin Gould forehand drive on the last of those five match-balls preceded a surprising best-of-five call (instead of no-set, which would have given Price/Gould another match-ball chance) and a Walker/Leach sweep of the ensuing overtime, which they duplicated in the fourth-game close-out session as well, and by early in the fifth, buoyed by their series of narrow escapes, Walker and Leach (who seized the game’s first five points) were flying, running an increasingly beleaguered Price (whose early-match racquet magic had run out by then) all over the court and surging into the final.

Their opponents at that ultimate stage, Hosey (substituting for an injured Berg, who had pulled a hamstring muscle a few days earlier) and Mudge, had split the first two games of their semi against John Russell and Preston Quick before securing each of the last two games by a single point. Russell and Quick had barely survived their quarterfinal Friday night against Joe Pentland and Mark Price (round of 16 winners against Michael Puertas f the host Racquet Club of St. Louis and Jamie Crombie), who saved the fourth game and thereby extended the match with an 8-0 run from 14-9 down, then led 12-7 in the fifth before Russell and Quick embarked on a power-based, desperation-fueled eight-point match-winning burst of their own. Three 8-0 streaks, each of which salvaged games that appeared down the drain, with not just that game but the match hanging in the balance each time, is highly unusual and may have partly stemmed from the extremely compressed tournament schedule, with four rounds played over the mere 32-hour period between Friday at noon and Saturday evening at 8:00.

Certainly the course of the final itself was influenced by this implicit fatigue factor, especially on the amazingly durable but nevertheless now 46-year-old Hosey, by more than a half-decade the oldest player among the four finalists, who along with Mudge got barely two hours rest time between their taut Russell/Quick semi and the Walker/Leach final. Earlier in the day Mudge became the fifth partner with whom Hosey has attained an ISDA final (preceded by Jamie Bentley, Berg, Leach, Blair Horler and Michael Pirnak), a record in the nearly eight years of the Association’s existence, and they carried the opening game of the final all the way to simultaneous game-point, at which juncture Leach carved a sweet backhand drop shot into the front-right nick to clinch that game and set the tone for the decisive, single-figures second.

Seeking for ways to turn the momentum around, Hosey and Mudge decided to switch walls for the third game (belatedly returning Mudge to the right wall, where he can be so dominant with his forehand power, as witness his and Gary Waite’s record-setting achievements over the eight-year period ending with Waite’s retirement last spring), but by then it was too late: Leach continued to execute flawlessly and Walker’s pace and speed were too much along the left wall for Hosey to repel. After dodging so lethal a bullet against Price and Gould earlier that afternoon, Leach and Walker were not to be denied and together the pair of talented Englishmen sprinted across the finish line and grabbed the first title of the pro doubles season

Tournament Recap:

Rd of 16:
Paul Price/Ben Gould, bye;
Michael Pirnak/Mark Chaloner d Scott Denne/Ryan Donegan, 3-0;
Matt Jensen/Jeff Mulligan d Andrew Merrill/Hamed Anvari, 3-0;
Chris Walker/Clive Leach, bye;
John Russell/Preston Quick, bye;
Joe Pentland/Mark Price d Jamie Crombie/Michael Puertas, 3-0;
James Hewitt/Ayman Kerim d Tim Porter/Andrew Cordova, 3-1;
Damien Mudge/Willie Hosey, bye.

Qtrs:
P. Price/Gould d Pirnak/Chaloner, 3-0;
Walker/Leach d Jensen/Mulligan, 3-0;
Russell/Quick d Pentland/M. Price, 3-2;
Mudge/Hosey d Hewitt/Kerim, 3-0.

Semis:
Walker/Leach d P. Price/Gould, 3-2;
Mudge/Hosey d Russell/Quick, 3-1.

Finals:
Walker/Leach d Mudge/Hosey, 3-0.