In a triumphant return to the site of their first tournament-winning foray two years ago, Paul Price and Ben Gould swept to victory this past weekend in the Maryland Club Open, the first ranking stop on the 2008-09 ISDA professional squash tour. In so doing, and by powering their 15-5 13-15 15-8 15-4 way past final-round opponents, namely John Russell and Preston Quick, who have given them trouble in the past, Price and Gould fired the first significant shot of the October to May season. In the process they demonstrated the completeness of their recovery from the injuries and deflating late-match losses that plagued them last spring, while  banishing as well whatever bad memories may have lingered from last year’s Baltimore final, when they led Clive Leach and Chris Walker 2-1, 11-8 but wound up losing in five.

Almost every one of the tournaments in the last half of the 2007-08 ISDA year had come down to final-round confrontations between the second-seeded Price/Gould pairing and their top-seeded counterparts Damien Mudge and Viktor Berg, who had reached all 10 of the post-Thanksgiving events on the schedule, winning eight of them, en route to earning the No. 1 end-of-season team ranking.

But both of these juggernauts really struggled in their respective semifinals, with Price/Gould forced to a fifth game (which they won 15-9) against Leach and Matt Jenson, and Mudge and Berg, who didn’t even look fully comfortable in their 3-1 quarter over the debuting team of Walker and Jonny Smith, falling in four close games to Russell and Quick, who never managed to beat Mudge and Berg in nearly a half-dozen attempts last season. Mudge, who made so successful a switch to the left wall last season after his many record-breaking years on the right partnering Gary Waite, was having trouble controlling his cross-court lobs, a number of which either drifted out of court or were shallow enough for Quick to attack.

The other three quarterfinals saw Price and Gould prevail in three over James Hewitt and Jeff Mulligan (five-game round-of-16 victors over Ben Howell and Alex Langerhorst) and Jenson and Leach take a fifth game from Mark Price and Joe Pentland, as Russell/Quick also did at the expense of Eric Vlcek and Yvain Badan (who had won an 18-17 fourth game in their 3-2 16’s win over Michael Ferreira and Whitten Morris).

After a fast start and a slight second-game letdown, Price and Gould were in full control of what became a downhill Monday-night final, carrying the play throughout the last two games and benefiting as well from a mid-match foot injury that appeared to befall Russell, who was clearly having difficulty decelerating by the time the fourth game began. The next tour stop will be the Big Apple Open at the end of the month, with November events in Toronto and St. Louis to follow

Tournament Recap

Rd of 16:
Damien Mudge/Viktor Berg, bye;
Chris Walker/Jonny Smith d Alan Clyne/Paul Frank, 3-0;
Eric Vlcek/Yvain Badan d Michael Ferreira/Whitten Morris, 3-2;
John Russell/Preston Quick, bye;
Matt Jenson/Clive Leach, bye;
Joe Pentland/Mark Price d Andrew Merrill/Hamed Anvari, 3-1;
James Hewitt/Jeff Mulligan d Ben Howell/Alex Langerhorst, 3-2;
Paul Price/Ben Gould, bye.

Qtrs:
Mudge/Berg d Walker/Smith, 3-1;
Russell/Quick d Vlcek/Badan, 3-2;
Jenson/Leach d Pentland/M. Price, 3-2;
P. Price/Gould d Hewitt/Mulligan, 3-0.

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

Final:
P. Price/Gould d Russell/Quick, 3-1.

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