Friday Final: Quick/Betts Suffer Loss
April 2, 2005, Rob Dinerman in New York
SquashTalk Independent News Service © 2005 all Rights Reserved;

Second Seeds Fall in Women's Open    [complete draws & results]

The first major upset of the 2004 C B Richard Ellis U. S. Men's and Women's Doubles Squash Championships occurred last night when No. 2 women's Open seeds Dana Betts and Meredeth Quick lost in five games to Kristin Fullam and Brooke Cooper in their quarter-final opening-round match. Fullam and Cooper will now meet the Belknap twins, Berkeley and Mary, first-round winners over Emily Lungstrum and Shirin Narimani, in their semi at the University Club late this morning.

Jessica Dimauro, who along with Quick opposed Alicia McConnell and Demer Holleran in last year's women's Open final, and her 2005 partner Karen Jerome, handily won their first round last night and will now face McConnell and Pochi Holdefer, who had their way with their Philadelphia foes Dawn Grey and Amy Milanek. Jerome had reached the '02 and '03 finals in New York and Denver respectively with the now-retired Jessie Chai.

MENS OPEN SEMI LINEUPS TAKE SHAPE
The men's Open semis are now also set, with top seeds and 2002 champs Gary Waite and Morris Clothier facing Alex Pavulans and Eric Vlcek (Clothier's partner in their four-year championship run from 1998-2001) and Preston Quick and Steve Scharff, winners of the only five-gamer of this flight over Jeff Stanley and Noah Wimmer, going up against second seeds Scott Butcher and Josh McDonald. Waite had had to pull out of the '03 and '04 events, first due to the birth of his third daughter and then last year after suffering a severe wrist injury, but he is in top form this time around, having gone undefeated so far this ISDA season, during which he and partner Damien Mudge have posted a 39-0 mark thus far.

The men's A draw fully lived up yesterday afternoon and evening to its pre-tournament reputation as both by far the largest (28 teams) of the dozen flights and the one with the most depth and unpredictability. Fourth seeds Addison West and Mark Barber were pushed to a fifth game by Michael Sabatine and Nick Barquin, as were recently crowned Philadelphia Racquet Club club champions Duncan Pearson and Greg Park by Streetsquash administrators and former Harvard captains Pete Karlen and George Polsky, who took that deciding stanza all the way to a tiebreaker. Typical of the competition level as well was a bruising four-game 80-minute struggle between second seeds Geoff Kennedy and Beau Buford, longtime partners, '02 BIDS champions and former college teammates, and a first-time team composed of Bill Villari and John Burke.

The latter duo won a close first game, barely dropped the second 15-13 on a close but correct let point call on the game's last point, and held a 12-10 lead and later a double-game point in a fourth-set tiebreaker before falling just short in an 11-15 15-13 15-10 18-17 thriller in which Buford and Kennedy displayed the same late-game ability that two months earlier had enabled them to surmount a two/love deficit and four match points against them in a rousing comeback win in a William White quarter-final against West and Wimmer.

WYANTS LOOK FORMIDABLE
Kennedy and Buford will now face the Wyant brothers, Tim and Jack, each of whom have won tournaments in the last 12 months, Jack having won the Massachusetts State Open with Ross Revenaugh while Tim won the Morris Invitational with Cynthia Kempner in December.

Third seeds Imran Khan and Tim Harrity defeated former Harvard teammates Andrew Merrill and Dave Barry in four, but Harrity's frequent doubles partner and former Williams classmate Greg Zaff was not as successful in his return to doubles competition after a two-year hiatus. Zaff and Jamie Fagan lost their second-round 40's match to George White and Mark Spector, a fine follow-up to the White/Spector Thursday first-round win over the highly regarded Apawamis team of Bill Mangan and Bill Ullman.

Results, US National Doubles: [Draw/results]

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