TMI and ISDA Team Up to Bring $10,000 Professional Squash Doubles Tournament

October 2008

ISDA Tour Gets Underway With “Challenger’ Pittsburgh Cup
by Rob Dinerman

Pushed into testing tiebreaker sessions at the outset of all three of their matches in the $10,000 inaugural Pittsburgh Cup this past weekend, second seeds Eric Vlcek and Yvain Badan used each of those overtimes as a springboard to the trio of 3-0 victories that brought them to the winner’s circle. In rising superior to first qualifiers Shane Coleman and his Cynwyd Club pro-shop colleague Gavin Jones, then decorated Canadians Michael Pirnak and Chris Deratnay and finally top seeds James Hewitt and Mark Chaloner, Vlcek and Badan began their first full season together on a winning note after joining up last winter, following Vlcek’s recovery from a ruptured Achilles tendon in February ’07.

This tournament, hosted by the Pittsburgh Golf Club, was not only the first pro doubles event ever held in Pittsburgh, but also the first stop on the 2008-09 ISDA pro doubles tour (with 20 more to follow between now and early May) and the first EVER “Challenger” tourney, i.e. below the $20,000 full-ranking minimum level and with only players ranked out of the top 10 allowed to participate. The ISDA will be sanctioning three or four additional Challenger tourneys this season, in the hope of both having these events grow into full ranking stops in the near future, and of giving players ranked out of the top 10 an opportunity to accumulate ranking points and advance deeper into draws, an especially compelling dynamic in light of the virtual lockbox 60-1 record that the top-four ranked 2007-08 ISDA (namely Damien Mudge/Viktor Berg, Paul Price/Ben Gould, Chris Walker/Clive Leach and John Russell/Preston Quick) recorded last season against the rest of the ISDA field, which made the inevitable progression of these four juggernauts to the semis pretty much a foregone conclusion from one week to the next.

Eleven teams responded to the opportunity provided by this novel Challenger concept, included among whom were two teams from Scotland, who decided to play in both Pittsburgh and the next stop in mid-month in Baltimore as a means of preparing for the upcoming biennial World Softball Doubles championships (played on court the same length but six feet, six inches wider than a regular softball singles court), which will be held in December in Chennai, India. Both of the Scottish teams won their opening match and showed a remarkable adjustment to the hardball doubles game before falling to their far more experienced North American opponents in their second match.

Coleman was a dominant figure with both power and nick-finding three-walls in his and Jones’s 3-0 win over Paul Frank (Scottish team coach who subbed for an injured player) and Jamie Macaulay, as were both Pirnak (winner of a host of important ISDA crowns and a perennial top-10-ranked player for much of this decade) and Chris Deratnay in their quarterfinal surge past their Scottish opponents Stuart Crawford and Alan Clyne; that both of these victorious pairings then fell in straight sets to Vlcek and Badan was both surprising and a testament to how well the eventual tournament winners were able to press their advantage after getting through first-game tiebreakers in each case, a productive pattern that carried through the final as well, in which a Badan forehand volley cross-court nick on game-ball died in front of Hewitt to finish off the first game and a Vlcek shallow forehand rail did the same to conclude the third and conclude the 18-16 15-11 15-13 tally. Much of the match devolved into a cross-court battle between Hewitt (whose pre-tournament slight shoulder injury affected both his power and shot-making just enough to have an impact) and Badan, with Vlcek scoring with his short game and Chaloner contributing his firepower whenever the opportunity to do so arose.

With this title now part of the still fairly small body of their collaborative work, Vlcek and Badan will now face an intriguing first-round Maryland Club Open assignment late next week when they take on two-time (’06 and ’07) U. S. Nationals A and two-time (’05 and ’07) Silver Racquets champs Whitten Morris and Michael Ferreira in a match-up of two teams both of whom will be seeking their first-ever ISDA full-ranking-tournament main-draw win. It will be interesting to see what role, if any, their Pittsburgh Cup exploits play when they go up against the daunting Ferreira/Morris duo; what is known for sure is that this first edition of both this tourney and the Challenger concept was a major success, a tribute not only to the playing group (which responded in praiseworthy fashion to the heightened profiles they took on with the tour’s normal stars absent) but also to Tournament Chairman Taylor Abbett (who also partnered Chaloner to victory in their pro-am final against Pirnak and Matt Guvaux, the host club’s head tennis pro) and his small but dedicated tournament committee, whose efforts emphatically got Pittsburgh back on the squash doubles map after a hiatus of several years.

Tournament Recap
Qualifying: Shane Coleman/Gavin Jones d Paul Frank/Jamie Macaulay (first-rd 3-1 winners over Carl Baglio/Tim Loat), 3-0; Alan Clyne/Stuart Crawford d Will Osnato/Mike Fensterstock, 3-1.

Quarters: James Hewitt/Mark Chaloner d Andrew Merrill/Hamed Anvari, 3-0; Bruce Marrison/Ben Howell d Patrick Chifunda/Rob Dinerman, 3-0; Michael Pirnak/Chris Deratnay d Clyne/Crawford, 3-0; Eric Vlcek/Yvain Badan d Coleman/Jones, 3-0.
Semis: Hewitt/Chaloner d Marrison/Howell, 3-1; Vlcek/Badan d Pirnak/Deratnay, 3-0.

Final: Vlcek/Badan d Hewitt/Chaloner, 3-0.