2009/2010 WDSA Tour Schedule
November 13-15 2009 St Paul Indian Summer Open - St Paul
December 11-14 2009 Turner Cup - New York City, NY
January 2010 Briggs Cup benefiting City Squash
February 26-28 2010 Hashim Khan Open - Denver, CO
April 16-18 2010 Players Championship - Long Island, NY
August 20-22 2010 Minturn Mixed Invitational - Vail, CO
Pierrepont And Krizek Capture The Turner Cup By Rob Dinerman
Dateline December 15 --- In a devastating display of athleticism, firepower and teamwork second seeds Narelle Krizek and Suzie Pierrepont completely overwhelmed the top-seeded team of Meredeth Quick and Steph Hewitt Monday night by a 15-6, 11 and 6 tally to earn the inaugural edition of the $15,000 Turner Cup. Krizek and Pierrepont demonstrated their superiority to the entire nine-team field in every aspect of the game throughout the weekend, but never more so than in the final, in which they seized the initiative from the very first point, a floor-hugging Krizek forehand rail from the back wall that bounced three times before reaching the red line, the first of well over two dozen untouchable winners that she and her partner would deliver before the match ended, a mere 29 minutes after it began.
Two points later, Pierrepont would respond to a Quick drop-shot by snapping off a forehand reverse three-wall that rolled insolently out at Hewitt’s feet, and shortly thereafter the score stood at 6-1, then 13-5 en route to 15-6. By that time, any pre-match speculation that Krizek’s time-consuming though victorious five-game collaboration with Chris Oberbeck in a pro-am final (over Marie Vlcek and Peter Lasusa) that immediately preceded the pro final would sap some of her energy had long since been dispelled --- so had any possibility of the tinning patches that had plagued Pierrepont’s semifinal output on Sunday (a 3-1 win over Emily Lungstrum and Marci Sier) carrying over to the final, or of the solid play that had brought Quick and Hewitt to victory in the season-opening Indian Summer Open in St. Paul last month and through a pair of 3-0 pre-final wins being sufficient to make for a close and competitive final.
The latter pair have both won numerous important Women’s Doubles and Mixed Doubles titles in the recent past --- indeed Hewitt is the current Canadian Mixed and Women’s World Doubles champion, having won those events this past spring with her husband James Hewitt and with Jessica DiMauro respectively --- and, especially in the second game, they kept the ball deep and executed well whenever an opening presented itself. But neither player has the arsenal to really hurt the Pierrepont/Krizek duo, who for their part seemed to spend the whole match demonstrating how many ways were at their disposal of adding to their swiftly-growing point total, ranging from nick-finding three-walls and cross-court drops, to the deadly angles that both conjured up on their reverse-corners, to the power that Pierrepont can create, to the immaculate quality of Krizek’s shot-selection and match-long freedom from the tin, to the extraordinary telepathy with which they covered for each other, all the more noteworthy for the Turner Cup being their debut performance as a unit.
Even the second game, clearly the closest of the three, didn’t have the “feel” of a 15-11 game, though there was an important point at 10-8, the winning of which might have given the top seeds a fighting chance at that game. But a strenuous all-court exchange, kept alive on a great Quick deep-right retrieve of a scorching Pierrepont backhand blast past Hewitt, ended on the very next swing when Krizek guided a cross-drop into the front-left nick before either of her lunging opponents could cover the vacated area, and when Pierrepont blasted another cross-court winner early in the following point, the margin had grown to 12-8, then 14-9 and eventually (on a Krizek straight-drop after a great Hewitt retrieve of a Pierrepont three-wall) 15-11.
Quick and Hewitt valiantly hung in through the first half of the third game, drawing to 5-7 when Quick hit a backhand rail past her left-wall counterpart Pierrepont, but the tall British-born WISPA top-30 then erupted for four winners in a row (on two cross-drop nicks, the second off a loose Quick serve-return, then a tight backhand reverse-corner, followed by a backhand three-wall with Hewitt pinned behind the red line). This shot-making outburst put the game out of reach at 11-5. Krizek would then add a three-wall winner, and at 12-6, Pierrepont (who seemed to play the entire match with an “on a mission” zeal to banish her sub-par semifinal performance) closed the match with three successive winners, namely a cross-drop serve-return into the front-right nick, a reverse-corner with Quick too far behind her to track the ball down, and a surprise backhand drop shot from near the back wall.
In an emotional acceptance speech during the trophy presentation that followed, and with her father George Tippett (in town on his annual visit from his home in Australia) proudly looking on, Krizek paid tribute to Patrick Turner, the tournament’s primary patron, for enabling her to fulfill the vision that she and husband Rob had when they founded the WDSA, which is now in its third competitive season. She also thanked Tournament Chair Lee Belknap; USSRA Doubles Chair Morris Clothier (in attendance along with the President of Franklin & Marshall, Clothier’s alma mater); Chris Oberbeck, whose company, Saratoga Partners, sponsored the pro-am portion of the tournament); and the many patrons who had supported what clearly had been the most successful tournament in WDSA history.
It may have been won by the greatest team in WDSA history as well, or in the history of women’s doubles squash, for that matter, as it seems extremely unlikely that any pair of women has ever played doubles at the level in a final of an event of this magnitude that Krizek and Pierrepont attained last night, and that includes the DiMauro/Natalie Grainger tandem that dominated the inaugural WDSA 2007-08 tour, as well as the Demer Holleran/Alicia McConnell dynasty that had a long unbroken U. S. National Doubles skein throughout the late-1990’s and early-2000’s.