2009/2010 WDSA Tour Schedule
November 13-15 2009 St Paul Indian Summer Open - www.commodoresquashclub.com
December 11-14 2009 Turner Cup - New York City, NY
February 26-28 2010 Hashim Khan Open - Denver, CO
April 16-18 2010 Players Championship - Long Island, NY
May 7-9 2010 1st Canadian Open - Burlington Ontario
August 20-22 2010 Minturn Mixed Invitational - Vail, CO
A Recap Of The 2009-10 WDSA Tour By Rob Dinerman
Dateline June 19th --- When Narelle Krizek and Suzie Pierrepont successfully rallied from two games to love down to (barely) overtake Meredeth Quick and Steph Hewitt in the closing stretch of the inaugural Canadian Pro final in what was described by many as a fantastic showcase for professional women’s doubles, it seemed to encapsulate how far the Women’s Doubles Squash Association (WDSA) has come in its three years of existence. In addition to comprising the first-ever tour stop in Canada, the event featured the emergence of several new players, noticeably improved play from some of the veterans and a sharpening of what has developed into a truly worthy-of-the-term rivalry between the top two teams that is certain to heat up even more when the 2010-11 season kicks off this coming autumn.
A trilogy of WDSA-tour finals between the Krizek/Pierrepont and Quick/Hewitt tandems progressed from a totally dominant 15-6, 11 and 6 Krizek/Pierrepont victory in the Turner Cup in December (their debut as partners) to a competitive-for-awhile meeting in the Players Championship in April (in which Pierrepont/Krizek trailed 1-1, 7-11 before mounting a furious 23-7 match-closing spurt to 15-12, 15-6) to a Canadian Pro final three weeks later in which, as noted, Quick and Hewitt actually led 2-0, 12-11. Undeterred by their potentially deflating 15-13 loss of that game, they moved confidently to 13-8 in the fourth, yielded a game-tying 5-0 run (mostly on audacious winners by Krizek, who by that time felt she had nothing to lose by going for broke) but still eventually had a match- and championship-point opportunity at 2-all in the ensuing best-of-five tiebreaker before a Pierrepont drop-shot winner from deep in the court repulsed that imminent threat.
Even though Krizek and Pierrepont (who also won the late-March U. S. National Doubles crown, defeating Natalie Grainger and Diana Dowling 3-0 in the final) wound up earning the fifth game 15-12, it was clear that Quick and Hewitt had taken giant steps in each of the subsequent head-to-head matches towards erasing what had initially appeared to be a sizable gap between these two teams after the one-sided Turner Cup final, and that they now view themselves (and justifiably so) as having both the game plan and the self-belief to prevail the next time these two teams meet up, presumably fairly early next season.
Quick and Hewitt, who had never partnered up prior to the outset of the season, were five for five in terms of reaching WDSA finals; in addition to those three Krizek/Pierrepont finals, they won the mid-November season-opening Indian Summer Open at the Commodore Squash Club in St. Paul, MN, with an 18-17 fourth-game final-round victory over Krizek and her older sister Natarsha McElhinny, who, however, were able to decisively reverse that outcome when these same two teams met in late February in the Hashim Khan Open at the Denver Athletic Club, where Quick had learned the game as a youngster. Krizek wound up with an overall won-lost record of 16-2 on the season, her only setbacks occurring in Minnesota, as noted, and when she and partner Manek Mathur were unable to convert a 14-12 fifth-game advantage against eventual-champs Grainger and Steve Scharff in the U. S. Mixed Doubles semis, where defending title-holders Pierrepont and Trevor McGuinness lost as well, to their ’09 final-round victims Ryan O’Connell and Emily Lungstrum.
The latter was a four-time semifinalist this past season, in the Indian Summer Open and Turner Cup with Marci Sier and at the Players Championship and Canadian Pro with Dana Betts. Lungstrum and Betts seemed well positioned to reach the Players Championship final when, after trailing Quick and Hewitt 11-4 in their bottom-half semifinal first game, they sharp-shot their way not only to victory in that game and the second but to a 7-1 margin in the third game as well. Indeed, it may have been in mounting their sustained rally from that daunting deficit that Quick and Hewitt may have “found” themselves as a team, creating a level of momentum that, as noted, would carry them first deep into the next-day four-game final with Krizek and Pierrepont and then to the very brink of a championship shortly thereafter in suburban Toronto in a final that enthralled the packed gallery at the host Cedar Springs Racquet Club.
That event was expertly run by Karen Jerome (happily returned to the competitive fray after two consecutive seasons lost to devastating calf injuries) and Carmela Rogers --- indeed, the unsung heroes of the WDSA Tour throughout its three-year history have been the sponsors and organizers who have been so loyal in their supportive dollars and efforts. This group includes longtime Denver Athletic Club head pro John Lesko and his wife Anne; longtime Commodore Squash Club pro John O’Brien and his wife Amy; Rob Deans the Tournament Chair of the Players Championship, which was sponsored by Mark Dowley, Patrick Turner and Peter Grauer; Saratoga Partners, which sponsored the Pro-Am portion of the Turner Cup; umbrella WDSA Tour sponsors TCW Crescent Mezzanine and Harrow Sports; Canadian Pro title sponsor Patrick Turner and silver sponsor Ridley Windows and Doors; and tour founders Krizek herself and husband Rob, whose vision and energy are responsible for the very existence of this women’s professional doubles circuit.