David C. Johnson, Jr. Memorial Draw SDA Live
The world’s oldest professional doubles tournament—the SDA David C. Johnson, Jr. Memorial—will be contested for the sixty-seventh time this week at the Heights Casino in Brooklyn, New York.
The main draw is led by the tournament’s all-time winningest player, Damien Mudge, with partner Viktor Berg as the Australian world No. 2 searches for a record fifteenth title.
Mudge & Berg are seeded for a fourth final this season against two seeds Manek Mathur & Yvain Badan. Mudge & Berg won their first encounter against the world No. 3’s in December’s Wilmington Pro Doubles, but the Trinity grads have won the two most recent encounters in the Putnam Pro-Am and North American Open finals.
The tournament boasts a full main draw of sixteen teams, with four qualifying finals slated for Wednesday morning to complete the main draw. All main draw matches are scoring and streaming on SDA Live from 4:30pm ET Wednesday afternoon.
The David C. Johnson, Jr. Memorial is the oldest professional squash doubles tournament. In 1938, Ned Bigelow started an open doubles championship at the Heights Casino. It was the first tournament that allowed professionals to participate and paid them if they won. Until the 1960’s, the Heights Casino tournament was the only open professional doubles tournament. In 1965, it was renamed after the early death of David C. Johnson, Jr., who was one of the tournament’s driving forces.
“The Heights Casino takes lots of pride in hosting the Johnson,” said club member and tournament chairman Will Bunn.”First and foremost, we have a large number of squash doubles advocates as a whole. Our primary goal is to provide the players a venue and place to show off their sport and expertise. It’s a really well-grounded, and well-loved tournament spanning generations of club members.”