Graham Bassett, the Squash Doubles Association (SDA) tour director, presented the association’s annual awards on court yesterday at the 2019 FS Investments U.S. Open. Bassett spoke about the benchmarks of the men’s professional tour: events were contested in twenty cities across Canada, Mexico, and the U.S. with prize money totaling more than $600,000. “As a player-run tour,” Bassett said, “these awards are particularly impactful for players as they are recognitions from their peers.”
Colin West was given the 2019 Rookie of the Year Award. West won the Pittsburgh Golf Challenger in February and rose to No. 25 in the SDA rankings.
The Most Improved Player Award went to Hameed Ahmed. He was a finalist at the Denver Club Open and the Piedmont Driving Club Cup in Atlanta and was a semifinalist at the Tavern Club Open in Cleveland. In just three seasons on tour, Ahmed, the associate head coach at Harvard, has risen to No. 15 in the world rankings.
The Team of the Year Award was given to James Stout & Greg McArthur. This tandem captured the Baltimore Cup and were finalists at the Maryland Club Open, North American Open, and the David C. Johnson Jr. Memorial.
John Russell won the Player of the Year Award. Russell, playing with five different partners, reached eleven finals and won five events, including the prestigious Kellner Cup. His impressive season saw him finish atop the SDA rankings.
The Sportsmanship Award was given to Greg McArthur. “This player was selected by his peers,” Bassett said, “as a consummate gentleman on and off the court. He plays clean and never exchanges a negative word with opponents on court, all while achieving a career high No. 4 ranking.”
SDA Tour Director Graham Bassett (l) with SDA award recipients.(l-r) John Russell, Greg McArthur, James Stout and Hameed Ahmed
Nearly one year after rupturing his Achilles while playing with Chris Callis, former world No. 1 Manek Mathur made a victorious return to the SDA Pro Tour with Callis by capturing the season-opening Maryland Club Open title, Monday, September 30, in Baltimore.
The $50,000 diamond draw was reflective of the parity that formed over the course of last season in the vacuum of Mathur, who had gone undefeated with the now retired Damien Mudge two seasons ago. James Stout & Greg McArthur, who won three titles last season, led the draw as top seeds, opposed by world No. 1 John Russell & Scott Arnold as the two seeds. Callis, then ranked No. 2, and Mathur, No. 12, entered the top half of the draw as the four seeds.
Mathur & Callis dropped their opening games in both their first and second round matches before getting up to speed and winning both matches in four games. The quartefinals played out according to seeding despite a close slate of matches that were all decided in either four or five games.
Both of Sunday’s semifinals took an unfortunate turn in the second game of each match. First, McArthur picked up a wrist injury forcing a retirement that sent Mathur & Callis into the final. Then Bernardo Samper sustained a hamstring injury in the second semifinal, causing another retirement and sending Russell & Arnold through to the final.
In the final, Mathur & Callis held off a comeback from Russell & Arnold to claim the first title of the season 15-10, 15-9, 12-15, 15-11.
Both Mathur & Callis were pleased with improved form as the tournament progressed–particularly Mathur having spent so long off court–and were happy to be back on court together.
“We were a bit rusty to start, not to take anything away from our initial round opponents who played lights out, but it was fun to watch our progress through the weekend,” Mathur said. “The injury layoff was something I personally expected to be harder on the legs, but seeing the ball at that speed and pace, was the biggest thing to readjust to. Being on court with Chris has always been a treat. We go back so many years competing against each other, that battling on the same team is a ton of fun. We have a good off court relationship which transfers pretty seamlessly to the on court game.”
“I think we were both so excited to get back out there that it translated to us being a little too amped on court,” Callis said. “Each round we got a little more comfortable out there and by the finals it felt like the game had slowed down massively versus the first match. We knew from last year that we had good quality doubles in us and we were really happy to find it in our first event back together.”
The result sends Callis back atop the world rankings in October, marking the second time the Princeton graduate has reached the tour’s top ranking in the past year. Callis was more focused on the successful return of Mathur, however.
“The amount of work Manek put in to get to this point in just eleven months is just incredible–nobody deserved this win more than he did, so I’m glad we could get it done,” Callis said. “Having him back in these draws is great for the sport of doubles and really raises the bar for all of us in the tournament.”
On Friday night, the Maryland Club Open was recognized for being named the 2018 SDA Tournament of the year as voted by the players. The board tenures for outgoing members and SDA players Mike Ferreira and Peter Kelly were also celebrated.
(l-r): Mike Ferreira, Maryland Club Director of Squash Andrew Cordova, Peter Kelly
The Maryland Club Open, now four times voted SDA Tournament of the year, heralded in the new SDA Pro Tour season in front of one of the country’s most passionate hotbeds of squash doubles.
“The Maryland Club is such a doubles enthusiastic club that the energy around the event is electric,” Mathur said. “It lifts all of us up and gets us excited for the season. Andrew Cordova goes out of his way to make the event a success and the membership treats the entire tour like family and opens all their doors to us. With the only club in America to have three doubles courts, it definitely fits the mould for the first event of the season!”
“The enthusiasm around doubles at the Maryland Club is truly second to none,” Callis said. “The members really love the sport and put so much energy into the game–it’s always a blast to play in front of a packed crowd that really knows their doubles.”
The tour resumes later this month with the Big Apple Open, October 25-28.
The SDA Pro Tour welcomes the continued support of johnnie-O as the official lifestyle partner of the tour for the next two seasons.
“It is great to be able to welcome johnnie-O back as a sponsor of the Tour,” said Kevin Luzak, Chair of the Squash Doubles Association Board of Directors. “The johnnie-O brand, focused an active, athletic lifestyle, is a perfect complement for the overall message of the Tour and our sport. Moreover, johnnie-O has put together a fantastic selection of Tour-branded clothing and gear that helps our members and supporters get that message out to our communities.”
Started by John O’Donnell in 2005, johnnie-O is a branded lifestyle apparel company, founded in Santa Monica, CA, that fuses a Southern California vibe with East Coast style and embodies living your best life. With headquarters based in Los Angeles and offices throughout the Midwest and East Coast of the United States, johnnie-O boasts a national presence and partnerships with Major League Baseball, university athletics programs and the SDA Pro Tour.
Johnnie-O joins the SDA in its eighth season. Established in 2012 as the successor to the International Squash Doubles Association, the SDA Pro Tour has more than 100 members representing eighteen countries and supports a schedule of more than twenty events across the United States, Canada and Mexico with an aggregate purse of more than $600,000.
“We’re thrilled here at johnnie-O to renew our partnership with the SDA Pro Tour,” said johnnie-O’s Senior Vice President of Business Development Quinn Veysey. “As we kickoff our third year, it feels like we’ve hit our stride with players, pros, and patrons who are aware of the sponsorship and are eagerly seeking out products for both on and off the court. The SDA Pro Tour community overlaps very well with johnnie-O and we’re psyched to be able to continue our support.”
SDA players and patrons can be seen sporting johnnie-O gear this season. Items from johnnie-O’s SDA Pro Tour collection can be viewed and purchased here.
Damien Mudge, the most accomplished doubles player in the history of the sport and the Squash Doubles Association’s (SDA) “all-time leading scorer” by a wide margin, has decided to retire from the tour after 19 years of record-shattering achievement. Mudge, 43, underwent a major allograft procedure on his right knee (his seventh knee surgery overall, the fourth on his right leg) in August 2018 and was sidelined throughout the subsequent 2018-19 SDA season. With his leg currently still at least several months away from being ready to return to SDA-level competition, and in deference to the cumulative effect of a number of other injuries and depleting maladies that have befallen him over the course of nearly two decades of grueling play — among them shoulder and wrist injuries, one of which required the insertion of a pin for several months to stabilize the joint; a painful neuroma and a plantar fascia tear on his right foot; a two-and-a-half-year bout with chronic-fatigue-syndrome; and multiple concussions — Mudge, who has been based at the University Club of New York for more than two decades, the last 18 as its head squash pro, recently concluded that the time has come for him to end his doubles career.
And what an extraordinary career it has been! Mudge has been ranked No. 1 virtually uninterrupted since the outset of the 1999-2000 season, when he and Gary Waite had the first of their three wire-to-wire undefeated seasons (also 2001-02 and 2004-05). After seven years (and 75 tournament wins, the most all-time of any combination) with Waite, Mudge switched to the left wall and led the tour in wins first from 2007-10 with Viktor Berg and then from 2010-15 with Ben Gould before joining forces with Manek Mathur prior to the 2016-17 season. After losing to Michael Ferreira and Yvain Badan, 15-13 in the fifth, in their debut as partners at the Maryland Club Open final in September 2016, Mudge and Mathur went undefeated throughout the remainder of both that season and the 2017-18 season that followed, covering 16 straight tournaments and 54 consecutive matches, while receiving the SDA Team of the Year Award both years.
Mudge with final tour partner Manek Mathur during the 2017-18 SDA Season
Mudge with his various partners has won nearly 175 pro doubles tournaments, more than double the number amassed by any other player, and he holds the most-times-won record for every established tournament on the SDA schedule, highlighted by 15 North American Opens, 10 Kellner Cups, six Briggs Cups and 17 David Johnson Invitational titles (all in a row from 2002-18) at the Heights Casino Club in Brooklyn. His Player of The Year and Doubles Team of the Year Awards totals far exceed anyone else’s and in all five seasons during the nearly two decades that the SDA and its forerunner, the International Squash Doubles Association (ISDA) have existed in which one team has gone undefeated, Mudge has been on that team: as noted, three times with Waite as well as in 2010-11 with Gould and 2017-18 with Mathur.
(l-r) Michael Ferreira, Yvain Badan, Damien Mudge, and Manek Mathur at the 2017 David C. Johnson Jr. Memorial – Mudge’s 16th consecutive Johnson win.
In their eighth and final appearance of the 2017-18 season, the Tavern Club Invitational in Cleveland, Mathur and Mudge capped off their 24-0 slate with a four-game final-round win over John Russell and Scott Arnold that swung on the forehand drive that Mathur lashed down the left wall for a clear winner at 14-all in the third game that put his team ahead to stay. Earlier in that game, Mudge, playing in his first tournament since undergoing a right-knee arthroscopic procedure to repair torn cartilage slightly more than a month earlier, planted to reverse direction and felt a searing pain in that joint, greatly reducing his mobility for the rest of that match. A subsequent examination immediately upon his return to New York revealed that he had blown a hole through the cartilage around the medial part of the knee, necessitating the allograft procedure, a far more complicated and invasive operation than any if its predecessors and one that involves transplanting the cartilage of a cadaver to fill the hole. Mathur’s 2018-19 season ended prematurely as well when he ruptured his left Achilles tendon in the late-October 2018 Big Apple Open at the New York Athletic Club. Mudge was in attendance that night, sitting in the bench just behind the glass back wall of the host club’s doubles court and, ironically in light of how full of energy and health both he and Mathur had been during their undefeated 2017-18 season, it was Mudge’s crutch that Mathur had to lean on in order to exit the court after incurring his own serious season-ending injury.
(l-r) Clive Leach, Ben Gould, Paul Price, and prone Damien Mudge at the 2014 Putnam Pro-Am Boston
Mudge’s retirement punctuates a Spring/Summer 2019 period during which some of the all-time best players in squash’s various professional Associations have stepped away from the sport. Five-time British Open champion Nicol David, who enjoyed nearly a decade atop the women’s pro singles tour, retired this past spring as did three-time World Open Champion Ramy Ashour, two-time British Open champion Laura Massaro and former World No. 2 Jenny Duncalf. In recent years Mudge had been the only SDA player whose playing career dated back to the formation of the ISDA in February 2000, making him the bridge that spanned the early-2000’s top-tier group consisting of Waite, Berg, Clive Leach, Blair Horler, Willie Hosey, Michael Pirnak, David Kay, Scott Dulmage, Jamie Bentley, Scott Stoneburgh and Anders Wahlstedt, and extended through the Gould/Russell/Paul Price/Preston Quick/Greg Park set of stars later that decade and into the next, all the way to the Mathur/Callis/Yvain Badan/Michael Ferreira/Bernardo Samper/James Stout/Greg McArthur contingent of players headlining the current era. Throughout that lengthy time frame encapsulating several player generations, the only relentless constant has been Damien Mudge’s standing as the dominant player in professional doubles squash in North America, and his retirement symbolizes the passing of a glorious era in the history of squash on this continent.
