WDSA Turner Cup Final: Pierrepont And Krizek Motor To Victory by Rob Dinerman Dateline May 18th
--- In a riveting and fierce hour-long competition whose pace and
quality showcased women’s professional doubles at its captivating best,
top seeds Narelle Krizek and Suzie Pierrepont defeated Steph Hewitt and
Meredeth Quick 15-11 12-15 15-8 15-7 this afternoon in the final round
of the $25,000 Turner Cup, benefiting Squash Haven and hosted by the
Westchester Country Club in Rye, NY. In so doing, Krizek and Pierrepont
clinched the season-end No. 1 team ranking for the fourth time in the
past five years (Hewitt/Quick being the one exception in 2011-12),
earned their 13th WDSA-sanctioned tournament win and won their fourth
tournament in as many attempts this season, having previously triumphed
in the season-opening inaugural Cincinnati Open, the U. S, Open and the
John’s Island Open.
Hewitt
and Quick, who won the 2012 Turner Cup in a four-game final over
Pierrepont/Krizek (the last time that this latter duo were dealt a
loss), came into today’s final with great momentum, having capped off
their Saturday-afternoon semifinal win over Dana Betts and Alex Clark
with a 13-1 match-closing run, and from the first point of the final,
which ended with Hewitt snapping off an untouchable forehand
reverse-corner, they gave notice that they were more than ready for the
task ahead. That game seesawed evenly along to 8-all, with both teams a
little tight and tinny, until Pierrepont knocked off a few front-court
winners to give her team enough of a lead to account for that game.
She had
been getting too many open balls to swing at in that opening game, but
in the second, Hewitt got much better width on her cross-courts, Quick
scored several times in front (as often on her forehand, especially in
nicking her narrow cross-court drop shot in front of Pierrepont, as on
her backhand), and the pair also got an important (and proper)
over-rule in their favor at 12-10 to make the score 13-10 instead of
12-11, an important swing at that stage of the game. Krizek then buried
a forehand three-wall but tinned a forehand roll-corner attempt from
the back wall (14-11), following which Pierrepont hit a winning
reverse-corner but then tinned a volley to even the match at a game
apiece.
In both
of the final two games, Quick and Hewitt moved well, shot well, hit
well and covered for each other exceptionally well --- that they still
lost both games by convincing single-digit scores was totally due to
the consistent excellence of their opponents’ play, which In each case
resulted in extended mid-game runs (from 3-4 to 10-4 in the third game
and from 5-4 to 10-4 in the close-out fourth) that essentially sealed
the outcome. Quick and Hewitt are guaranteed to play at a high level,
while Krizek and Pierrepont can sometimes vacillate a bit, especially
depending on how Pierrepont is executing her shots. But when the top
seeds are “on,” the extent and variety of their weaponry results in too
high a level of unrelenting all-court pressure for any team on the
current WDSA tour, Quick/Hewitt included, to sustain --- and that was
the case this afternoon.
Krizek is
a sniper, always a threat to snap off a nick-finding three-wall or a
shallow rail or a tin-defying reverse-corner or a dangerously angled
skid-boast, while Pierrepont uses her height and wing span so
effectively that it is almost impossible to lob over her or move her
off the tee. It is also amazing how someone as tall as she is can get
so low when retrieving drop shots or three-walls, and can possess
such good touch on her high backhand volleys. When they are both at
their sharpest and staying away from the tin, they can put a team under
constant siege. Hewitt and Quick withstood the onslaught remarkably
well --- Quick’s exceptional mobility kept a lot of would-be
Pierrepont/Krizek winners in play, and she and Hewitt have the kind of
near-instinctive communication level that bespeaks their six years of
partnership. They contested the first third of both the third and
fourth games on even terms, hanging in, both territorially and
statistically, even though Pierrepont and Krizek were more the team on
the attack by a small but definite margin, perhaps 55-45.
But
gradually in each game, Pierrepont and Krizek were able to wedge open
just enough cracks in the Quick/Hewitt armor --- a semi-forced
Hewitt tin, a widely-angled Pierrepont roll-corner winner after an
exchange near the front wall, a Krizek drive down the middle with both
opponents guarding their respective side walls, a “scramble” play which
ended with Quick, roaming to the back to cover for a
stuck-up-front Hewitt being unable to recover in time when Pierrepont
tucked a drop-shot instead of lashing the ball deep --- to lead to
those decisive mid-game spurts. Had there been any diminution on the
part of Krizek and Pierrepont, one had the sense that Quick and Hewitt
would have grabbed the opening, but in this case there was no such
let-up and Krizek emphatically finished off her team’s fully-deserved
victory with a tight reverse-corner that a tired-looking Hewitt had no
chance of tracking down.
There remains
one more tournament on the WDSA 2013-14 calendar, namely the mid-July
Wilson Cup, a “special event” in which the top 16 ranked players who
meet the two-tournament minimum requirement will participate in
Southampton. More information on this tournament can be found on the
WDSA web site, wdsatour.com.
