The 2012 Short Hills Invitational featured the weakest Men’s Open draw since I first played it in 2005 with John Milbank. Anytime superstars and tournament regulars Brian Uihlein, Chris Gambino, Johan duRandt, and Mark Parsons are not in the draw the tournament is not what it could have been – in a capsule, the draw was four top teams short. That being said, it was still a loaded tournament: Cochrane/Estes, Broderick/Stulac, Arraya, Lubow/DeRose, Caldwell/Cordish, Cosimano/Haller, Rothschild/Schmitt, LeFevre/English, etc. Just imagine however how this tight 32 team draw would have looked like if instead of one great team (Broderick/Stulac) you would have had two great teams (Broderick/Gambino and Parsons/Stulac) plus Uihlein/ Estes, duRandt/Porter and Cochrane/anyone – you would have had eight great teams out of the tournament after the round of sixteen. Just to give you and idea how strong Short Hills usually is, last year’s draw featured the eventual National Championship finalists (Stulac/Parsons vs. duRandt/Porter) as a round of 16 match-up – that’s right, a second round match!
The first upset took place in the second round (the 16s) when Mark Ruppert and Rusty Wright eliminated former tournament winners and (former) number 1 team in the country David Caldwell and Blake Cordish 6-3, 6-2. I did not see the match as I was playing at another venue but the result did surprise me. It was the second straight early exit for Caldwell/Cordish following an equally surprising first round loss in Boston to the Power brothers. It has been a disappointing season so far for a team that has won a lot (a lot!) of tournaments in their career so far. In the words of the great Joe Buck, David and Blake “need to figure something out and get something going”…
That was not the only big second round upset. Perennial top 5ers Steve DeRose and Jon Lubow lost 7-5 in the third set against two talented yet unproven (until now at least) Brazilians: Marco Grangeiro and Guga Goncalves. It is the second year in a row that Steve & Jon have an early exit at Short Hills which is rare for them – this is a great team that hardly ever has surprising losses. Personally, I do not consider it an upset that the unseeded team of Dan Rothschild and John Schmitt beat Denny English and Nathan LeFevre. I think it was an even matchup with a slight edge to Rothschild/Schmitt who ended up winning 6-1 in the third. Denny English told me at lunch after the match that Nathan and him were up a set and 2-0 and sort of thought that they had it in the bag. Big mistake: you never have it in the bag against Rothschild/Schmitt regardless of what the score is! Former finalists Anthony Cosimano and Steve Haller had a war of a second round match vs. Brian O’Connor and Devon Wakeford, finally prevailing 7-6 in the third. Brian is playing as well as I have seen him play and Devon is coming along nicely for a new player but they need to switch sides, particularly if they play against two righties which they will most of the time. The match could have gone either way but paddle is no different than any other sport: for the most part, the team that is supposed to win usually does. I have not seen the Anglo-Swedish duo of George Wilkinson and Sebastian Bredberg play one single point but I keep hearing great things about them from a lot of people. They are good dudes, I can tell you that.
All quarterfinals featured intriguing match-ups but not all of them lived up to the expectations. Broderick/Stulac dismantled Rothschild/Schmitt 2 & 1. I was not necessarily surprised at who won but I was surprised by the score and by how quickly it was over. The explosive team of Rothschild and Schmitt have not caught a break in any of the tournaments they have played so far this year and will go into the Nationals unseeded (and probably not placed either) but not one seeded team will look forward to play them – they can beat any team and probably will upset someone. Juan Arraya and I played a very good match against the difficult team of Anthony Cosimano and Steve Haller and won 6-2, 6-4 – I think this was Juan’s best match so far this year. It’s always tough to play Cosimano because he can make anyone look bad on volley exchanges, he’s really unbelievable. Grangeiro/Goncalves followed their win over DeRose/Lubow with another one in straight sets over the tricky team of Ruppert/Wright. I did not see the Cochrane/Estes vs. Bredberg/Wilkinson quarter but Cochrane/Estes won 4 & 2.
This year, the semis were played on Saturday, unlike in past years when the semis and finals were usually played on Sunday. I think tournament director Dave Broderick goes back and forth with the format and I do not think anyone has a strong preference either way. The first semifinal did not last too long as Cochrane/Estes made quick work of Grangeiro/Goncalves 1 & 1. I did not see that match since Juan Arraya and I were playing in the other semifinal against Broderick/Stulac at the same time. It was a good tournament for Marco & Guga and it will be up to them to duplicate this strong result in future tournaments. It is always more difficult to back up a good result than to have a good result. Juan and I lost 5 & 4 vs. Broderick/Stulac in a pretty high quality and entertaining match (in my opinion at least). I thought all four of us played pretty well and I did not feel that the match had a definite momentum swing on either side which is fairly uncommon – usually each of the four players can pinpoint when the momentum changes in favor of either team. For whatever reason however, I did not sense that in this match. The big points made the difference – they played them better than we did and did not make any mistakes on important points. We did: a missed return here, a poor shot selection, pressing a little too much when you do not really have to and there goes a set. If the trend continues (and unfortunately for us, it did) there goes the match too. When you play a match within your own level, every set comes down to two key points. If you play two sets, four points will make the difference, if it is a three set match, then six points will decide the winner – whoever gets the edge on those key points will win the match. Bottom line, Drew and Mike deserved to win because they were better when it counted.
I did not see the final but Junior Estes told me it was very close: Estes/Cochrane beat Broderick/Stulac 6-3, 3-6, 6-4 to win the 2012 Short Hills Invitational. As always, great job by Dave Broderick and Marjorie Hodson who moved things along as well as you possibly can when running a men and women’s event at several locations at the same time.