Month: March 2021

Posted on

Warhawk Open Wrap-up

Collins takes the IRT Singles title in Monroe on the weekend. Photo from US Open by Kevin SAvory

Congrats to your Pro winners on the weekend:
– Singles: Robert Collins
– Doubles; David Diaz & Brennen Jennings

Both #1 seeds hold on and take the titles over strong fields. A great tournament for a non-resident of the Texas/Louisiana corridor to see some of these players play for the first time live.

R2 Sports App home page for event: https://www.r2sports.com/website/event-website.asp?TID=37104

——————

Lets review the notable matches in the Singles draw.

In the 32s, there were a few upsets by seeds and some notable winners advancing on.
– #9 seed Michael Magana / Realtor advanced over Bryan Satawa to setup a great 8/9 matchup in the 16s.
– #12 Cole Sendrey, playing in (I think) his age 16 season, topped Steve Semones to move on.
– #22 Paul Julbes upset #11 Ray Flowers.
– #20 Ted Alvendia upset #13 Kenneth Fletcher.
– Long-time top Texas amateur Lance Hale, the 2019 Texas Male Player of the Year, advanced in two tight games over Bradnado Turnquest 13,12.
– #23 Michael Perez upset #10 Kipp Atwell in two.

—————-

In the 16s, we got the top 8 seeds starting up and immediately some upsets.
– #1 Robert Collins got his tourney started with a two-game win over #16 David Anastasio 2,2
– #8/#9 matches are always fun and this was too, one of just a couple of round of 16 match to go tiebreaker. #8 Daniel Diaz, a commercial airline pilot based in Monterrey, flew into town and advanced past #9 Magana but not without getting stretched. Magana came from way down in game two to take it 15-14 and force a breaker. Diaz cruised in the 3rd to win 3,(14),3.
– #5 Long-time tourney player Bob Jackson] was upset in the first match of the 16s by junior Texan Sendrey 11,2.
– #4 Zach Williams advanced in two over #20 Alvendia.
– #3 Destry Everhart ran into a frequent southwestern local rival in Hale and advanced in two games 2,5.
– #6 Brennen Jennings survived a strong push from #22 Julbes, who saved match point against in game two to force the breaker. Jennings got hot and ran off 6 unanswered points to take the 3rd 11-6. Final score 12,(14),6
– #23 Perez provided the biggest upset of the round, recovering from a 15-3 first game defeat to take out #7 Sam Hojat in the breaker. Two wins in an IRT pro event for Perez, who seems like he just moved up to open.
-#2 Maurice Miller got his title defense started with a straightforward win over #15 Craig Clement Jr. 4,1.

—————-

In the Quarters:
– #1 Collins overcame some really spirited play and some amazing diving gets to advance past #8 Diaz 9,14. The pandemic has been great for Collins’ facial hair game; he’s rocking a look that can only be described as, “extra in a saloon shootout scene.”
– #4 Williams topped the junior Cinderella Sendrey 5,8 to make the semis.
– #6 Jennings and #3 Everhart played about as close as you can play, going toe-to-toe with shot after shot. The Texan came out on top of the Alabama #1 in the end, with Brennen advancing (14),14,7.
– #2 Miller stopped the upset run of #23 Perez in the quarters, advancing in two straight 9.6. Great showing by Perez on the weekend.

—————

In the Semis
– #1 Collins cruised past #4 Williams 6,8 to make the final. Collins pushed the tempo all game and kept the pressure on Williams.
– #2 Miller had his hands full with #6 Jennings, who seemed to improve round after round in this event and nearly took out the semi-regular touring pro. Miller won a back and forth tiebreaker match 12,(12),7.

In the Finals, Collins took two close games from Miller and surprised this pundit, winning the draw 13,13. Good solid win for Collins, who really was hitting the ball well all weekend.

—————-

Doubles review

Three of the four top seeds held to the semis, but three of the four quarters went breaker. Quarter final results:
– #1 Diaz/Jennings took out the all-Texas Perez/Hale team
– the #4 Miller Father/son team took out the #5 Sendrey Father/Son team
– #3 Richard Eisemann/Jubles went 11-9 to take out IRT touring pro Collins playing with Tom Provan.
– #2 Magana/Williams lost to the the travelling North Carolina pair of Chris Thomas and Eric New for the round’s only upset.

In the semis:
– #1 Diaz/Jennings played two solid games to advance over the Atlanta-based Miller team, a match that was delayed for quite a bit due to participants playing their singles semis.
– #3 Eisemann/Jubles continued to show why they’re a heck of an age-group team, advancing to the final with lethal power and a great lefty/righty combo. Eisemann is a long-time top age-group player and certainly did not play like a man turning 60 in a few weeks.

In the final, the two younger players outlasted their rivals 7,9 to take the title. Diaz/Jennings d Eisemann/Jubles for the title.

—————-

Men’s Open, other draws
– Men’s Open was a pro consolation drop down, won by Sam Hojat, who took four straight 2-game victories and topped Parker Ewing in the final.
– The 19-person Men’s A draw was taken by DAVID Anastasia].

—————–

Thanks for all who streamed on the weekend: Steve Semones, David Anastasio, Brennan Jennings, Destry Everhart, Lance Hale, Sean Duffy, Tom Provan and others who I may have missed. It’s great to see live racquetbal!Thanks to the Tourney Directors Mark Thompson and Raj Bajari for putting this event on!

——————

Next up? The next scheduled Pro event will be the Sweet Caroline LPRT event the first weekend of May in South Carolina. World Singles & Doubles just got pushed back to perhaps August, which puts the next IRT event perhaps not happening until then. USAR National festival is the first two weekends of June, and in the interim we’ll cover some major WOR events as they happen.

——————-

Reminder to Players! Please like and follow this page so that when I tag you, you see it. Facebook will only retain tags of people that like/follow a page, which means lots of you are not getting the notoriety of getting tagged and noticed on FB.

——————-
Sponsor linksInternational Racquetball TourUSA RacquetballHashtags #racquetball#proracquetball#outdoorracquetball#irt#lprt#wor

Posted on

2021 Warhawk Open Preview

Maurice Miller is the defending champ and #2 seed; can he repeat? Photo USOpen 2019, Photographer Kevin Savory

Hello Racquetball fans! There’s an IRT Tier-5 event happening this weekend; the 2021 Warhawk Open, so named because Warhawks are the mascot of the host facility, the University of Louisiana at Monroe (ULM). Nearly 70 players have entered this event, the lions share from Louisiana and Texas, and represent a good chunk of the top players from the South West. The Pro Singles draw includes no less than 24 players and play gets started first thing friday morning.

R2 Sports App link: https://www.r2sports.com/website/event-website.asp?TID=37104

Draws are up and online now.

PRS note/reminder: we do not enter non-Tier1s into the database. This review is as a fan of the sport craving live racquetball action

🙂

——————————

Notable round of 32 and 16 matches: honestly I don’t know the local players well enough to make predictions. I do see some familiar names though in the play ins and look forward to seeing if they can advance. Good luck to frequent and vocal racquetball fans like Parker Ewing, Bryan Satawa, Steve Semones, Lance Hale, Ray Flowers, and the like.

The 8/9 and especially the 7/10 round of 16s look tough, with #7 Sam Hojat projected to take on #10 Kipp Atwell if seeds hold early.

——————————

Projected Qtrs:

If the top seeds hold, here’s what your quarters would look like:
– #1 Robert Collins v #8 Daniel Diaz; Collins is a long-time touring vet from Hawaii/NorCal who has been touring full time since 2013. Diaz is a wildcard; he played the Atlanta Tier1 earlier this year and lost two close matches to a couple of touring vets. He was the 2019 Texas state singles champ and could give Collins some grief, but I think Collins advances.
– #5 Bob Jackson has been playing top-level Racquetball for 25+ years: he was qualifying into main draws in the mid 1990s. He is projected to play Texan #4 Zach Williams, who ran to the final of this event last year and should be favored to move on here.
– #3 Destry Everhart is Alabama’s #1 player and has a ton of solid wins on his resume; he might face a tough round of 16 against top veteran Texan Lance Hale. In the quarter’s he’s set to face #6 Brennen Jennings, who has won the last few Texas shootouts he’s entered. This could be an upset pick by seed.
– #2 Maurice Miller, this event’s defending champ, projects to take on the Hojat/Atwell winner here for a spot in the semis.

Projected Semis:
– #1 Collins v #4 Williams: I think i like the veteran lefty to move on here.
– #2 Miller v #6 Jennings: I don’t think Miller is losing at this juncture.

Finals; #2 Miller defends his title over #1 Collins.

——————————-

Doubles review

14 teams entered, including a ton of players who aren’t in the singles pro draw. I like the #1 seeded team of Diaz/Jennings to advance to the semis. There they are set to face #4 seeds but defending champs Miller & Miller for a barn burner.

At the bottom, #2 seed Magana/Williams made the final last year and are favorites to get there again, though doubles teams with tough players like Collins and Richard Eisemann are in their side of the draw.

Look for the Millers to repeat and give Maurice the double.

———————————

I’m sure there will be streaming this weekend; Plenty of the participants are regular/frequent participants of the Racquetball facebook groups.

———————————T

agsSponsor linksInternational Racquetball TourUSA RacquetballHashtags #racquetball#proracquetball#irt

Posted on

WOR Historical Singles Data updated

Hawkes had 20 career Outdoor Nationals singles titles. Photo IRB cover shot

In Jan 2019, after years of research, WOR Hall of Fame chair Brett Elkins revealed a the initial results of his attempts to find all the past winners and semi-finalists of the Outdoor national championships singles events. PRS helped a little bit, finding old WOR nationals review articles in the magazines … but there’s not a ton of coverage even in the publications of the time, so kudos to Elkins for reaching out to the players from each era to test their memories on each event.

This note is to tell you that we’ve updated the PRS database to put in all the results of Elkin’s singles research so that All Finals and All Quarter/Semis/Finals reports work and display as much data as we have available. Furthermore I’ve added in some category queries so you can quickly run just the finals for Outdoor 3-wall and isolate that long-running event from the other major outdoor championships in Vegas and Florida.

Here’s some example queries for you, now live with “better” data than we had before:

All Men’s Outdoor Nats singles finals: http://rball.pro/946EC1
Current Record Holders for Outdoor Nats singles titles:
– Brian Hawkes with 20
– Rocky Carson with 12
– Several players with 2: Alvaro Beltran, Dan Southern, and Charlie Brumfield
– 8 players with 1 title each.

All Men’s Outdoor Nats Quarters/Semis/Finals: http://rball.pro/A8AE3F

Once you run the Quarters/Semis/Finals report, you can see the dilemma we face; prior to the R2 era starting in 2006, there’s almost no documented history of the event other than the stellar memory of the likes of Greg Solis, Mike Peters and others.

—-

The Women’s singles data isn’t as well populated: that’s one of Elkins’ todo items. We have the winners going back to 2006, nothing for most of the 1990s and 2000s, then some early history documenting the great rivalry between Lynn Adams and Martha McDonald.

All Women’s Outdoor Nats singles finals: http://rball.pro/54B622

—

Of course, there’s also a separate WOR Doubles database, with Men’s, Women’s and Mixed pro doubles reports for all three major WOR events; we published a major update for the Doubles Outdoor Nationals data last week.

—

Lastly a quick note that i’ve changed the “seasons” in WOR to be just the year in which the tourneys occurred, instead of assigning a “season” that crossed the Dec/Jan time-frame (which is what the pro tours do). This was an anachronism that I just never fixed, until now.

Enjoy!USA Racquetball

Posted on

Outdoor Nationals Doubles data load update

As with all other Outdoor lists, Brian Hawkes reigns supreme here too. Photo IR cover shot Aug 1984

Hello Outdoor Racquetball Fans.

I’ve recently worked with Brett Elkins, who coordinates the WOR Hall of Fame, to help populate better the Men’s historical Outdoor Nationals doubles data in the database. Brett has been working with some of the older pros to try to fill in gaps/holes in the early data to get a complete picture of past winners from the early years.

Meanwhile, I’ve gone through all available R2sports based tournaments and filled in complete draws from 2007-current. Plus, I transcribed the 2006 draw from a picture someone took of the draw-sheet (John Ellis maybe? I cannot remember where I got it from but thank you to whoever had it). This has resulted in 325 Pro doubles matches newly entered into the database.

Here’s some reports that show the newly entered data:

– http://rball.pro/3FCE81 This report shows the Quarters/Semis/Finals for all Men’s Pro Outdoor Nationals tournaments dating to 1974. It shows how we had full draw-sheets from 2019-2006, plus the 1980 tournament (courtesy of Steve Belmonte).

– http://rball.pro/B02D9AThis just shows the final and is a bit easier to read, especially on a cell phone. As you can see, there’s still a few holes: we don’t know who won at all in 1981, and we don’t know who Hawkes’ partner was for his early titles.

Based on known data, who holds the most Outdoor Nationals doubles titles?
– Brian Hawkes: 8
– Greg Solis: 6
– Craig “Clubber” Lane: 6
– Rocky Carson: 5
– Robert Hoff: 5
– Kevin Booth: 5
– Paul Olson: 4
– Mark Harding: 4
– Mike Peters: 3
– Josh Tucker: 3
– Dave Genevay: 3
– Dan Southern: 3

Fitting that the king of Outdoor holds this record to go along with his 20 Outdoor Nationals singles titles. The rest of this list is dotted with Hall of Fame outdoor players from the sport’s long history playing in Huntington Beach & Costa Mesa.

As always, if you have old drawsheets or information, please reach out so we can input it.

USA Racquetball

Hashtags #racquetball#proracquetball#outdoorracquetball#wor

Posted on

Annual Joes Tourney Wrap-up

Joe Kelley takes his own tourney on home soil. Photo credit: Stephen Fitzsimons, 2020 3WallBall

Congrats to Joe Kelley for winning on home turf and taking the first annual Average Joe’s Invitational at the Kelley house in Montague, NJ.

15 players representing 6 states (NY, NJ, MD, CT, NC and GA) came to the home of Joe and Sam Kelley, who recently completed construction on a court adjacent to their home. The facility is great, the play was great, and the streaming was constant all weekend.

Play kicked off Friday night with the round of 16, then played out the full draw by Saturday evening; here’s how things went

In the 16s:
– #1 Seed Brent Walters got a bye in the 16s and did a lot of reffing and streaming as a result.
– #9 Dylan Pruitt (who is NOT left handed, inside joke from my 3WallBall writeups last fall) topped Greg Caruso.8,8.
– #5 Joe Kelley topped Tony Prater 6,4
– #13 David Austin provided the biggest shock result of the round, crushing #4 Jon Justice 1,8 to move on.
– #3 Austin Cunningham topped #14 Josh Shea in a tight match 10,12. Shea is playing in his age 16 season and really hung well with the more experienced Cunningham.
– #6 Sam Kelley topped Aaron Dardini in two quick games 1,8.
– #7 Jose Dino Flores used his quick, compact swing and his agility to take out #10 lefty Jordan Walters in two games 9,6
– #2 Jason Sylvester beat Matt Mertz in two quick games 7,0.

In the Quarters:
– #9 Pruitt, recently graduated out of Juniors, played really solid ball to upset the #1 seed Walters and shake up the draw. Walters took the first game, but Pruitt battled back and dominated in the tiebreaker. final score (11),8,4
– #5 Kelley went tiebreaker against his frequent Jersey rival Austin, winning out in the battle of lefties to advance (13),4,6
– #3 Cunningham topped Sam Kelley in a breaker, splitting the first two games before advancing in the breaker. Final score (8),8,4
– #2 Sylvester edged out Flores in a battle between two long-time New England state level rivals. The two went 14-15, 15-14 in the first two games, with Sylvester saving match point against, before running away in the breaker 11-2. Not much between these two tough players on the day.

In the Semis:
– #5 Kelley dropped the first game 15-14 against the youngster from Maryland before rebounding to take game two 15-8. In the breaker, Pruitt ran off 5 quick points … and then hit a wall. Kelley ran off 11 unanswered points and took the breaker 11-5.
– #3 Cunningham made quick work of Sylvester, perhaps winded from his Flores battle, winning in two games 6,8 and displaying great reflexes and a sneaky fast serve that netted him points. He took match point with a behind-the-back roll-out.

In the final, Kelley mounted a furious comeback to shock Cunningham in game one, then cruised to the title in game two. Final score 13,7 (or perhaps 13,6 as Cunningham believes he lost a point on a technical to a fussy ref in Brent Walters

—–

Great event, great idea and it was awesome to watch from afar all day Saturday. Hope to see more live racquetball soon. Thanks to the participants and of course to the Kelley brothers for building this amazing court and hosting.

Posted on

1st Annual Average Joes Invitational

So, In case you weren’t aware, the Kelley brothers from New Jersey have built a racquetball court at their house, complete with viewing area, mini-clubhouse and had it christened by none other than the legend Cliff Swain.

This weekend they’ve invited 15 of the top open players from up and down the East Coast to their home for a single elimination tournament. The draw sheet is out (Austin Cunningham posted it on Keep Racquetball Great earlier today).

Here’s PRS’ predictions on how it will play out.

In the round of 16s.
– #1 seed North Carolinian Brent Walters gets a bye, which is probably good since he’s the oldest player in the draw. He’ll need his energy come Saturday night.
– In the #9/#8, I’ve got Maryland’s own Dylan Pruitt taking out New Jersey native #8 Greg Caruso in a slight upset. They played twice in mid 2019 and Pruitt beat him both times.
– #5 and host Joe Kelley takes out #12 Connecticut-based Tony Prater in the opener.
– #4 North Carolina’s Jon Justice takes out #13 Jersey native David Austin.
– #3 Georgian Austin Cunningham takes out NY’s #14 Josh Shea.
– #6 Fellow host @sam kelley handles New Yorker #11 Aaron Dardani.
– #7 Connecticut native Jose Flores takes out #10 North Carolina native Jordan Walters in a tight match.
– #2 New Yorker Jason Sylvester handles #15 Jersey native Matt Mertz.Just one upset by seeding in the 8/9, though the 7/10 could flip as well depending on how much Flores has been playing.

In the quarters we start to see some matches.
– #1 Reigning NC state champ Walters handles the youngster Pruitt.
– #4 2019 NC state runner up Justice takes out Joe Kelley.
– #3 Cunningham drops a game, but advances over Sam Kelley, knocking both brothers/hosts out in the quarters.
– #2 Sylvester goes tiebreaker but advances over long-time NE rival Flores.Chalk to the semis.

In the Semis:
– Walters prevails over his NC rival Justice in the semis.
– Cunningham takes out the veteran Sylvester.

In the final…
– Walters takes out Cunningham.

——-

Keep an eye out at KRG group and for Cunningham, Pruitt and Walters streaming the matches; they’re always good for it. They’ve already started streaming practice doubles matches this afternoon, and its great to see the guys back on the court.