Murray continues his reign atop Canadian Men’s Racquetball.
Photo 2019 US Open Kevin Savory
This past weekend, @Racquetball Canada held its all-encompassing National championships in Calgary. Unlike other countries where singles, doubles, and Juniors are held separately, Canada now has them all on the same weekend. So we have a ton of titlists to cover.
Congrats to your 2024 Canada National Open Singles winners on the weekend:
– Men’s Singles: Samuel Murray
– Women’s Singles: @Frederique Lambert
Congrats to your 2024 Canada National Open Doubles winners on the weekend:
– Men’s Doubles: @Christian Pocsai and @Trevor Ward
(Canada doesn’t separately compete Mixed Doubles, instead selecting the international Mixed partners from the qualified pool)
And, Congrats to your 2024 Canadian Junior National Singles Champions:
– Boys 21U: Christian Pocsai
– Boys 18U: Leyton Gouldie
– Boys 16U: Raphael Guillemette
– Boys 14U: Oren Gouldie
– Girls 18U: Ofelia Wilscam
– Girls 16U: Kaitlyn Couckuyt
– Girls 14U: Ariana Buller
We’ll do some commentary for each of the groups down below.
Trackie Sports App home page for event: https://secure.racquetballcanada.ca/entry-list/matches/1000485/4657/0/F/
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Men’s Open Singles
PRS report: https://rball.pro/d6m
Murray wins his 6th straight Canadian Nationals title and his 18th Canadian National-level singles event in a walk-over win against his frequent finals rival #2 seed Coby Iwaasa , who couldn’t reschedule some work-related exams and forfeited the final. This event featured the fun return of former Canadian great Roger Harripersad, two-time Canadian champ in 1985 and 1989.
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Women’s Open Singles
PRS report: https://rball.pro/kke
Lambert won her 4th straight Canadian national title, and her 6th overall, with a straightforward tournament where she did not lose a game. #2 seed and finalist Juliette Parent made her 2nd straight national final and seems to have taken the reigns as “next best” female Canadian right now from the likes of Morisste, Key, and Ramsay in the Canadian pecking order.
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Men’s Doubles:
PRS Report: https://rball.pro/fyc
Sam & @Tommy Murray were upset in the finals of Canadian doubles for the 2nd year running, this time by @Trevor Webb and @Christian Pocsai. Webb wins his 2nd ever title while long-time junior champion Pocsai takes his first ever Canadian adult title.
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Women’s Doubles:
Lambert wins her 5th Canadian National title, the first of which came way back in 2010. Morissette also wins her 5th, and the pair have won the last three straight. The Parent sisters return to the final for the first time since 2021 but are still waiting for their big breakthrough.
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Boys Junior Results.
Matrix report of all Canadian Junior boys champs: https://rball.pro/ny4
Christian Pocsai graduates out of 18U and dethrone’s last year’s 21U champ Gauri, and wins his family’s 10th career junior title. Meanwhile, the Gouldie brothers Leyton and Oren take 18U and 14U respectively. Rafael Guillemette repeats as 16U champ, almost 20 years after Francis Guillemette took the 16U title in Canada in 1995.
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Girls Junior Results.
Matrix report of all Canadian Junior boys champs: https://rball.pro/5zu
Ofelia Wilscam wins the Wilscam clan’s 7th junior title in 18U, after a couple of down years on the Canada junior circuilt. Kaitlyn Couckuyt moves up one division after taking last year’s 14U division and wins again. Lastly a debut jr title for Ariana Buller, two years after her older sister won 14U.
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That’s a wrap for Racquetball Canada Nationals for 2024. We’ll be back next fall with their qualifier.
He didn’t win, but Alonso certainly raised some eyebrows this weekend. Photo via Alonso’s twitter account.
Congrats to your Pro winners on the weekend:
– Singles: Conrrado Moscoso
– Doubles: Rodrigo Montoya and @Erick Trujillo
– Singles PRS Match report: https://rball.pro/yxv
– Doubles PRS Match report: https://rball.pro/q3p
This was a crazy tournament for a few reasons we’ll go into below. Lots of really amazing results to talk about.
R2 Sports App home page for event: https://www.r2sports.com/website/event-website.asp?TID=42331
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Let’s review the notable matches in the Singles draw.
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In the qualifying round/64s, nothing too notable other than a player named “Wer” played a player named “Wolfe” and I didn’t see it; h/t to the reddit user who pointed it out. Wolfe topped Wer with an injury retirement. The #14 qualifying seed and #30 seed overall @Jordy Alonso topped his fellow Mexican Alejandro Bear, looking to make the main draw in just his 12th career pro event.
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In the 32s:
– Former #1 Rocky Carson dusted off the sticks and topped Chilean @Rafael Gatica
to move into the 16s and setup a match with #1 Moscoso.
– #9 Carter Thomas got a very solid win over @Alejandro Cardona , who continues to be a dangerous opponent when he shows up.
– US Junior Cole Sendry got a TB win over #13 @Carlos Ramirez to make the round of 16 for the first time in his pro career
– #11 Jaime Martell took out the up and coming Elias Nieto in a breaker, in a match that I thought might go the other way.
– #23 Diego Gastelum , strong Mexican junior, took out countryman #10 Erick Cuevas to make his first round of 16 in a pro event.
– However, the match of the event, and perhaps the season, was the shock upset of #3 Kane Waselenchuk at the hands of #30 Jordy Alonso. I’ll be honest; I tuned in mid-match and saw that Kane had won game one 15-7 and was up 7-2 in the second and thought the match was over. Only when I started seeing random social media questions did I realize an upset had occurred, so I pulled up the video and watched it from the mid-way point. From the point where I left off … Alonso ground back into the match to take game two 15-12 then blitzed the 14-time tour champ 11-1 in the tie-breaker. I don’t think the analysis was difficult: Alonso’s drive serve was 100% “on,” and he was putting pressure on Kane for the entire second half of the match that Kane doesn’t normally see from most players on tour. Alonso didn’t screw around with his serve; he pounded drives to Kane’s backhand, got aces, forced weak returns, and he hit really unbeatable pinch shots once his feet were set. Kane really couldn’t do anything to stop the train of points in the tiebreaker and essentially threw in the towel at about 1-9 down.
Alonso, as i’ve commented elsewhere, is not a nobody; he’s got a slew of solid wins on his resume, but he rarely tours. This is just his 12th pro event and he turns 27 in early June. But clearly this is a shocking result. This is the first time Kane’s EVER lost on the court prior to the round of 16 in his 20-something year career (He has one round of 64 forfeit loss from last August). The interesting thing about Alonso what happens next is this; the draw kind of opens up, and there’s no reason to think at this juncture that he can’t move on. His career best finish is a round of 16 loss, but he’ll easily beat that as we’re about to see.
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In the 16s:
– Moscoso was forced to mount a massive comeback in game one to top Carson 15-14, and the effort seemed to exhaust the 40-something Rocky, who lost the second game in just a few minutes 15-1.
– In the 8/9 matchup, Alan Natera crushed Carter 8,6 to move on. He achieves his second quarter final of the season, having only ever made the quarters twice in nearly 30 previous pro events.
– Alonso made fast work of #14 Robbie Collins 2,7, facing his second straight lefty and using the same strategy to move on. He makes his first ever pro quarter.
– #11 Martell shocked #6 Andres Acuna 11-10 to make his first quarter of the year and throw the refereeing schedule completely off for the tournament (Martell generally does the back end reffing of the events as an international qualified referee).
– Trujillo crushed Gastelum, who had several h2h wins over Erick in Mexican nationals of late, to move into the quarters.
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In the Quarters
– #1 Moscoso cruised past #8 Natera 3,9, probably looking ahead knowing that his leading nemesis Kane was out of the draw.
– #4 Jake Bredenbeck got revenge from a shock US Nationals qualifying loss last year against #5 Adam Manilla , crushing the lefty 4,9 to move into the semis.
– #30 Alonso came from a game down to drop #11 Martell in a battle of Mexican Cinderellas.
-#2 @Rodrigo Montoy , who saw his side of the draw open up nicely with Kane’s loss, ground out a win against his double partner Trujillo to move on.
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In the Semis
– Jake pushed Conrrado but couldn’t break him, losing 12,8.
– Alonso continued his amazing weekend with perhaps his biggest achievement yet, coming down from 5-10 in the tie-breaker to shock #2 Montoya 11-10 to move into the final.
As the #30 seed, Alonso becomes the 2nd highest seeded player to EVER make a pro tour final. The highest ever seed? #39 Waselenchuk, who was seeded dead last at the 2008 Motorola Championships when he came off his 2-year break.
In the Finals, Alonso’s run came to a relatively unheralded end, as Moscoso destroyed the Mexican 3,5 to take the title. It’s Moscoso’s 9th career IRT win.
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Points Implications of results
This round of 32 loss does a ton of damage to Kane’s 2024 title aspirations, but he remains in the lead for 2024 season to date points by a hair right now over Moscoso.
As for the rolling 365-calendar, it’s hard to say what the rankings will be come tuesday when they re-run, because I’m not aware of how the tour is handling satellite points right now. There’s not enough Tier 1 events to exclude them/go into the points replacement system, and when just counting tier 1s in the rankings I can’t make my current XLS match the r2sports-generated rankings. So, I *think* with this win Moscoso opens up a sizeable 400-point lead on #2 Montoya, Kane remain sat #3, and most of the rest of the top 10 remains the same. The big news might be that Trujillo moves ahead of Natera, and (given that DLR is seemingly retired) might now get “stuck” in that 8/9 slot that feeds into Moscoso. That’s a typical tripping point for players moving their way up the rankings, and it can be tough to move past it.
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Doubles review
#1 ranked IRT doubles Montoya made his fourth pro doubles final out of four held this season and took it with Trujillo. They top the Bolivian team of Moscoso/Carrasco in a breaker.
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Open Singles, other notable draws
The 32man Men’s Open Singles draw opened up nicely when #2 seed Alonso withdrew to focus on the pro side; this opened up the bottom half for #6 Ecuadorian Juan Francisco Cueva to make the final with wins over a slew of international opponents. Gastelum made his way to the final from the top half as the #1 seed, but Cueva took the title.
Jose Caceres / Carlos Ramirez took the Men’s Open doubles title over
Alejandro Bear / Elias Nieto.
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Thanks for all the streaming on the weekend, especially from broadcasters Favio Soto, Steve Schulze, Pablo Fajre and the IRTLive crew
We’ll cover the Canadian National event next in this space, which also happened last weekend. Then we have a week break until the LPRT finishes up its 2023-24 season in Chesapeake, Virginia, just a couple hours drive from me.
Can Trujillo make some noise in SoCal? Photo US Open 2021 via Kevin Savory
Welcome back to the IRT 2024 season. This coming weekend is the 4th event of the season, with the tour returning to Southern California at one of the biggest clubs in the LA area in Canoga Park. Thanks to tourney director Cindy Tillbury for making this event happen, and thanks to JMB produce and its owner Craig Rolandelli for being the title sponsor.
This week we have a nice contingent of Mexican players who have been able to drive over the border to play. There’s 37 pros in the singles draw. There’s also a slew of regular touring pros/top 10 players missing: #4 Parrilla, #5 DLR, #9 Murray, and #13 Portillo all miss this event for various reasons (It’s Canada nationals this weekend for Murray, for example). These absences have given some career high seedings to a couple of players, including Erick Trujillo getting a 7 seed and @Erick Cuevas being seeded 10th.
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Let’s preview the draw. Here’s some notable qualifying matches that i’m looking forward to:
In the round of 64/qualifying, there’s only 5 qualifiers this weekend:
– Wer/Wolfe could be interesting: Wer a long-time international player and Wolfe briefly a touring pro a few years back.
– Alonso-Bear is a tough draw for the youngster Bear.
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Projecting the 32s: here’s some great matches to watch for in the 32s.
– 9/24: @thomas Carter vs @Alejandro Cardona is a fun first round. Cardona doesn’t tour full time but he’s tough. Carter has been playing well, but this could be close.
– #5 Adam Manilla projects to play @DJ Mendoza, USA adult team member versus USA junior team member.
– Fellow USA junior team member Cole Sendrey gets a winnable match against Carlos Ramirez.
– Alonso feeds into #3 @Kane Waselenchuk , and will get some points off of him.
– #11 Jaime Martell gets Elias Nieto , a tough matchup.
– Trujillo takes on veteran international Juan Francisco Cueva .
– with his career best seeding, Erick Cuevas gets tough junior Diego Gastelum. Upset watch here.
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round of 16:
– Current #1 Conrrado Moscoso projects to play former #1 @Rocky Carson , who’s entering his home town event and comes in as a #17 seed.
– #8/#9 Alan Natera projects against the Carter/Cardona winner, either of which will make for a solid match here.
– In the 6/11, Andres Acuna projects to play Martell/Nieto winner, which will be a solid match.
– In the 7/10, I could see Trujillo v Gastelum, two guys who are both competing in Mexico U21 right now, and which we could see Gastelum getting a win. The last time they played was at 2023 Mexican Nationals, and Gastelum beat him easily.
– #1 Moscoso over #8 Natera. There’s really only one or two guys who can top Moscoso right now, and they’re both on the opposite side of the draw this weekend.
– #5 Manilla over #4 @Jake Bredenbeck . Manilla got Jake at US Nationals last year, and Jake’s been on a season-long slide, so I’m playing the trends here.
– #3 Waselenchuk over #6 Acuna. Acuna took a game off Kane earlier this season by sticking to a simple game plan: get drive serves in and go for 3 shot rally wins. Is he consistent enough to do this for three games? No, but if Kane’s having an off day this could be close.
– #2 Rodrigo Montoya over Gastelum Montoya is #2 for a reason and won’t be falling here.
Semis:
– Moscoso over Manilla
– Waselenchuk over Montoya. Now, this is no gimme; they played in Minnesota and it was a 14,(7),2 win for Kane … first game could have gone either way and Montoya blitzed Kane for the game two win before a bad call derailed Rodrigo mentally in the breaker. The thing is, Kane doesn’t have mental breakdowns on the court; he’s relentless, and you can’t have any slip ups. Can Rodrigo put it together and get a first career win?
Finals;
Kane over Moscoso. The last couple of times we’ve seen this anticipated matchup, its been disappointing. Moscoso is a front runner; when he’s ahead, he dominates. When he loses the first game, he struggles to come back. Conrrado has a h2h win over kane so its possible, but I don’t think the court conditions (playing at sea-level with the slower gearbox ball) will play into Conrrado’s favor.
If Kane wins, he will have an almost unbeatable lead for the year end title … he’s already 300 points ahead in season to date and has basically no points to defend for 2023.
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Doubles review
No Javier Mar this weekend, so the top doubles player Montoya picks up Trujillo as the #1 seed. They have to play two tough SoCal players in Allin/Shahin right out of the box. Alvi and Rocky take time away from Centurion to play pro doubles together as the #8 seed; they’re good at doubles but won’t get past #1. I like the Bredenbeck brothers at #5 to make the semis but fall.
From the bottom half, two kids in Gastelum & Sendry should push #2 Moscoso/Carrasco but fall in the Quarters. I like Natera/Acuna as a team and I thi nk they can get past the reigning Bolivian champs in the semis if they pick on Carrasco, who sometimes struggles to put balls away when he needs to.
Finals though, Montoya/Trujillo should win.
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Look for Streaming in the regular places; follow the IRT on Facebook and sign up to get notifications when they go Live. Look for Favio Soto, Samuel Schulze, Pablo Fajre and the IRTLive crew all weekend on the mike, calling the shots!
Vargas wins her 5th title of the season, and moves closer to the year end title.
Photo US Open 2019 Kevin Savory
Congrats to your Pro winners on the weekend:
– Singles: Maria José Vargas
– Doubles: Alexandra Herrera and Montse Mejia
Both #1 seeds take the pro draws, but both also had to endure 11-10 wins to do so along the way.
R2 Sports App home page for event: https://www.r2sports.com/website/event-website.asp?TID=42306
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Let’s review the notable matches in the Singles draw.
Singles Match report in the PRS database: https://rball.pro/v9b
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In the 32s:
– #17 Michelle Key continues to build points after being away from touring for years by topping #16 Stephanie Synhorst
– #21 Sheryl Lotts, who’s also been away from the tour for months after being a regular fixture, returned with a great win over #12 Hollie Scott .
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In the 16s:
– #9 Carla Munoz took out #8 Cris Amaya 7,6 to try to stay in the tour’s top 10.
– #11 Natalia Mendez got her best win in months, taking out the mercurial #6 Brenda Laime to move into the quarters for the third time this season.
– – #7 @Kelani Lawrence survived a 15-14 game one to advance past the the resurgent #10 @Jessica Parrilla .
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In the Quarters
– the top 4 seeds advanced as expected, with a couple of the matches being close.
– #4 @Alexandra Herrera ground out a close 13,14 win against #5 Ana Gabriela Martinez to get back to the semis.
– #1 Vargas was pressed by long-time South American rival #8 Munoz 11.10.
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In the Semis
– #1 Vargas cruised past #4 Herrera 8,5 to earn her 5th final out of the 7 tournaments played this season.
– #3 Paola Longoria reminded everyone where she belongs in the pecking order right now, taking out last year’s tour champ #2 Mejia in a hard fought 11-8 breaker.
In the Finals, Vargas took game one 12, then fell in game two 7 to setup another finals tiebreaker against the long time tour champion. In the tie-breaker, Vargas was fully in control and cruised to a 10-5 lead, but Longoria fought back. Vargas served for the match another 6 times without winning the final point as Longoria amazingly got it it back to 10-10 and had some opportunities, but couldn’t capitalize. Unfortunately, the match ended on a disputed serve that Longoria was adamant was a screen serve or foot fault. The lines judges didn’t agree, and that was that.
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Points Implications of results
With the win, Vargas now has 5 titles on the year, out of 7 events. Longoria has the other two. In the two tourneys Vargas missed, she had a semis loss and, going all the way back to Denver 2023, a loss in the 16s to Martinez. So, even though Vargas has far more titles, the points race for the title remains within Longoria’s reach. Assuming that SC was a “regular” grand slam, and that the last tournament next month in Chesapeake is also a “regular” grand slam … Vargas can still be caught for the 2023-24 title. It’ll take a miracle though: she leads Longoria by around 282 points, and you get 300 for winning a GS. So if Longoria wins Chesapeake (300) and Vargas misses the event, or loses in the round of 32 (worth 18.75), there’s a chance. However, if Vargas advances to the 16s in Chesapeake that’ll enough to seal the deal.
Mejia still sits #2 in rolling rankings, but will fall to #3 as soon as last year’s Chesapeake event (which she won) falls off. There’s a massive gap from the top 3 to #4 Herrera, then another huge gap to the ladies ranked 5th-13th, who are all within 100-120 points of each other. Based on her results in this event, Lawrence should move up to #5 on tour, a career high. Manilla is holding on at #7 despite being out for months. Despite making the quarters, Munoz will fall to #11 and the missing Salas will lose 4 spots and fall to #13. Most of the rest of the tour stays relatively the same.
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Doubles review
Match report in the PRS database: https://rball.pro/t0c
The top ranked team survived an 11-10 thriller in the semis against the hodge-podge team of Martinez & Parrilla, then destroyed #2 Vargas/Mendez in the final for yet another title. Herrera & Mejia have now won 5 of the season’s 6 titles, and lost in the final of the one event they didn’t win.
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Open Singles, other notable draws
– Mendez topped San Antonio USA junior Naomi Ros in the final of Women’s Open. Ros got there by beating #1 seed Munoz, which has to be a career best win.
– the Commish @TJTj Baumbaugh teamed with Kanesha Madison to take the 3-team Women’s Open Doubles draw.
– Former IRT touring pro @Maurice Miller topped #1 seed @Dylan Pruitt for the Men’s Open singles title.
– Pruitt teamed with Georgia’s @Austin Cunningham to take the Men’s Open Doubles title.
– Pruitt made it a “double double” (also my favorite order at In-and-Out Burger) by taking the Mixed Pro/Open title with Lotts.
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Thanks for all the streaming on the weekend, especially from broadcasters Timothy Baghurst, Jerry J Josey Jr., JTRball, and Tj Baumbaugh. Miller sat in on the singles final.
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 Facebook. If your name is here and it isn’t tagged … it probably means I attempted to tag you but Facebook stripped it.
Vargas closes in on the Season Ending title.
Photo via usaracquetballevents.com
Welcome to the penultimate event of the 2023-24 @LPRT season, and its a big one. The 8th annual Sweet Caroline Classic in Greenville is perhaps the most important stop on tour. Greenville is the home of the LPRT Hall of Fame and it has supported the tour like none other.
We have a solid draw of 23 players. We’re missing #7 Manilla (injury) and #9 Solis from the draw, but have most of the rest of the top 20 along with the likes of @Sheryl Lotts who has been an infrequent player this season. Play starts friday 5/17 and continues through the weekend.
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Let’s preview the draw. Here’s some notable qualifying matches that i’m looking forward to:
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In the 32s:
– #21 Lotts takes on #12 Hollie Scott in a fun opener.
– #13 @Maria Paz Riquelme takes on fellow South American lefty Martina Katz .
– #14 @Lexi York takes on junior ##19 @khKhyathi Velpuri to start.
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round of 16: Here’s some good ones to look for:
– 8/9 Munoz v Amaya. Cris Amaya has had a great season and now has overtaken Carla Munoz to get back into the top 8. It’s been more than a few years since Amaya was in the top 8 on tour and she’ll need this win to stay there.
– 5/12 Gaby Martinez likely gets Scott in a tough opener for the Guatemalan.
– whoever wins the play-in will give #4 @Alexandra Herrera a lefty opponent in the 16s
– #7 @Kelani Lawrence seems likely to face off against #10 Jessica Parrilla . Believe it or not, these two have never played in a top-level indoor match.
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Projected Qtrs:
– #1 @Maria José Vargas shouldn’t struggle with either potential opponent Amaya or Munoz
– #4 Herrera projects into #5 Gaby, a tough match up of two former Tier1 winners. I like the way Herrera is playing and project the seeds to hold.
– #3 Paola Longoria projects into #6 Brenda Laime , who does have a H2H win over the long-time #1. Laime has been struggling lately though so I’ll project Longoria to move on here.
– #2 Montse Mejia gets the winner of Lawrence/parrilla in a match she should move on from.
Semis:
I continue to predict chalk; the cream has definitely risen to the top of the tour right now, and its hard to see anyone moving forward right now from outside the top 4-5.
– #1 Vargas over #4 Herrera: they’ve met four times this season and Vargas is 4-0, but it was an 11-10 win in San Antonio in their most recent meeting that has this being closer to a coinflip than many might think.
– #2 Mejia over #3 Longoria; a rematch of the San Antonio semis, which featured a come-from-behind win for Mejia over her long-time rival. That broke a streak of 4- straight losses against Paola for Montse; can she repeat the feat? She needs to “remember” what she did to turn around that match in Texas to move forward.
Finals; #1 Vargas over #2 Mejia. They’ve met three times this year, all three Vargas wins. Their last meeting was the final of San Antonio, an 11-7 grinding win for the #1 player.
Fun fact: if Vargas wins this event, and it gives the Grand Slam points I believe it will, then Vargas will have an insurmountable lead heading into Chesapeake. However, the points assignment may change slightly if either event becomes a “Grand Slam plus” so don’t quote me on that.
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Doubles review
No Salas means Longoria is completely out of the doubles draw, which is pretty crazy considering that she’s played in 66 Pro doubles finals since 2013. There’s some very solid, long-standing pairings in the Doubles draw all looking to un-seat the #1 dominant pair of Mejia & Herrera, and the semis onward will be great. Look for Munoz/Key to push the #1 in the top semi but fall, and look for the Argentines Vargas & Mendez to push past the American duo of Lawrence & Scott. Mejia & Herrera remain too good to lose at the top.
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Look for Streaming in the regular places; follow the LPRT on Facebook and sign up to get notifications when they go Live. Look for Timothy Baghurst, Jerry J Josey Jr., and Tj Baumbaugh on the mike, calling the shots!
Coincidentally, if you’re interested in playing Fantasy Racquetball for this event, the links to the brackets are advertised on LPRT’s main page. The winner each week gets free swag!
