The 22nd @International Racquetball Federation – IRF World Championships bracket events are in the books. Here’s a recap of the knockout stage action, along with links for the results as entered into the Pro Racquetball Stats database.
Congratulations to the winners:
– Men’s Singles: Daniel De La Rosa , USA
– Women’s Singles: Paola Longoria , Mexico
– Men’s Doubles: Samuel Murray & @Coby Iwaasa , Canada
– Women’s Doubles: @Alexandra Herrera & Montse Mejia, Mexico
– Mixed Doubles: Daniel De la Rosa & Hollie Scott , USA
Executive Summary: Great week for DLR, who goes undefeated and wins both Singles and Mixed. One has to wonder what would have happened if he had chosen to play Men’s doubles with his USA national championship winning partner Fernandez. Team Mexico does the double, winning both Women’s Singles and Doubles. Canada’s men’s doubles team continues to get results, making their 5th international final since 2019 and getting their second title. Bolivia is completely shut out after several cycles of multiple-win performances.
r2sports home page: https://www.r2sports.com/website/event-website.asp?TID=42436
Pro Racquetball Stats DB match results. Click on these links to see the match results for this event in the DB:
– Men’s Singles: https://rball.pro/8gq
– Women’s Singles: https://rball.pro/iby
– Men’s Doubles: https://rball.pro/v19
– Women’s Doubles: https://rball.pro/2l0
– Mixed Doubles: https://rball.pro/2gk
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For the rest of the event, they will play a “Team competition” davis-cup style where countries play singles and doubles as a team to advance; we’ll cover this and its World Games qualification import in an other post. Meanwhile, for decades all the individual play has historically resulted in separate “Team Standings” for IRF events. I’m not sure, with the advent of the team play recently, if IRF even maintains the Team Points results anymore … but we do for historical purposes. So…
Team Points Results From Knockouts
The “Team Standings” were determined by a standard algorithm that awarded points based on group stage and knockout performance.
(You can get these “team results” via queries available from the IRF singles page off of proracquetballstats.com historical site)
Combined Team (Overall)
1st – Mexico
2nd – USA
3rd – Bolivia
4th — Argentina
Mexico had the combined win sealed up even before any of the finals were played on thursday on the strength of their Women’s results. Bolivia edged Argentina for 3rd place by just four points, which is kind of ironic considering that Argentina’s entire team (Centellas, Garcia, Mendez, Miranda, and Vargas) all were born in Bolivia and switched allegiances to their South American Neighbor.
Men’s Team
1st – USA
2nd – Mexico
3rd – Bolivia
4th – Canada
USA’s dual-singles finals and Mexico’s early knockouts seal the Men’s title for USA.
Women’s Team
1st – Mexico
2nd – Argentina
3rd – Guatemala
4th – USA
Mexico nearly took maximum possible points for women, with 3 group stage wins and the singles title.
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Let’s run through the individual draws and talk about notable results.
Men’s Singles:
The Men’s singles knockout round went about as expected until the quarters … then all hell broke loose. I missed on 3 of the 4 quarter results in my prediction piece, headlined by the shock loss of the top seed and current IRT #1 Moscoso to Mexico’s #2 Portillo. USA’s #2 @Jake Bredenbeck had to go five to topple Argentina’s Garcia, and the infrequent touring pro Bolivian Carlos Keller Vargas took out Mexico’s Andree Parrilla. In the semis, Jake took out Lalo to get to the finals of an international competition the first time since 2016. There he met De La Rosa, who cruised past Keller in the other semi.
It was the first all-american final in an IRF event since 2015, and the first all-USA final in an IRF Major since 2010. Ironically, the last time Jake made an IRF singles final, his opponent was … De la Rosa as well. In the final, DLR ground out two game wins, then Jake caught fire and nearly donuted Daniel in the third before he caught fire in the fourth and pasted Jake 11-4 to claim the title. It’s Daniel’s first ever World title.
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Women’s Singles:
The GOAT cruised into the final, topping the young Bolivian Rivero in the, then the hobbled Vargas in the semis. Meanwhile Guatemala’s Martinez beat USA’s Key in the opener, then beat former LPRT tour champ Mejia in the quarters in a match that included the single longest game (23-21) in IRF history, then she came from a game down to topple Chile’s Carla Munoz in the semis.
Longoria and @Ana Gabriela Martínez met in the Worlds final for the fourth time in the last five World Championships, and Longoria came out on top in the final to claim her 6th IRF World title. It’s also her 26th career IRF singles title, with wins dating all the way back to 2006.
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Men’s Doubles.
The #1 doubles team in the world (Montoya & Mar) was upset in Mexican Nationals this year by the #1 seed here (Parrilla & Portillo): they cruised into the title game with a 4-game win over team USA (Manilla & Fernandez) that wasn’t without a bit of controversy late. Meanwhile, Team Canada (Murray & Iwaasa), who have a habit of making it to the gold medal match internationally (they now have made 6 gold medal Men’s Pro Doubles matches since 2019), ground out two tough 5 game wins, including over Bolivia in the semis to ensure a medal-less event for the racquetball-rabid country, to get to the finals again.
In the final, Team Canada won a back and forth 5 game match where the momentum switched over and again.
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Women’s Doubles:
They had to work for it, but the dominant #1 pro doubles team of Mejia & Herrera came from behind in the 5th to win the five-game thriller over team Argentina (Vargas & Mendez) to claim the title. Its their third IRF title in the last two years.
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Mixed Doubles
Team USA’s De La Rosa would not be denied in San Antonio, as he took over for stretches to take the mixed title with partner Hollie Scott.
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Congrats to the International Racquetball Federation for another successful event. Thanks to the IRT streaming crew, and thanks to @Gary Mazaroff and Gustavo and all his co-announcers for their hard work all week.
Next up on the Racquetball Calendar: https://docs.google.com/…/1V6OTid6rZ356voXVkoV2…/edit…
We’ll cover the IRF team event next week in another post. Then next weekend 9/8/24 is world Racquetball day, with shootouts and tourneys all over the country. Please consider supporting your event organizers by playing in one of these events. One of the biggest will be an outdoor event at Stratton Woods park in Northern Virginia with a lot of traveling talent for the Bolivian Open.
After that, we have the 3WallBall event with the introduction of World Team Racquetball in Las Vegas at the end of September.