Category: IRT

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IRT 2024 Inland Empire Pro/Am Recap

Kane regains #1 on tour. Photo credit: unknown

Congrats to your Pro Singles winner on the weekend: Kane Waselenchuk

Kane wins his 127th career Tier 1 IRT title. We’ll talk about the final and the point implications later on.

R2 Sports App home page for event: https://www.r2sports.com/website/event-website.asp?TID=44845

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Let’s review the notable matches in the Singles draw.

Singles Match report in the PRS database: https://rball.pro/tbe

In the 32s: A last minute draw change jumbled the lowest 7-8 seeds from where they stood monday, and led to just a couple of compelling matchups in the opening round.

– Mexican U21 Gastelum upended USA junior Cody elkins 10,10 to earn a shot at Kane

– Alonso took out Antone 13,4; the USA national team member made him sweat in game one for sure.

– The biggest result, and biggest shock to me: Martell easily beat Garcia 4,10. That’s tough for Garcia, who I think was the only South American to make the trip.

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In the 16s:

– Alonso took out Jake in a tough 11-9 breaker. I don’t think this is an upset necessarily based on the way both have been playing, and it gives you some pause to ask, “just how good is Alonso?” If he played regularly, is he top 4? Too high?

– Trujillo took out Martel, also in a breaker. This isn’t an upset by seed, but it is a notable result b/c Trujillo has had some losses recently to his fellow countrymen. This is a solid win over a solid player and gives Trujillo’s top 10 ranking a boost.

– Montoya edged his doubles partner Mar in a breaker. No surprise they went to a 3rd game; even if one is the #2 seed and the other is in the 20s, these two are neck and neck talent wise.

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In the Quarters

– #1 Kane cruises past Natera 6,4. He’s just getting warmed up.

– Great win by Acuna, downing Alonso 2,13. I thought for certain we were going to see another Alonso-Kane matchup, but the Costa Rican had other thoughts.

– Parrilla had a typical 7,13 win over Manilla. Both control players tried to out control the other, and Andree was better at it.

– Montoya set down Trujillo 12,3. After a close first game, the powerful Rodrigo went to town and advanced with ease.

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In the Semis

– Acuna kept it close b/c he has a game plan against Kane that we’ve seen before, but just not a good enough one y et. kane advances 10,7

– In the other semi, two players who have played each other dozens of times over the years faced off again, and this time Parrilla took out Montoya 9,6 to move into the final.

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In the Finals, we got an interesting matchup. Kane and Andree have a history playing each other. One of their first meetings was a 0,0,0 embarrassment at the 2016 US Open when Andree was a budding player on the competing WRT. They met in the final of Chicago a few months later and Parrilla pushed Kane in at least one game, showing a bit of a gumption at the time. They’ve usually played close games, albeit mostly Kane wins … then Parrilla got an 11-10 finals win over Kane in January 2022 for a big win.

Kane jumped out to a massive first game lead, ahead 10-0 at one point, and he honestly looked miffed when Parrilla finally got a point and ruined his donut. Well, that wasn’t going to be where Parrilla stopped … he ran off ten unanswered points himself to tie the game and Kane had to press to win it 15-14. Game two was one-way traffic for the Mexican, who crushed Kane 15-3 to force a breaker.

Fun fact: on the IRT, when players split the first two games, the player who won the second game has the advantage, having won 51% of the time. So advantage momentum, albeit only slightly. Kane had none of that, crushing Parrilla 11-3 to win the match. Andree scored 32 total points, Kane 29 … but it was the points at the end that counted. The end of the match was a little testy, with Andree having some words for Kane on his way out of the court, which were returned in turn.

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Points Implications of results.

Kane regains 1st place on tour, for the first time in several years. The last time he was #1 on tour, the best I can tell, was at the 2021 US Open. He has about a 90 point lead on #2 Moscoso, but we know that Moscoso is now out for the rest of 2024. Parrilla now sits third and Kane has him by about 377 points. That’s huge; the next event to drop was Boston in Nov 2023, which Parrilla won, so that means he’s defending winner’s points/400 points. Montoya has dropped to 4th, just a handful behind Parrilla, and has a quarter and semi to defend the rest of the way out.

But the 377 gap is massive: if there’s just one more tier 1 (which is worth 400 for winning, 501.33 if its a tier1+), Kane basically has the year end title already sewn up. We know about Pleasanton in November; maybe we get Pelham Memorial increased to Tier 1 in December, but it was a Satellite last year. So amazingly Kane is in pole position to win the year end title

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Open Singles, other notable draws

– With no Pro doubles, the Open Doubles came down to the four best pros playing, with Mar/Garcia topping Sendrey/Gastelum in the final.

– In Men’s Open, doubles partners Sendrey and Gastelem both advanced to the final and then double forfeited.

– Arizona’s Susie Boulanger & Damian Zamorano took the Mixed Open Doubles final in a walk-over.

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Thanks for all the streaming on the weekend, especially from broadcasters Favio Soto, Pablo Fajre and the IRTLive crew

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Next up?

Per our handy master racquetball calendar …

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1V6OTid6rZ356voXVkoV2sN7KMMbIP9SZd0MssH_nPGU/edit?usp=sharing

Next up is the Pleasanton Golden State Open in Pleasanton in a month’s time.

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IRT 2024 Inland Empire Pro/Am Preview

Can we get another Alonso run? Photo via Alonso Twitter page

Hello racquetball fans! It’s been a minute since we were talking about the Men’s pro tour (last tier 1 stop: May in Canoga Park), but they’re back in action at a site that the Men’s tour has never visited before (at least for a Tier 1): Spokane, Washington.

Washington has been host to the IRT in the past, but not for more than a decade.

Seattle has hosted a dozen big-time events over the years, and in the late 80s/early 90s Seattle hosted the “Grand Nationals” event that was often the sole major of the year. Famously, in 1988 the tour rolled into Seattle to finish off the season at the CityFed Grand Nationals, with the year end title completely up for grabs; the players on tour knew that the final major would have a massive amount of points awarded, and any one of the top 5-6 players entering that event could win the year end title. the #1, #2 and #4 ranked players all fell in the quarters, and #3 seeded @Ruben Gonzalez topped #5 @Egan Inoue for the tournament win and year-end title.

Because it’s been some months since the IRT was in action, we’ve seen a bit of movement in the rankings, so the projected quarterfinals may look a little different than you’d expect. We’re also seeing a bit of a thinner draw due to the geographic location of the event and the difficulty some international players have in getting there. However, that all said, we’re going to see some excellent matches all the way through.

R2 Sports App link: https://www.r2sports.com/website/event-website.asp?TID=44845

The most obvious Top player missing is #1 Moscoso, who suffered an arm injury while training over the weekend, basically the day before he was set to board a plane to come to the USA. He’s set to have surgery this week and could be sidelined for the rest of the season, a dagger to his chances of finishing #1 for the first time. Also missing is current #10 De La Rosa and #12 Sam Murray, the latter somewhat surprisingly given the few Tier 1 events we are set to have in 2024. In Conrrado’s absence, Kane ascends to the #1 seed for the first time since the 2021 US Open. He’s in the driver’s seat to win the 2024 title right now, years after he last won it at the end of the 2019-2020 season.

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Let’s preview the draw. Here’s some notable matches I’m looking at. The draw was re-made at the very last minute because of the dropping out of Kadim Carrasco due to travel issues thanks to Milton (lots of South Americans fly through Florida as a transfer point) which scattered every round of 32 and 16 matchup.

In the 32s:

– #12 @Carlos Ramirez takes on #21 John Wolfe , who toured for a brief period a few years back. Ramirez very quietly has now risen to #16 in the rankings and is the #12 seed here by virtue of several absences, and he’s done so mainly by his consistency attending events on tour. He’s made three round of 16s in his career 15 events and his best ever result may have been a 2022 win over Gastelum. He has a solid opportunity to get into another round of 16 here.

– #13 @Jordy Alonso vs #20 @Wayne Antone Racquetball : Antone was set to play Carrasco before he dropped out; now he has to fend with a guy who put an “L” on Kane and made a tour final earlier this year. Antone’s solid, but Alonso has the ability to beat basically anyone if he’s on.

– #14 Cole Sendrey gets a fun one against Canadian National #19 @Lee Connell. The Canadian has been around the block and is old enough to be Cole’s dad, but can still play. Sendrey will need to focus to win this match.

– #11 Robert Collins vs #22 @Gatlin Sutherland. This is a fun one: Collins was just named the US Junior National team coach (well deserved by the way), and Sutherland is a regular on the US Junior National team. How will the player do against the coach? This is Sutherland’s pro debut. he’s had some success in US Junior nationals event (one title back in 2014, made the finals of 16s two years ago, and he owns 4 junior national doubles titles), but he’ll have his hands full with veteran Collins.

#10 @Jaime Martell Racquetball vs #23 @Diego Garcia . The last minute seed change has the most impact on Martell, who has a career high seeding here only to get drawn against Garcia. Last time Diego showed up an an IRT event, he took out two top seeds and took a game off of Montoya in the quarters before falling, and at the last Worlds he beat Acuna straight up and fell 11-9 in the fifth to Jake. I see Garcia moving on.

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round of 16:

– #1 Waselenchuk vs #16 @Diego Gastelum ; Kane gets started with a decent tie; Gastelum is no pushover, being the 2023 U21 world champ and with a handful of wins over IRT top 10 player Trujillo in the last couple of years. He’s probably best known for taking Jake to a 15-14 game one loss at the 2023 Worlds event out of nowhere, shocking those in attendance who had never seen him before. That being said, for Kane this isn’t the same as running into someone like Alonso, and he should move on.

– #9 @Thomas Carter vs #8 @Alan Natera: These two meet again. They were 8 & 9 at the last IRT event, and Natera cruised to an 8,6 win. I see a similar result here.

– #4 @Jake Bredenbeck vs #13 Alonso. Jake is the unfortunate recipient of the Alonso matchup, a player who beat Kane, Collins, Martell, and Montoya at the last IRT event. Is Alonso the new Landa on tour? For those who don’t remember, Landa didn’t tour regularly until deep into his 20s, but would periodically show up at pro stops and knock off top-seeded players with ease. I see Alonso doing the same now.

– #7 @Erick Trujillo vs Garcia: these two faced off twice at the 2022 Worlds u21 junior championship, with Garcia winning in the group stage and then in the U21 final. Both games went the distance, all 5 games. Trujillo didn’t get to #7 by accident and has some wins on tour for sure, but so does Garcia. I still like the dark-horse here.

– #2 Rodrigo Montoya Racquetball vs #15 @javier Mar; the luck of the draw pits long-time doubles partners and good friends Montoya & Mar together at this stage, instead of two rounds subsequent. The last time they played, Rodrigo got the better of his friend in 2023 in Minnesota, but Mar absolutely has beaten him in the past. Mar has struggled with injuries for some time, but seems to be healthy and is coming off a solid 3WB event. I still think Montoya is the favorite but it could be close. Upsets frequently happen when two people this close play.

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Projected Qtrs:

– #1 Waselenchuk over #8 Natera; Kane over powers the Mexican turned Chilean.

– #13 Alonso over #5 Acuna: Jordy is too much of a shotmaker for Acuna to handle.

– #3 Parrilla over #6 Manilla: both players have straightforward paths to the quarters thanks to the last minute schedule change, and Parrilla is gifted a semis slot.

– #2 Montoya over #23 Garcia: they met in 2023 World Singles in Denver as mentioned above, and Montoya won in a breaker. I’d expect a similar result here.

Semis:

– Kane over Alonso. Kane will have learned how to beat Jordy, will be on the gas from the get go, and won’t lose to the same guy twice.

– Montoya over Parrilla: just too much firepower at this point in both players’ careers.

Finals;

– Kane over Montoya: you hate to predict against the best player of all time, but if there’s a player who has both the game and the mentality to beat him, I think its Rodrigo. When they played in Minnesota, Kane won 14,(7),2 in a match that was a lot closer than the score indicated. The first game was a coinflip and Montoya cruised in game two before letting his concentration slip a bit in the breaker. Kane never lets his concentration slip, and still has the power and shot-making ability to counter even the athletic Montoya.

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Doubles:

There’s no pro doubles here, but there is an Open doubles that’s gotten some late prize money, so look for some of the traveling pros to pour into Open doubles to try to earn a bit more cash. Mar & Garcia as #1 seeds and I like them over #2 Sendrey/Gastelum in the final.

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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! Thanks to Favio for giving me an advance copy of the draw and for being a fan.

Thanks to the Tourney Director Rich Carver for putting this event on!

Thanks to our main sponsors @mche property Services and the @Spokane Athletic club; it goes without saying that without you and your support, we don’t have a sport.

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.

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13th Annual Costa Rica Open IRT Tier 2 Recap

Montoya wins the double in Costa Rica. Photo Kevin Savory 2022 Portland IRT event

Congrats to your Pro winners on the weekend:

– IRT Men’s Singles: Rodrigo Montoya

– Open Doubles: Montoya & Javier Mar

– Open Singles: Diego Garcia

IRT Satellite events have specific rules about entry (only half the top 8 players are allowed to enter), which is primarily why i do not enter them into the database. I don’t want to “give credit” for tournament wins where half the top 10 was banned from entering.

Satellites do play an important part in the IRT tour though. Depending on the number of tier one events in the current 365 day rolling calendar, points earned at satellite events may or may not “count” towards a player’s ranking. As I write this article, the IRT has only 8 Tier 1s in its current 365-day window, which means that the points calculation takes a player’s 8 best results (Tier1 or otherwise) to total up their current point total. If a player has played in all 8 tier1s plus some satellite events, then the running point total will have the lowest X number of events subtracted from their overall total until they get down to the top 8 scores.

For example: Andree Parrilla plays a lot of events; he has played in all four satellite events in the last 365 days before the Costa Rica Open, and as a result, his IRT points total is all his tier 1 points minus three lowest point totals (satellite or not). This is where satellite events come in handy; you can win a Tier 2 event (worth 120 points) and have it “replace” a poor showing in a tier1 Event (say, a round of 16 loss, which is only worth 90) and actually come out ahead. And of course whatever prize money you make is yours, irrespective of the points impact on your IRT ranking.

All that being said, a slew of IRT touring regulars were in San Jose competing for the Tier 2 points and prize money, and we also got a big draw of international players, so here’s a review of the draw.

R2 Sports App home page for event: https://www.r2sports.com/tourney/home.asp?TID=42435

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In the 32s: we got some fun match-ups.

– CRC #2 @Jaime Mansilla got a solid win over Ecuadorian vet @Jose Daniel Ugalde to open.

– Bolivian turned Argentine @Gerson Miranda , who won World Juniors 18U back in 2019 before switching countries, got a solid win over #9 Rafael Gatica .

– #5 Carter Thomas survived a serious challenge from up-and-coming Mexican Junior @Jorge Gutierrez to move on in a breaker, and a heck of a round of 32 match.

– #23 @Sebastian Hernandez , Mexican world u18 champ a couple years ago, cruised past Guatemala’s #1 Juan Salvatierra 12,4

– #26 @Rodrigo Salgado upset touring veteran #7 @Carlos Ramirz in the opener.

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In the 16s:

– #9 Diego Gastelum and Miranda had a barn-burner, with Gastelum coming out on top in an 11-8 breaker.

– Carter was pressed by international vet Guatemalan Edwin Galicia but moved on.

– #3 Erick Trujillo made a statement against fellow Mexican 20-something Elias Nieto , beating him 0,7

– #6 Eduardo Portillo dodged a bullet and advanced past the dangerous Bolivian turned Argentine @DDiego García 13,7. Thought this would be closer, given Lalo’s time away.

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In the Quarters

– #1 Rodrigo Montoya crushed his young Mexican rival Gastelum 2,4 to move on.

– #4 Alan Natera took out Carter by the heavy scoreline of 5,2

– #3 Trujillo got a solid career win over #6 Portillo to kind of re-settle where these two players rank right now in the world order of men’s pro racquetball.

– #2 and home town favorite Andres Acuna was stretched to a breaker by Sebastian Hernandez before advancing.

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In the Semis

– #1 Montoya cruised past Natera 7,6

– #2 Acuna had to dig deep, getting taken to a breaker by Trujillo before advancing.

In the Finals, Montoya went breaker but topped the home-town favorite Acuna to repeat as champion.

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Points Implications of results

Interestingly, this tournament actually will impact the top of the rankings, if I have my XLS synced up right. Parrilla played this event last year and came in 2nd (worth 90 points). He misses it this year, so those 90 points expire off, but they’re not replaced with anything, so he’ll slightly fall in the rankings, enough to allow Kane Waselenchuk to move above him to #3. I also believe Trujillo and Natera may switch spots in the rankings, though both of these guys play a slew of events so it’s a little tough to figure out which results drop.

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Other notable draws

– Open Doubles: They didn’t play “IRT Pro Doubles” but they did have an Open Doubles draw that featured all the pros. #1 seeds Montoya and his regular partner Javier Mar took the title, but played a knifes edge close game in the final over Carter & Natera to do so, winning 15-14, 15-14.

– Open Singles: Diego Garcia took the Open Singles draw, getting a walk-over against #1 seed Portillo when Lalo was injured.

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Next up?

Per our handy master racquetball calendar …

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1V6OTid6rZ356voXVkoV2sN7KMMbIP9SZd0MssH_nPGU/edit?usp=sharing

We have a week break, then its the 2024 USA Junior Nationals in Pleasanton. The LPRT season has completed so we’ll do a 2023-24 recap soon. Then, in July we have the 2nd leg of the Outdoor Major season in Outdoor Nationals.

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IRT SoCal Open 2024 Recap

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

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Next up?

Per our handy master racquetball calendar …

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1V6OTid6rZ356voXVkoV2sN7KMMbIP9SZd0MssH_nPGU/edit?usp=sharing

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.

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IRT 2024 JMB Produce SoCal Open Preview

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.

R2 Sports App link:https://www.r2sports.com/website/event-website.asp?TID=42331

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.

– #2 @Rodrigo Montoya gets a resurgent #15 @Sam Bredenbeck .

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Projected Qtrs:

– #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!

Associations

International Racquetball Tour

Posted on

2nd Annual Montana Winter Classic Recap

Kane wins in Montana Photo US Open 2019, Photographer Kevin Savory

There was an IRT Satellite event last week in Billings Montana, which did a great job putting pro racquetball in the state for the first time last year and was able to do it again this year.

r2sports site for brackets: https://www.r2sports.com/website/event-website.asp?TID=41762

Here’s a recap.

In Pro Singles, there were 8 regular touring players, including #2 @jaJake Bredenbeck , #4 Andree Parrilla , #6 @Kane Waselenchuk , and #7 @Adam Manilla playing in Montana. This is consistent with the long-standing tour rules that only four of the top 8 seeds can enter a non-tier1 at any time. In addition, top 20 players Alan Natera , Carter Thomas , @Sam Bredenbeck and @JJim Douglas were on hand to compete.

There were no unexpected upsets to the quarters (#8 Douglas was upset by top Canadian #9 @Lee Connell but otherwise seeds held). In the quarters, Natera got a solid win in the 4/5 seed match, topping lefty Manilla in a tie-breaker.

In the semis, #1 @Jake Bredenbeck topped Natera in two, while #3 Kane Waselenchuk “upset” #2 Parrilla in two to setup a hard-hitting final.

In the final Jake hung with Kane for stretches but the GOAT overcame, winning 8,10 to claim the title. Satellite events do give points to the players, but they only count if there’s enough tier 1s to even the playing field. Right now we’re short on IRT events, so it remains to be seen if this event eventually makes a difference in the standings.

Other draws in MT:

– in Open Doubles, @Sudsy Monchik and Mark frank took the title in a walkover.

– Mystery Mixed doubles was taken by jake and Kelly Grimley, with Jake topping his brother in the final.

– Canadian Tanner Prentice took the Pro drop/down consolation division

– last year’s LPRT pro champ @Montse Mejia took the LPRT exhibition event over Lexi York and .. a rare appearance from Rhonda Rajsich .

Thanks to Sudsy and Leo for broadcasting all weekend.

Next up in the world of Racquetball is the Boivarian Youth Games, with a rball component, and then at the end of the month we get an LPRT event in San Antonio.

Posted on

IRT 2024 Shamrock Shootout Wrap-Up

Kane takes the title and looks like he’s 100% “back.” Photo Md19 by Ken Fife

Congrats to your Pro winners on the weekend:

– Singles: Kane Waselenchuk

– Doubles: Andree Parrilla & Adam Manilla.

Kane wins his 126th tier1 event and looks like he’s 100% back. Adam and Andree win their 2nd doubles title of the new season together and solidify their spot as the #1 doubles team on tour.

R2 Sports App home page for event: https://www.r2sports.com/website/event-website.asp?TID=41791

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Let’s review the notable matches in the Singles draw.

Singles Match report in the PRS database: https://rball.pro/pyk

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In the 64, there weren’t any real upsets, but we did see a couple closer matches. Jaime Mansilla , the latest in the Chilean Mansilla playing family, took out Canadian @Christian Pocsai in a tie-breaker/tune up for PARC next week. Bolivian @luLuis Antonio Aguilar had a come-from-behind victory over Ohio-an Victor Migliore in a solid match. Most of the rest of the round was one-way traffic for the favorites.

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In the 32s: We got some surprise results.

– Alan Natera advanced in the expected dog-fight over veteran Mexican WRT champ Alejandro Cardona 13,8.

– John Goth upset a mid-teen touring pro for the second straight event, this time topping Bolivian @Kadim Carrasco in a breaker to get to the round of 16 for the second event running.

– Jordy Alonso became just the second man to even take a game off a top-8 seed in the round of 32, stretching #4 @Andree Parrilla to a breaker. Being honest, if Alonso toured regularly, he’d probably be ranked in the 10-12 range, so this wasn’t that surprising a result.

– @Robert Collins had to go 11-9 in the breaker to advance past young Mexican Neito Oscar .

– Jaime Martell put down his own young Mexican up-and-comer in @Diego Gastelum .

However, the result of the event, and of the last season and a half, was #30 @Jhonatan Flores upsetting #3 @jaJake Bredenbeck in two games, 15-5, 15-7. Flores is the reigning 18U world Junior champ from Bolivia, and there’s a pretty good history of World 18U champs going on to big and better things in the sport. Here’s a quick list of the last 10 junior world 18U champs: Flores, Sebastian Hernandez, Trujillo, Miranda, Portillo, Mauro Rojas, Christian Longoria, Montoya, Mercado, and Moscoso. That list includes your current #1, #2, #10, and #12 players, along with a guy in Mercado who was a mainstay in the top 10 before stepping back this year. These two played in Minnesota a couple weeks ago with Jake winning 5,10, so a reverse score-line of 5,7 is shocking. I didn’t see the match and can’t find a stream, so it’s hard to comment on the “why” of this loss for Jake (but I heard someone say he was injured). I thought in my preview this might be closer than the Minnesota result, but not a heavy loss. Flores as the #30 seed becomes the highest seed to get into the 16s since the World Singles& Doubles event, and frankly has a good shot of getting to the quarters.

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In the 16s, we got a couple of interesting results:

– The players expecting to see the back end of the draw cruised in two easy games, including Moscoso, Kane, Montoya.

– Natera got a great win, stopping the Trujillo train in its tracks 7,7. He earns his 3rd career QF.

– Flores, as expected advanced with relative ease over Collins 7,4 to secure a quarter final matchup with King Kane. If he could beat Jake 5,7 (even if Jake was hobbled), then he can beat a lot of the regulars on tour by similar score lines. He reaches the quarters as a #30 seed, and that’s the 6th highest seed on record to EVER reach a pro quarter (see https://rball.pro/swo for report).

– #10 @Thomas Carter really pushed #7 Andres Acuna for a couple of games, then the Costa Rican pulled away 11-2 in the breaker.

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In the Quarters

– #1 Conrrado Moscoso handled Natera 6,11 to move on. Being #1 on tour has its privileges; he has more or less cruised through the first three rounds.

– #4 Parrilla took out his doubles partner #5 Adam Manilla in a topsy turvy tiebreaker

– #6 Waselenchuk ended the Cinderella run of Flores, but not without him making it interesting. Final score: 3,(13),7. The first game seemed to be butterflies of an 18yr old kid playing the best player the sport has ever seen. Game 2 saw Flores calm down and really shock Kane to jump ahead 6-1, a score-line that included three straight aces that Kane barely moved for. Flores’ serving game was on, going to Kane’s forehand with success. I thought Kane was a little “off” this match, leaving balls up uncharacteristically, which contributed to the closeness of the match, but all credit due to Flores for his play. The tiebreaker was back and forth, and he got to about 7-8 when Kane blasted a backhand return of serve and ran the table to win 11-7. Great match, great showing from Flores for sure.

– #7 Andres Acuna shocked the #2 seed Rodrigo Montoya in a breaker to earn just his second ever career pro semi-final, 11-9 in the third.

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In the Semis, two anti climactic results as the two expected finalists each advanced without much fan fare. Moscoso over Parrilla 12,5, Kane over Acuna 4,11.

In the Finals, whatever rustiness that Kane showed earlier in the event seemed to have been fine-tuned out of existence on the hard courts of Lombard. Kane’s serve was crisp and his shot selection was spot on, and he dominated the final. Final scores, 9,6 though the actual match wasn’t nearly as close.

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Points Implications of results

(standard caveat: I don’t work for the IRT, so this is an educated guess. Sometimes they do weird things with the rankings, sometimes I’m not privy to the actual point values of events).

Assuming Lombard was a standard Tier 1 (which may not be right; they had $31k of prize money, so it could be a tier1 plus), we’re going to see some movement in the top 10 for sure. Nothing changes in the top5, but Kane should move to #6 in the rolling 365 rankings. With DLR’s likely absence in the next event, that means Kane could be in the top-half of the draw, pushing the inevitable Moscoso-Kane meeting earlier. Murray’s absence drops him to #9. This allows Acuna to move up to a career high #8 on tour. Portillo’s ranking continues to drop; he’ll fall to #13 as it seems he may be officially moving on from the tour unfortunately.

The “season to date” point race is much more interesting. Kane now has a 300 point lead on Conrrado in season to date (that’s the equivalent of a tier 1 final). Acuna is now #5 in the 2024 race and Trujillo #8. Meanwhile, Jake is #11, DLR is #23, and Lalo is #24 in the 2024 race, showing how much work there is for these guys to make up to stay relevant. With DLR and Lalo stepping back, Landa done, Beltran & Carson hanging it up last year, and Mercado seemingly done as well, that’s a huge chunk of your top 10 from just a few years ago now done. It’s definitely a generational year on tour.

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Doubles review

Match report in the PRS database: https://rball.pro/hud

The doubles draw came down to the two top seeds. Trujillo is serving as an able replacement for Javier Mar, but the #2 seeds Montoya/Trujillo fell to #1 Parrilla/Manilla. The lefty-righty pair wins its second title of the season, while Parrilla has now captured all three pro doubles titles this season.

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Open Singles, other notable draws

– A huge 30-man open draw was taken by Gastelum, who topped IRT darling Flores in the final. Flores got h2h wins over Ulliman, Alonso, and Ramirez in the open draw to cap his weekend.

– Team Ohio (Ulliman and Migliore) took the Men’s Open draw.

– @Victoria Rodriguez took the Women’s Open draw

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Thanks for all the streaming on the weekend, especially from broadcasters Favio Soto, Pablo Fajre and the IRTLive crew

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Next up?

Per our handy master racquetball calendar …

https://docs.google.com/…/1V6OTid6rZ356voXVkoV2sN7KMMb…/

We’ll recap Beach Bash and Intercollegiates later this week, then its IRF PARC time.

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tags

@International Racquetball Tour

Posted on

39th Annual Papa Nicholas39th Annual Papa Nicholas IRT Shamrock Shootout Preview

Can Parrilla make some noise on tour? Photo 2019 US Open via Kevin Savory

The IRT returns to Chicagoland for its annual visit to the Glass Court facility in Lombard. This is the 39th annual iteration of this event, for years hosted by the legendary Goeff Peters, now hosted by Dan Jaskier and the regular Chicago crew. This is the 9th year in a row that this event holds an IRT component, but the IRT’s history in Chicago is rather rich.

Chicago has held more than 40 top-level Men’s Pro events since the mid 1970s, including the 1978 DP/Leach Nationals, where @Marty Hogan won his first ever pro title. It also hosted the DP Nationals in 1982 and Catalina Nationals in 83 when “Nationals” meant massive prize money, huge crowds, and TV broadcasts. Former IRT commissioner David Negrete was (is) a Chicago native, and for years the famous Halloween Classic was a staple on the IRT tour. Then, from 2005-2009 it was the host of the Motorola Pro Nationals, a massive money tournament that took over the moniker “Pro Nationals” from Mike Coulter and Las Vegas when the host club closed.

Since 2015 though, its been Shamrock, and the event has seen some great results. It is the site of @Andree Parrilla ‘s first ever tour win in 2018, and Parrilla always seems to play well here. Lastly, this event was the last event of the covid-ended 2019-20 season, with the tour just barely squeaking out the tournament before the country shut down for the virus.

This event looked for a while like it would be really badly impacted by the fixture congestion of this month, but a slew of players entered at the last minute, so there’s more than 40 IRT pros in the draws competing for more than $31k of prizemoney.

R2 Sports App link: https://www.r2sports.com/website/event-website.asp?TID=41791

The draws are up at r2sports; go to the above link to see them and read along.

Top-20 players missing: 3-time defending pro champ Daniel De la Rosa is not here; he has a competing PPA tour event in Austin. Also missing are #7 Murray, #10 Portillo, #18 Landa (retired), and #20 Sam Bredenbeck. The loss of DLR and Murray has a huge impact on the draw, as it elevates #8 ranked Waselenchuk to the #6 seed, meaning he’s on the opposite side of the draw from #1 Moscoso.

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Let’s preview the draw. Here’s some notable qualifying matches that i’m looking forward to:

In the Qualifying, we get a ton of internationals who rarely play the tour, but who had the opportunity to fly to the US a week before PARC starts to get some top-level matches. Look for the likes of Bolivians Luis Aguilar, Jhonatan Flores, and Hector Barrios to make some noise this weekend. Each of them may not be household names, but they’re all accomplished Junior worlds players.

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Projecting the 32s, here’s some fun matches to watch:

– Alejandro Cardona versus Alan Natera . Two solid Mexican veterans face off; its Juarez vs Chihuahua.

– Erick Trujillo versus @Mauricio Zelada : MoMo usually hangs with top 10 talent for at least a game or two, but expect the young Mexican to advance.

– #5 @Adam Manilla faces off against U21 Bolivian @Luis Antonio Aguilar . He’s the losing finalist of 2023 U21 and 2022 U18 and has some wins internationally. Adam should move on, but this is a tough round of 32.

– @JJohn gotti versus @Kadim Carrasco . Barn burner; Goth still gets wins, as we saw in Sioux Falls. Upset watch here.

– #4 @Andree Parrilla versus @Jordy Alonso . Brutal draw for Parrilla, who gets the very under-rated Alonso. Jordy can get wins: he beat Jake in Chicago two years ago, and beat Andree the last time they played. But, that was in 2017, and Andree shouldn’t slip up here.

– #3 @Jake Bredenbeck takes on, for the 2nd straight event, reigning 18U world junior champ Jhonatan Flores . Jake advanced 5,10 in Minnesota, so should be able to repeat the feat here.

– #22 Diego Gastelum versus #11 Jaime Martell . Oof, tough opener for Martell, drawing the reigning U21 world junior champ, a guy who’s got h2h wins over Trujillo and the whole crew of up-and-coming young Mexicans. Upset watch here.

I also think there will be several upsets by seed that aren’t really upsets by talent; look for the likes of Nieto and Sendrey to move on as well.

Remember: a top 8 seed on the IRT has yet to lose in the round of 32 since the format change, and only one has even gone tie-breaker. Will that trend continue this week? I count at least three top 8 seeds who I wouldn’t be shocked if they lose. In any case, a ton of really compelling 32 matchups.

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round of 16:

– #9 Trujillo over the winner of Natera/Cardona: another all-Mexican battle, and a great way for Trujillo to test where he is. I think he’s improved leaps and bounds this season, and this will be another solid test.

– Parrilla vs #20 Cole Sendrey: Cole isn’t favored in his opener but is the better player by talent levels. Can he do much with Parrilla?

– The winner of the Martell/Gastelum match feeds into #6 @Kane Waselenchuk for what should be a spirited blow-out loss.

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Projected Qtrs:

– #1 @Conrrado Moscoso over Trujillo. This should be a shooter’s paradise to watch.

– #4 Parrilla over #5 Manilla. If this meeting comes to pass, it’ll be a rematch of two weeks ago at this same juncture, a three game win for Parrilla that was one-way traffic after game one.

– #3 @Jake Bredenbeck versus Kane: I predicted Jake would come out on top in Minnesota over Kane. That was before seeing the current state of Kane’s game, which looks fantastic. It was still a 13,8 loss, close, but not really that close. Can Jake rebound and make it closer? Maybe. Still a kane win.

– #2 Rodrigo Montoya versus #7 Andres Acuna . Montoya’s first two rounds won’t trouble him much, and I don’t think Acuna will either.

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I’m projecting the exact same semis we got in Minnesota, and (spoiler) the same eventual outcome.

Semis:

– Moscoso over Parrilla; this is a rematch of Minnesota’s semis. Parrilla has a couple of career wins over Conrrado, so it can be done. For me, I don’t think Moscoso loses this match unless Kane wins ahead of time and he looks past the scrappy Andree.

– Also a rematch of MN semis, Kane takes on Montoya. Montoya can take games off kane; he’s got the serving prowess and the ability to extend rallies like few others, forcing that one extra shot that often makes the difference. Montoya’s loss in Minnesota was heaily due to a loss of focus in the breaker; if he can stay focused and stay on his game, he has a chance to win. Kane will have to be a bit “off” to do so, which doesn’t happen often. Still thinking Kane advances.

Finals; Kane vs Moscoso. Which Conrrado shows up? The one who beat Kane in Pleasanton/pushed him to 15-13 in Minnesota? Or the one who capitulates to a 15-2 game two loss in the final two weeks ago? It’s anyone’s guess. Moscoso may be #1 on tour, but international titles are more important to him, so is he looking ahead to PARC? One add’l wrinkle: Moscoso won’t be jet lagged all to hell here, since he stayed in the US after the Hall of Fame event, so he’ll be fresher in Chicago.

All that said, it’s Kanes to lose right now. He looked too good two weeks ago.

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Doubles review

Defending pro doubles champs Manilla & Parrilla get the #1 seed, since tour doubles #1 Montoya is missing his regular partner. Instead, Montoya picks up Trujillo to form a very formidable #2 team. The rest of the draw is filled with internationals getting a tune-up ahead of PARC. The likely Bolivian PARC team of Moscoso & Carrasco is the #3 seed, but I still like Montoya/Trujillo in the final against Parrilla/Manilla. From there, hard to root against the lefty-righty pair.

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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, Pablo Fajre and the IRTLive crew all weekend on the mike, calling the shots!

Associations

International Racquetball Tour

Posted on

IRT Minnesota HoF Event Wrap-Up

Kane is back. Photo credit: unknown

Congrats to your Pro winners on the weekend:

– Singles: Kane Waselenchuk

– Doubles: Andree Parrilla and Adam Manilla

Kane returns to the winner’s circle, winning his 125th career title. It has been nearly two years since Kane stood in the winner’s circle of the IRT, as he’s gone through quite a journey of injury recovery. He also, at the age of 42 years and 114 days becomes the oldest player ever to win a tier 1, besting Ruben Gonzalez’ former record by a year and a half.

R2 Sports App home page for event: https://www.r2sports.com/website/event-website.asp?TID=41775

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Let’s review the notable matches in the Singles draw.

Singles Match report in the PRS database: https://rball.pro/8de

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In the 32s: we got a couple of compelling matches and one real upset.

– #21 John Goth got the biggest upset of the round, taking out #12 @Robert Collins in a breaker. I thought this result might be in play, but it’s been more than 10 years since Goth made his surprise run to the USA Nationals final. But clearly, he’s still got it. He makes the main draw of an event at age 42, not quite a record but still impressive (see here for list of “oldest players to…” do stuff, something that will come up again later in this event: https://rball.pro/cr4 )

– #13 Jaime Martell was taken to a breaker by veteran Guatemalan @Juan Salvatierra , though the scores seem to indicate that Martell “turned it up” after losing game one. Final score: (13),1,2.

– Reigning 18U world champ @jhonatan Flores held his own against #3 @Jake Bredenbeck , losing by the relatively respectable score-line of 5,10.

– #26 @Mauricio Zelada pressed #7 @Alan Natera in game one but then the Mexican cruised. Final score 11,3

– #10 @Erick Trujillo perhaps was looking past his first round opponent and was shocked in game one against Guatemalan Edwin Galicia 15-4. He rebounded to take the next two 13 and 2 to move on and avoid the upset.

In a recurring theme, the top 8 players all won in two straight games, and as a reminder there has been just one tiebreaker and zero upsets of a top 8 player since the tour went back to a full 32 draw. Scores of your top 8 seeds in order: 3&4, 6&5, 5&10, 10&3, 8&4, 7&4, 11&3, and wbf-ns. A little better than the last event for the lowest ranked players, but I attribute that to the unusually large presence of internationals in this draw who are a bit better than their seeds.

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In the 16s, two upsets by seed, though neither was surprising:

– #11 @Kane Waselenchuk topped #6 @Andres Acuna with ease 2,6. Kane enters this event looking like he’s lost a little weight and is moving around pretty darn well, especially for someone north of 42.

– #10 @Erick Trujillo beat #7 @Alan Natera 7,9 and makes a statement about the current pecking order of Mexican racquetball. Trujillo, who burst onto the scene a couple years ago and then kind of scuffled against his like-aged competitors, has really stepped it up this year on tour.

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In the Quarters

– #1 Conrrado Moscoso made fast work of #8 Thomas Carter.

– #4 @Andree Parrilla held on to east past his doubles partner this weekend #5 @Adam Manilla in a breaker. After losing the first game 13, Parrilla found another gear and won going away 3,2.

– #3 @Jake Bredenbeck was not able to find his mojo against Kane, and lost 13,8. The match was close at times, but there was no letup from the King this time around. I predicted that Jake would have a good shot to win here, based on his results against Kane earlier this season, but it wasn’t to be. After a great run all last season of making the back end of events, Jake’s 2024 so far is a Loss in the qtrs, a Loss in the 16s, and now another loss in the quarters. After being in the mix for the title all the way till the death last season, Jake’s chances are now mostly kaput of winning #1.

– #2 @Rodrigo Montoya was pressed by the young Trujillo but held on 4,14.

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In the Semis

– #1 Moscoso returned to the final and guaranteed that he’ll greatly extend his lead at the top of the tour by topping #4 Parrilla 10,11.

– #11 Waselenchuk played a fascinating match against #2 Montoya. The first game was back and forth, a great contest between two of the better power servers the game has seen. Kane’s method of operations is to use his pinpoint accuracy to end rallies on balls where he can set his feet, but Montoya time and again made fantastic anticipating or diving gets to extend rallies. Kane held on to win game one 15-14 but Montoya countered with a relatively dominant game two win 15-7 to push it to the breaker. Early in game 3, a call went against Montoya that he didn’t like and he seemed to drift focus-wise for a few points. Suddenly it was 7-2 down before he called time out and the damage was done. Kane put his foot on Rodrigo’s throat and closed it out 11-2. You can’t lose focus for one second against Waselenchuk and you have to play perfect ball to beat him. To this observer, Kane looks as good as he has in several years.

In the Finals, we got another fantastic matchup against the former King and the likely future King of the sport. Moscoso, who has returned to his foot-faulting ways, was forced to deal with a line judge in the final (at Kane’s request) and had multiple calls go against him. Kane went up huge early, but Moscoso fought back. A very entertaining and competitive game came down to just a few moments; I noted in the comments of the video during game one how similar the two players really were: both have huge serves and drive a ton of pressure from them, and both really penalize weak service returns to do 3-shot rallies. The real difference between them right now to me is this: Kane plays smart, while Moscoso plays risky. When Moscoso makes his low-percentage shots (on top of everything else in his game) you see him run to 15-4 game wins. But when he misses … it’s just enough to give the game to the steady Kane 15-13. Also as noted … Moscoso is a notorious front runner, and often capitulates in heavy game two losses after close game one wins … and that’s exactly what happened here. Game 2 was a waste, one way traffic that was just the two players playing out the string at the end. Kane wins 13,2

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Points Implications of results

I’ll caveat this points analysis as I probably always should: sometimes I’m not privy to oddities that go on in the IRT rankings system, since it runs through R2 and includes little offities that even the tour owners aren’t always aware of. What I believe will happen, if I have my xls right, is this: because there’s fewer than ten tier1s in the last 365 days, all satellite points are dropped and the tour is just adding together the results from the tier1s.

Moscoso has opened up a sizeable lead at the top of the tour; he now leads #2 Montoya by nearly 500 points. Meanwhile, Daniel remains in 4th but now trails the top by nearly 900 points … it happened just that fast. DLR missed Chicago last year so he won’t drop too much further for a while, but the writing is on the wall. By mid-summer he may be entirely out of the top 10. He won’t be in Chicago either.

Kane should move up to #8, a spot he secured once he made the final. Portillo is just barely hanging onto the top 10, Natera gets dumped down to #12, and Trujillo now pushes for the top 10. Landa loses a ton of points from this event last year and now is barely clinging to a top 20 spot. With the win, Kane is in the lead for “season to date” points, which by the end of the year will be the only thing that matters.

However curiously, as of this writing Kane is not entered into the next IRT event (Shamrock Shootout in Chicago in two week’s time). He’s also not entered into the competing Beach Bash, which he likely would have played if it wasn’t a competing event. My guess is that he’ll go to chicago and we may get another couple of showdowns like we saw this weekend. (update: he entered Chicago earlier today). Thanks to DLR’s absense, we won’t be forced with Moscoso-Kane in the quarters … so we have a good shot of getting another Kane-Moscoso final in two weeks.

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Doubles review

Match report in the PRS database: https://rball.pro/vti

The doubles draw saw top ranked Montoya carry Cullen into the final by beating #2 Moscoso/Carrasco, but they played just a handful of points before the final was called off due to injury. #1 Manilla & Parrilla cruise to the title.

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Open Singles, other notable draws

– Alan Natera, seeded 7th but ranked just outside the top 8 so by contract he can play Open, took the Open draw, topping Bolivian junior Flores in the final. Barth and Galicia semi finalists.

– Home town team of Jordan Barth / Mike Klocker took Open doubles, taking out Pando & Meinerz in the final.

– Ava_Kaiser & Barb Hoffner took women’s doubles.

– Sponsor extraordinaire Keith Minor and Rebecca Bowman took Mixed Open.

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Thanks for all the streaming on the weekend, especially from broadcasters Favio Soto, Pablo Fajre, guest commentators and the IRTLive crew.

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Next up?

Per our handy master racquetball calendar …

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1V6OTid6rZ356voXVkoV2sN7KMMbIP9SZd0MssH_nPGU/

We’ll recap the LPRT and USAR HS Nationals in the next couple of days. After that, we get a break until the next uber-busy 3/17 weekend.

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tags

International Racquetball Tour

Posted on

IRT McNamara Minnesota Racquetball Hall of Fame Tournament Preview

Montoya is the defending champion Chicago: can he repeat? Photo Kevin Savory 2022 Portland IRT event

Welcome to the 35th annual (and 2nd time in a row that it’s had an IRT component) Minnesota Hall of Fame event. If you want to read why its called “McNamara,” go to the r2sports home page where the tourney organizers have a little history lesson that goes a long way to showing why Minnesota is one of the best supporting states for racquetball out there.

R2 Sports App link: https://www.r2sports.com/website/event-website.asp?TID=41775

There’s 32 men in this draw, including a slew of internationals that we don’t normally see in IRT draws. This generally happens just ahead of international competitions, and with PARC in a few weeks we see confederations like Canada, Chile, Bolivia, and Guatemala (still listed as “Zambia” in r2sports thanks to Guatemala’s non-recognition right now by IOC) sending their players here to get a tune-up.

There’s been a huge shake-up in the rankings since the end of the last event. The Feb2023 Atlanta grand slam expired off the books, and the results of the top four players from that event dropped off with major implications. When we last left off, the top 4 (and their points from Atlanta) were:

1. De la Rosa (600; won Atlanta)

2. Jake (450: finalist in Atlanta)

3. Moscoso: 0: missed Atlanta)

4. Montoya (135 – quarter final loss in Atlanta)

After Atlanta expired, your new top 4 (and the top 4 driving the seeding here) became:

1. Moscoso: rose up quickly w/o any points to defend.

2. Montoya: had relatively few points to lose

3. Jake

4. DLR

So Daniel sees his ranking plummet … and he’s missing from this event. It’s not due to a PPA conflict, so he must have another event or is making a conscious choice to not be here. After his 16s loss in the last event and missing this event, along with the distinct lack of IRT events on the books, his chances of repeating as #1 are basically over.

Also noteworthy: Kane has jumped up from 17 to 14, again having zero points expiring from Atlanta. And, thanks to three players in the top 13 missing (DLR, #6 Murray, and #8 Portillo), Kane gets an #11 seed here. #11 is a great seed to have if you’re in the mood for upsets (just ask George Mason, who raced to the final four as the #11 seed).

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Let’s preview the draw. Here’s some notable qualifying matches that i’m looking forward to:

In the 32s:

– #5 Adam Manilla gets up and coming Bolivian former junior world champ #28 Hector Barrios in what looks like the most competitive possible top 8 match in the 32s. The last time Barrios played an IRT event, he beat Sebastian Franco along with Wer and Cuevas, so he can get wins.

– #12 @Robert Collins gets the always-tough Minnesotan John Goth , who has more than a few tour scalps on his belt. Goth regularly plays with the Bredenbecks and stays sharp despite not touring regularly, but beating a tour vet is a little different than training with one.

– #3 Jake Bredenbeck faces off against Bolivian junior @Jhonatan Flores , who just won the world 18U junior title last November without dropping a single game. It’ll be interesting to see what Flores can do against a top pro like Jake.

– #15 Sam Bredenbeck gets a fun one against #18 Chilean national team member Rafael Gatica

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round of 16:

– The 8/9 match, which has seen Acuna vs Natera a bunch of times lately, gets us @TCarter Thomas and Kadim Carrasco . At #8 this is Carter’s highest ever pro seeding (he was #9 a few times in the past), and at #9 this is by far Carrasco’s highest ever seeding (previously best was #14). so we’re definitely seeing some impact to the departure of a slew of long-time players in the seeds. I like Carter here.

– 5-12 gives us a rare lefty-lefty between Manilla and Collins.

– #11 Waselenchuk gets #6 Andres Acuna in the 16s. These two played recently and Acuna got the first game before falling; can he repeat the task and set down Kane early? Not likely, but Acuna will have gained confidence from his game-plan success the last time they played.

– #10 Erick Trujillo will fancy his chances to upset #7 Alan Natera , who like many here this weekend has his highest ever IRT seed. Trujillo has the hot hand though and I like him to get to the quarters.

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Projected Qtrs:

– #1 Conrrado Moscoso , who has a very easy first two rounds, should cruise past #8 Carter to move to the semis.

– #4 @Andree Parrilla should advance past Adam Manilla . They’ve only played 3 times, Andree is 2-1, but is coming off a big-time win at Mexican Nationals.

– #3 Bredenbeck vs #11 Kane. Tough one to predict. They played in Boston last November and Jake beat a tiring Kane in the breaker, but had to save a match point against to even get past game 2. Since then, he’s taken a couple of uncharacteristic losses on tour (losing to Andree, Lalo, and Trujillo). Meanwhile, Kane has struggled since his return to make it through events: In Boston last Nov he tired in the semis losing to jake, then in Pleasanton after beating Conrrado game one he got blasted 4,4, then he retired in South Dakoda due to a leg issue. I think Jake can win here.

– #2 @Rodrigo Montoya over Trujillo: these two just played in the semis of Mexican Nats, a 6,6,9 relatively straight forward win for Montoya. Rodrigo will be looking to bounce back from his missing out on the Mexican team for this cycle. Montoya was the winner her last year (his first ever win), and has the most points to defend, but seems well positioned to at least get to the semis.

Semis:

– Conrrado over Parrilla: there’s a gulf between these two right now.

– Montoya over Jake: Amazingly, they havn’t played since Oct 2022 despite being seeded right next to each other for a while. Montoya leads 5-4 career and has won their last 2 meetings. Montoya likes these courts and is the defending champ. Last time they played it was 13,14 … so not much between them. Flip a coin and I’ll go Rodrigo.

Finals;

– I think 2024 is Moscoso’s year, and without having to face Kane until a possible final at the end of a long weekend (even if it was Kane in the final) is advantage Conrrado. He wins again and stretches his lead at the top.

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Doubles review

No Javier Mar, so no #1 Montoya/Mar pairing at the top. Montoya picks up Canadian Cullen and probably loses early, clearing the way for newly crowned Mexican champ (paired with Adam Manilla here) to cruise into the final. They’ll have to contend with likely the Bredenbeck brothers to get there. From the bottom, nothing should stop Bolivian national team Moscoso/Carrasco. The final will see Carrasco get isolated and Parrilla/Manilla taking the title.

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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 and Pablo Fajre and the IRTLive crew all weekend on the mike, calling the shots!

Associations

International Racquetball Tou r