Category: Singles

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.

The matches come fast and furious at the 22nd annual International Racquetball Federation – IRF World Championships. The Round Robins finished late on 8/26/24 and the knockouts start first thing 8/27/24 morning.

The round robins “eliminated” the lowest finishers in each RR group, who drop to a consolation bracket of sorts while the top 2 from each group comprise the winner’s bracket/single elimination knockouts going forward. This ended up eliminating a few surprise players/teams, but for the most part the RRs went according to seeds across the board.

Quick observations from the group stage:

– In Men’s singles, just one upset of a top seed when Diego Garcia upset Costa Rica’s @Andres Acuna . Garcia grabs the #5 seed while Acuna drops to #14 seed and a very tough hill to climb to get back to the semis or finals. Probably the other biggest shock was India’s Vineet Singh grabbing the 2nd seed out of group 8 to claim a knockout spot in the top group. The biggest names to fall into the consolation bracket probably were Chile’s Johan Igor or perhaps South Korea’s Namwoo Lee, but otherwise the Men’s singles was pretty chalky.

– In Women’s Singles: @Carla Munoz upset USA’s @Kelani Lawrence , the #2 overall seed, in a solid international upset. @Angelica Barrios – Raquetbolista took out USA’s @Michelle Key in another upset by seed, but clearly not by world ranking, to knock both of USA’s top players out of a top 8 seed in the knockouts. The biggest upsets in the group stage were Guatemala’s @MaMaria Renee Rodríguez getting knocked into the consolation bracket, as well as Canada’s @Danielle Ramsay and Ecuador’s @Maria Jose Munoz.

– In Men’s Doubles: no real surprises. There were a couple of team upsets by seed but not by talent. Chile’s Natera/Igor was in a group of death, and Guatemala’s Galicia/Salvatierra faced an uphill battle to qualify. Perhaps the biggest story line of the group stage here was several 5-game battles that the top seeds had to undertake to maintain their perfect record on Monday.

– In Women’s Doubles, the big shock was Guatemala’s former gold medal winning team of Martinez/Rodriguez getting taken out by Canada’s Lambert & Parent. Lambert plays only sparingly and Parent is still pretty new on the world stage, so to take out a top 4 touring pro in Gaby is huge. The DR’s up and coming team of Delgado & Cespedes falls to the consolation bracket out of the same group.

– In Mixed: Guatemala shocked Canada’s Murray/Lambert team to claim the #2 knockout seed. #1 overall seed mar/Mejia had to go 5 games to top Chile’s Munoz/Natera, and USA needed to come from 2 games down to “upset” Argentina’s Miranda/Centellas to claim the #4 seed in knockouts.

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Knockout Previews:

– Men’s Singles: Acuna/Keller is a tough opener for both and an upset watch. #10 Salvatierra can take out #7 Garcia in the only real upsets I see in the 32s or 16s. In the quarters, I can see Argentina’s Garcia taking out USA’s Bredenbeck (he rarely tours but when he does he gets results), while the bottom half’s seeds should move on easily. I see Moscoso topping Garcia in one semi, DLR taking out Parrilla in the other, and Moscoso beating a somewhat rusty DLR for the title.

– Women’s Singles: The quarters will be epic: Longoria-Rivero, Vargas-Barrios, Mejia-Gaby, and Munoz-Mendez, with a couple of LPRT-semis quality matchups. I’m thinking that it turns out to be Longoria-Vargas in the top semi, the one player Longoria really didn’t want to see until the final. Vargas looked a bit off at the LPRT season opener, nursing an injury according to my sources, so It wouldn’t surprise me if she falls to the grinder Barrios or Longoria. Paola to the final from the top. From the bottom, whoever wins between Mejia-Gaby should advance to the final. Either way, its advantage Paola, who I think wins yet another world title.

– Men’s Doubles: Mexico’s Parrilla/Portillo probably isn’t even Mexico’s best doubles team, but they should get to the final over USA’s Manilla/Sebastian (who haven’t quite gelled as a team so far). From the bottom, I like Canada’s veteran team of Murray & Iwaasa to pick on Carrasco endlessly and move past Bolivia. In the final, Mexico wins.

– Women’s Doubles: Mejia and Herrera won 7 of the 8 LPRT doubles titles last year, and there’s no reason to think they won’t cruise to the title here.

– Mixed Doubles: the most unpredictable draw. I could see Mar/Mejia getting beat first round by Natera/Munoz, or I could see them winning it. Moscoso/Barrios versus Miranda/Centellas is an awesome opener. The top half is stacked, while the bottom half opens up really well for USA’s DLR/Scott, who should easily get to the final. But i think they’ll fall to whichever team advances from the top; i’ll guess Moscoso/Barrios.

Keep on watching on the IRF streams. Lots of fun action to come.

Ill be curious to see how they do the Team competition, which right now is stubbed out on r2 as just the top four. I’ve got the spreadsheet of typical IRF points calculations updated for the group stage for now; the expected teams are in the lead so far (Mexico, Bolivia, then USA though Argentina is right there).

R2 site: https://www.r2sports.com/website/event-website.asp?TID=42436

This weekend kicks off the 22nd ever World Championships, the pinnacle of international competition in our sport. The event is being held in San Antonio, at the Thousand Oaks Family YMCA, the same site that holds the LPRT’s Battle at the Alamo every year. By the time you read this, pool play will have kicked off.

This is the first time that the IRF has held its World Championships, or any major international competition, on USA soil since 1996, when the tournament was in Phoenix. It’s been nearly 30 years since either Worlds or the Pan American Racquetball Championships was held in the country of the sport’s origin, but we’re back now. USA Racquetball made the commitment earlier this year to host the tournament based partly on this argument; it has been way too long.

The competitors, who are coming from at least 16 different countries, will compete in singles, doubles, and mixed doubles for the next week. All the players will compete in round robin competitions for the first few days, which are seeded per the IRF’s seeding policy (country-based, not individual based, and driven by the results in IRF competitions over the last couple of major tournament cycles). Once RRs are done, the draws will be seeded fully and then we’ll do a single elimination knockout phase all next week, culminating with Saturday finals in all divisions.

We’ll post a knockout preview once those draws are set, with predictions.

For now, we see that there’s several top IRT and LPRT players here who are early favorites. In Men’s singles, Moscoso & DLR likely feed into the two top seeds on the men’s side. Current #2 Montoya didn’t qualify, leaving Parrilla and Portillo as the Mexican representatives and semis favorites. In Ladies singles, four of the top five ranked pros are here (Longoria, Mejia, Vargas, and Gaby), which means the eventual semis and some of the quarters even will be pro-final quality matches.

One thing fans will notice; unlike any pro event and unlike most other international events, this event will play some Olympic style draws (where the knockouts have sub draws) and there will be some sort of team competition (either as a team or based on the individual performances of country teammates). That’s because this tournament also will serve as the qualifier to the 2025 World Games, held in China.

We weren’t sure there would be racquetball at the Chengdu, China based World Games, but word came out recently that the country had committed to the event. Furthermore, they’ll be playing mixed doubles (not just singles as were played in Birmingham back in 2022). So, that means each country will qualify exactly one man and one woman (a change from 2022). Furthermore, instead of individuals qualifying based on their singles performances, a team competition to be held this week will determine the 16 countries who qualify in.

Then, the seeding at the 2025 WGs will go by individual performances here in San Antonio, but that’s a conversation for another day.

Lastly, the WG 2025 will be limited to 16 countries, with 4 saved for Asian countries (host China plus 3 others, likely to be South Korea, Japan and maybe India). There will also be 4 saved for European countries (the likely participants seem to be Ireland and Germany for sure, but two other European countries might be hard to come by. We’ve had reps from Spain, England, Ukraine, Catalonia in the past few cycles, but we’ll have to see who is here in SA.

The remaining 8 countries are for North and South Americans, but if Asia/Europe can’t field 4 teams there will be additional spots opened up. The favorite 8 American countries to qualify seem to be USA, Canada, Mexico, Bolivia, Argentina, Guatemala, Ecuador, and Chile. That would leave aspiring and frequent international teams like Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Honduras, and the Dominican Republic on the outside looking in unless a spot is freed up.

Qualification details are here: hopefully i’m interpreting this document correctly: https://www.internationalracquetball.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/IRF-Qualification-TWG2025s.pdf

First things first though; round robins kick off on today 8/24/24 with streaming on IRF’s facebook channel.

@International Racquetball Federation – IRF

International Racquetball Tour

LPRT

@USA Racquetball