Tag: charlie brumfield

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WOR Historical Singles Data updated

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Enjoy!USA Racquetball

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1973 USA National Singles and Doubles tourney data loaded!

Thanks to Shari Coplen, who sent along some old magazine scans she got from one of the early pro champions Steve Serot, we now have the full Men’s singles and doubles draws from the 1973 IRA (now known as USA Racquetball) national championships.

Serot featured prominently in both events and kept copies of the material throughout the years. He also provided full bracket scans (!!) for both draws. Read on for a fun trip down memory lane.

The Singles draw from 1973 nationals is amazing: 102 players. I have never entered a bigger draw.

Match report: http://rball.pro/2EBB7D

Top 10 seeds:
1 Charlie Brumfield
2 Rubenstein, Ron
3 Schmidtke, Bill
4 Lawrence, Paul
5 Serot, Steve
6 Michael Zeitman
7 Bo Keeley (Steve Keeley)
8 Porco, Ken
9 Charles H. Garfinkel
10 Jerry Hilecher

Other notables in the draw:
– #15 Charlie Drake, who eventually became the commissioner of the pro tour in the early 80s and the CEO of Leach industries (one of the major sponsors of the sport).
– #17 Steve Strandemo, who was a regular touring pro for a decade and one of the sport’s first big-time teaching pros, running clinics for years after retiring.
– #24 Davey Bledsoe, who would go on to win the 1977 nationals and who passed away in Dec 2019
– #26 Randy Stafford, who now curates the Racquetball Museum (and who just got it back online: http://racquetballmuseum.com/ )
– #72 Chuck Leve, who wrote several books on racquetball and was inducted into the USAR Hall of Fame in 1997.
– #91 Marty Hogan … which has the be the lowest he was ever seeded in a tournament in his life.

The draw went nearly chalk in its later rounds, with 15 of the top 16 seeds advancing out of the 32s (only the #8 seed was upset early), then 7 of the top 8 seeds making the quarters. From there, #1 and defending champ Brumfield took over, advancing past #5 Serot in the semis, while #7 Keeley beat the #2 and #3 seeds to advance to the final. Brumfield took the title in a breaker over Bo in the end.

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1973 Doubles review

See http://rball.pro/CACB31 for the doubles bracket in the database.

The tournament is a throwback to the very early days of the sport, and the players involved in this event show as much.

Top Seeds:
1 Luciw, Mike & Rudusz, George; the 1972 champs.
2 Porco, Ken & Evans, Bill: Porco was part of the 1971 winning team.
3 Brumfield, Charlie & Serot, Steve; two of the best of the early touring racquetball pros during the sport’s infancy.
4 Souders, Roger & Charleson, Dave; Charleson would win the title in 1974.
5 Hilecher, Jerry & Wong, Kenny; Both St. Louis based and part of the core group of St. Louis natives that dominated early.
6 Keeley, Steve & Drake, Charlie; Keeley is the legendary character of the sport.
7 Dunn, Bill & Thurman, Bill were both early touring players and both played a number of NRC and IRA pro events from 73 to 77.
8 Johnson, Galen & Wirkus, Joe
9 Stafford, Randy & Davey Bledsoe
10 Strandemo, Steve & Strom, Ron

Also playing was a young Craig McCoy (the 15th seed as a 16yr old), and under-seeded Bill Schmidtke (the 1971 and 1974 Singles national champion), and seeded 44th a very precocious Marty Hogan, playing in his home-town at the age of 15.

The 5-time pro tour champ Brumfield, teamed with the lefty Serot, blew through the draw and were never really challenged in the event. They topped the #5 seeded Hilecher/Wong team in the final 1,15

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thanks to Shari and to Serot himself for retaining this information. As always, if you can find the draw sheets for an old event, i’ll put it in.

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2019 WOR Outdoor Championships Preview

This coming weekend is the biggest event on the annual Outdoor Racquetball calendar; its the 2019 Huntington Beach WOR 3-wall championships, presented by ProKennex Racquetball

r2sports home page: https://www.r2sports.com/portfolio/r2-event.asp?TID=30444

This year is the 46th annual version of this event, which crowns the “Outdoor Champion” for the year. For nearly all of those 46 years, it has been held at Marina Park in Huntington Beach, CA.

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Men’s Singles overview:

It is on these courts that Brian Hawkes became a legend, winning the first of his unbelievable 20 Outdoor titles in 1981. Towards the end of his career, he passed the mantle to Rocky Carson , who won the first of his 12 outdoor titles in 2002. This event has also seen other racquetball legends win titles, including the first pro champion Charlie Brumfield winning the first two iterations, Davey Bledsoe in 1978 and Marty Hogan in 1979. Californian Luis R Avila is the defending Men’s Singles champ.

click here for a history of the Men’s Singles titlists of this event: http://rball.pro/FBDCFB

Previewing this year’s event: there’s 9 men entered into the draw. I like #1 seed Avila from the top half, outdoor legend #7 seed Greg Solis to advance from the bottom, and for Avila to defend his title.

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On the Women’s Singles side, this event has been dominated by two players over the last decade; Rhonda Rajsich and Janel Tisinger-Ledkins. These two players have won 9 of the last 12 outdoor titles, and more often than not meet in the finals. But, don’t count out the dominant indoor players; #1 Paola Longoria won this event in 2009, and Jacqueline Paraiso-Larsson won it in 2010. Neither Longoria or Rajsich is playing this weekend … surprising that Rhonda (a frequent outdoor competitor) didn’t make the event. She was nursing an injury towards the end of the pro season, so perhaps she’s saving up energy for Pan Ams later this summer.

There wasn’t a Women’s singles event in 2018, and there won’t be a Women’s Pro Singles division this year either, so the defending 2017 champ (Tisinger) still holds the title.

click here for a list of Women’s singles titlists since 2006: http://rball.pro/8EC038

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However, lets talk about Doubles. Outdoor racquetball is about doubles. Here’s links to past 3-wall WOR Doubles champs (history in DB only goes to 2006): 
– Men’s Pro Doubles: http://rball.pro/F47B68
– Women’s Pro doubles: http://rball.pro/6DD510
– Mixed Pro Doubles: http://rball.pro/E1A355

We head into this event with these teams as your defending champs:
– Men’s Doubles: Brandon Davis and Josh Tucker
– Women’s Doubles: Michelle De La Rosa and Carla Muñoz Montesinos
– Mixed Doubles: Greg Solis and Janel Tisinger-Ledkins

That’s a great collection of some of the legends of the outdoor game. Davis & Tucker won last year as the #6 seed, beating the #3, #2 and #1 seeded teams along the way, including Rocky Carson and Jesus Ustarroz in the final. Michelle De la Rosa & Munoz came out of a stacked round robin group last year as the #4 seed, topping the top two seeded teams along the way. In the 2018 Mixed event, Solis and Janel held serve as the #1 seed, holding off Emmett Coe and Jackie Paraiso-Larsson in the final.

This year, who is back to defend their title? Here’s some previews of the Doubles events:

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Men’s Pro Doubles Preview:

10 teams entered this year, led by defending champs Davis/Tucker as the #1 seed. They’re going to have their hands full, as the world’s top indoor doubles team of Alvaro Beltran and Daniel De La Rosa are seeded 8th, making for one heck of a potential quarter final. If they can advance, they possibly face a doubles team in the semis that includes the #1 seed here Avila teamed with perhaps the finest outdoor singles player in the land, Robert Sostre.

On the bottom half, #2 seed Carson is teamed with Ustarroz, but will have to fight through teams that include Solis, Coe, Rick Koll and other top players teamed up in the bottom half.

I’m going to go with Beltran/DLR facing off against Coe/Koll in the final, with the indoor champs prevailing in outdoor as well.

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Women’s Pro Doubles Preview:

There’s just two pro Women’s doubles teams entered; your defending champs mDLR/Munoz and the younger team of Jazmín Treviño and Heather Mahoney (you current 14U junior national champ). These two teams are the top seeds in separate round robin groups containing a slew of Elite, A and B/C teams. I’d expect the two pro teams to come out of each RR bracket and meet in the final, where i’d expect the defending champions to repeat.

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Mixed Doubles Preview:

There’s 6 teams entered this year; last year’s defending champion team is ineligible due to Tisinger’s suspension. But the draw features last year’s losing finalists (Coe and Paraiso-Larsson as the #1 seed and the two-time champ before that in 2016-2017 husband-wife team of DLR/mDLR as the #2 seed. It should be a solid event.

I like the two top seeds to advance to the final, and I like the husband/wife De la Rosa pairing (who also took the Beach Bash one-wall mixed title earlier this year) to come out on top.

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BTW, In case you’re wondering why most of the historical links only show champs to 2006-2008 range (for all categories besides Men’s singles). that was the beginning of the use of r2sports.com for tourney tracking. If anyone has a source for 2005 and earlier results i’m all ears; DM me or email me.

And lastly, in a new wrinkle, both the Men’s and Mixed doubles entry are double elimination. This is a new one for Pro Racquetball Stats: I do not have a double elimination event in the database right now and frankly have no idea how i’m going to do the data entry. I very well may just put in the winner’s bracket matches and hope for a clean winners’ bracket-loser’s bracket final at the end so as not to complicate our logic. We’ll see how it goes; the only DE tourney I can think of was the Mexican Women’s nationals event in 2018 … which they basically abandoned once they realized that the loser’s bracket winner (Alexandra Herrera) would have had to play like 4 straight matches potentially on the final day of the event. I’ll capture the results, but may only show winner’s bracket data. We’ll see.

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WOR – World Outdoor Racquetball 
USA Racquetball
International Racquetball Tour
LPRT
International Racquetball Federation – IRF