Thanks to Steve Belmonte for digging up the full draw sheets from the 1980 Outdoor Nationals event in Costa Mesa, California. I’ve loaded the full men’s singles and doubles draws into the database, including seeding and scores.
Here’s the doubles Match Report: http://rball.pro/1B3596
Here’s some fun facts on the 1980 Doubles event:
There were 43 teams entered into 1980’s event.
top 8 seeds:
1 Trenton, Dave/Fey, Steve; the 1979 champions and runner’s up a couple other times.
2 Wallace, Barry/Wetzel, Bob; the founders of the Outdoor Nationals tournament and the champs in 75 and 77.
3 Southern, Dan/Alcala, Juan; Southern = outdoor HoFamer
4 Carson, Jim / Chadwick, Bill: Carson was the tournament director in the 80s
5 Morrow, Morrow/ Radford, ?
6 McDonald, Greg/McDonald, Martha; the husband and wife pair who competed in Men’s doubles events both here and at USRA nationals.
7 Stocker, Bobby/ Meyers, Larry
8 Hogan, Marty/Mondry, Steve; Marty Hogan competed in outdoor nationals a number of times in the 1970s, including playing in the first one in 1974 at the age of 16.
The winners, Mark Harding and Paul Olson, were the #42 seeds. I dare say this is the lowest seed i think i’ve ever see win a tournament that I’ve entered into the database. They also won in 1985 as a team.
Here’s the Singles draw in the database: http://rball.pro/5B4519
52 players in this draw. top 8 seeds:
1 Marty Hogan, the 79 champ and in the midst of his total domination of the sport.
2 Wagner, Rich; the 79 runner up and one of the more underrated pros ever. He’s up for the HoFame this year.
3 Morrow, Mark
4 Southern, Dan
5 Myers, Lindsay; the early canadian #1 pro who toured until the Catalina tour shut him out.
6 Dave Peck; who would go on to win the 1982 pro indoor championship.
7 Stocker, Bobby
8 Bush, Dave
Notables in the draw:
9 Hawkes, Brian; he was the 9th seed here, but would win in 1981 and start his 25-year run dominating the tournament.
21 Mike Genevay, brother of Dave Genevay, the 3x doubles champion
34 Mark Harding, who won the doubles title.
42 Jerry Hilecher, one of the top indoor pros of the day.
52 Gregg Peck, who was just 16 and was traveling and competing with his older brother Dave. Gregg was a 2020 Hall of Fame inductee who tragically passed away earlier this year.
In the singles draw, Hogan got beat early, Wagner as the #2 seed forfeited his opener, and #56 Steve Mitchell made a huge run to the semis. In the final, #4 Dan Southern fell behind 3-10 in the tiebreaker to #7 Bobby Stocker, called two successive time outs to cool him off, then came back to take the title 11-10.
(This story is also courtesy of Belmonte, a great historian for outdoor racquetball)
As always; if you have old draw sheets for tournaments like this, or specific to outdoor if you have any history on the Men’s doubles event from the late 1970s to early 1990s, let us know. We have multiple holes in this data.
Post-publishing update: thanks to Norm McNutt and Steve Belmonte who noticed some misspellings and data entry errors in the draws, specifically with R.O. Carson getting mapped to his son Rocky, Olson misspelled as Olsen, and the wrong Genevay brother in the draw.
