Reminisces of Jim Prigoff
Thinking about Victor Elmaleh gave me cause to reflect on strategy. One needs to put ALL the facts together, not just operate on some of the information.
I believe it was in Buffalo in 1965 that Victor and Roland Oddy were ranked at #2 in the 40 and over National Doubles. Stan Nelson and I had beaten the #2 Canadian team to come up against Victor and Roland in the semi-finals. Our usual strategy was for me to either hit the ball hard and deep to the left side so that Stan could move up and drop the ball in the right corner or for me to just hit a very low straight shot down the right wall. If the right wall shot wasn't excellent, Roland would move forward, get it and hit a perfect roll corner. So there I was blasting away at Victor and he was calmly hitting a perfect reverse corner. The harder I hit it, the better the shot he made.
In the finals, they came up against the #1 Canadian team. What the Canadians quickly figured out was to hit a high shot off the side wall over Victor that came off the back wall. I knew that was Victor's FAVORITE shot because he would come around and rifle it into the front right corner. So I never utilized it. What I hadn't added in was that Roland, seeing where the ball was going, instead of leaving it to Victor, would constantly race back and the two of them would get tied up with each other in the middle of the back court. Championship 3-0 to the Canadians.
Jim Prigoff
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And some forty years later..........my doubles partner, Kevin Jernigan and I had a similar tactical dilemma to Jim's when we played a quarter final match of the National Doubles Squash Century against former #1 World's Doubles Player, Gary Waite and his partner, coincidentally enough, Niko Elmaleh (Victor's son). at the Racquet and Tennis Club of NY on Park Avenue; a club which sports one Racquets Court and two Court Tennis Courts.
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| The Racquet and Tennis Club of New York |
From the very first stroke of the opening game, the obvious strategy was to hit every ball AWAY from Gary either short or long to Niko's right wall, but Gary's retrieving was stupendous. He jackrabbited to EVERY gettable ball regardless of where we hit it, resulting in our losing the first game by the desultory score of 15-6.
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| R and T's Racquets Court |
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| One of the R and T's Court Tennis Courts |
Between games, we toweled off, sipped water, and regrouped.
As we closed the court door behind us to begin game two, Kevin and I considered Plan B: hit every ball right AT Niko's feet; so that he would have no other choice but to hit the ball on his own and not rely on Gary.
The change in strategy worked!
Niko's shots were good but weren't quite as punishing as Gary's allowing Kevin and I to really open up the court for our well-placed shots that even Gary couldn't retrieve.
We won 3-1 which was very satisfying because of the use of our well thought out strategy.
John
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