When the Australian superstars Damien Mudge and Ben Gould defeated the English pairing of Clive Leach and Jonny Smith three games to love in mid-April at the Racquet & Tennis Club in mid-town Manhattan before a packed gallery in the final round of the biennial World Doubles, they capped off two and a half months of perfection during which they ran off the last seven tournaments of the SDA’s inaugural 2012-13 tour. After suffering consecutive-tournament mid-January losses in both Boston and at the North American Open in Greenwich to Leach and Paul Price, Mudge and Gould emphatically righted themselves, sweeping to sequential victories in Philadelphia, Brooklyn, Baltimore, Denver, Atlanta, Cleveland and finally New York, and dashing off 23 straight matches, all but five of them in straight sets. In light of their wins in each of the four autumn tour stops (the Maryland Club Open, the St. Louis Open, the Big Apple Open and the inaugural U. S. Open in Wilmington) prior to their pair of setbacks, Mudge and Gould finished off the season having won 11 of the 13 tournaments held under the SDA aegis this season, compiling in the process a record of 30-2, and lifting the overall totals of their three-year partnership to a won-loss record of 99-3, with 30 tournament wins in 33 attempts.
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