Shake Up Central! - Articles

That was the name of the game for the men’s side of this past weekend's AVP in New York City. Midseason injuries and partner switches have created a domino effect which has drastically changed the look of the tournament. Eight new partnerships were featured in the main draw under the shadow of the Freedom Tower this past weekend. Two made it all the way to the crossover and Jeremy Casebeer earned his first final appearance with Sean Rosenthal. Here’s the story on that one: Sean gave The Lorax a call after Theo Brunner picked up Billy Allen. Theo and Sean were obviously not getting stellar results as a partnership but after a back injury took Sean out of competition for a few weeks, Theo had an even stronger reason to search down the list of great defenders. Brunner is now taking Allen on a well-deserved world tour trip and they’ve had decent results in their first international tournaments together. They both have pretty low key personalities which leads to steady performances but, as a USA fan, I hope to see some more fire out of them. Rosenthal and Casebeer stuck around to play AVP and it paid off in a big way. Reaching the final in your first tournament together is no easy feat. They are the new major threat on tour. Hudson Bates and I played them in our first round match. They didn’t leave us any openings. They had a smooth sideout rhythm and they always managed to get themselves back into system with...

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