• 12/10/23: In the post-game interview after the Golden State Open final, Daniel De La Rosa announced that he will not be "touring full time" in 2024, alluding to his commitments to "another sport." There's little surprise here; he signed an 3-year contract with the Professional Pickleball Association in August which guarantees a salary, benefits, and expense reimbursement to play professional Pickleball. His main sponsor Pro Kennex and Mike Martinez tried to manage the situation on social media by noting that DLR is a "multi sport" sponsored player and has expectations of continuing to play and compete in racquetball, but as they say, we'll see how it goes. Touring Full-time in 2024 may not really be a "full time" endeavor, in that the tour (which had to 10 Tier1s in 2023) may struggle to get even 6 Tier1s in 2024 based on the attrition we're already seeing.
• 12/9/23: A Jake Bredenbeck loss in the quarters of the Golden State Open sealed the 2023 title for De La Rosa before he even took the court for his critical quarterfinal against Acuna. Daniel won that match and his semi to resolve any question as to his #1 status, though he ended up losing the finals badly to #2 Moscoso.
• 12/4/23: another rankings surprise: when 2022 Portland expired, the 365-day rolling calendar only had 9 tier 1s. Per existing and very old logic in the rankings system, when the number of events falls below 10, then only that number of tournaments (tier1s or otherwise) can be included in the rankings. This means that all the satellite=playing players have LOST all their satellite points temporarily. This makes the standings going into Plesanton a little less competitive versus what it should be, but the implications for the last event are simple: if DLR makes the semis, he has sewn up the year end title. Otherwise, Jake has to win and DLR has to lose relatively early to have there be any change at the top.
• 11/20/23: It is discovered that the irttour.com's points ranking system has some issues in its logic as compared to the player contracts, tournament point values, and the counting of satellite events. The point calculation mechanism was not dropping the lowest score (as per the player contract, if there's 12 or fewer tier1s in a 365-day rolling calendar the lowest scores shall be dropped), the point values for both Tracktown Open and the World Singles and Dobules were being counted as Grand Slams and not Tier 1s, and players who earned points in some satellite events were not having those points added to their totals due to the Costa Rica event not being properly configured in R2. All three issues were addressed with resolutions ahead of the last two events of the season: The answers/fixes are: Tracktown & Denver fixed in system, Costa Rica to be ignored b/c it would have possibly changed seeding for all subsequent tournaments, and the historic logic of dropping zero tournaments will be honored as opposed to the wording of the player contract (which will be fixed/clarified in 2024).
• 11/13/23: Jake Bredenbeck ascends to #1 ranking on tour for the first time with his finals appearance in Boston.
• 11/12/2023: Kane Waselenchuk, who had not played professional singles since his Achilles heel tear in September 2022, enters the Boston singles event with little fanfare and advances to the semis, beating #11 Robbie Collins, #6 Adam Manilla, and most notably #3 Conrrado Moscoso with relative ease. He nearly beats #2 Jake Bredenbeck in the semis, but seemed to pick up an injury that hampered his movement, losing in a tiebreaker. Still, its an amazing return to form for the 14-time pro tour champ, and his defeat of Moscoso had huge implications for the year end race.
• Sept 2023: Alex Landa announces in a Facebook post that he'll be retiring as of the last event of the 2023 season from professional racquetball.
• Aug 2023: With the cancellation of the Portland Tourney of Champions as a Tier 1, the tour will have exactly 10 tier 1s/Grand slams. Per the player contract, the year end title will be determined by the sum of these 10 events, less one. Both of the top competitors for the title (Moscoso and De La Rosa) have missed one event this year, so they're on equal footing w/r/t the points race heading into the last two Tier 1s in Boston and Pleasanton.
• Aug 2023: World singles & Doubles happens, and with the loss of the US Open this is the defacto US Open of hte season.
• May 2023: a couple of shots across the bow of the IRT player contract are made, as DLR & Landa play in an "Open" tournament in San Antonio while Portillo skips an IRT event (along with Acuna, who is outside the top 8) to play in the Asian open. Both actions seem to be in violation of the IRT player contract, which stipulates that top 8 players may not play ANY non-IRT event and only a limited number of IRT satellite events per season. A bit later, Portillo takes to facebook to complain that he had been fined $500 for the action, though the post is later taken down. It does beg a question as to the fairness of the IRT player contract given the change inprotected seeding; the entire point of banning the top 8 from playing in other events was off-set by the guaranteed spot into the 16s.
• May 2023: IRT officials discuss possible changes to the IRT ranking system going into effect in the new year. Thanks to the large anticipated 2023 slate of events and the distance we've now put ourselves from Covid, the tour will be moving away from the rolling 11 tier 1s and back to a rolling 365-day calendar. This is only fair, since the rolling 11-event slate ended up including three 2021 events (including the 2021 US Open) to determine the 2022 champion. The plan will be to pivot to the 365-day rolling calendar in mid May, once there's an accumulation of events and the tour is caught up to its full slate.
• 3/16/23: despite being in a nip and tuck battle for #1 on tour, DLR skips the Chicago open to compete instead in a PPA pickleball event in Austin that happened the same weekend. This will give Moscoso a leg up in the battle for #1.
• 3/5/23: Rodrigo Montoya becomes the 45th man to ever win an IRT event, topping his doubles partner Mar in the 16s, then topping the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd ranked players (Portillo, Moscoso, and De La Rosa) to win the title in Minnesota.
• 2/19/2023: the IRT has apparently pivoted away from its tiered qualifying system and is going to a straight draw; no more byes into the 16s for the top 8 pros. Everyone starts in the 32s or the 64s if the draw is large enough.
• 1/26/23: #12 Mario Mercado is given the inaugural Mark Griffin Sportsman of the Year Award at the Lewis Drug Pro-Am. Griffin first started the Lewis Drug Pro/Am tournament in 1978, and it is the longest running pro event in the country. The award will be presented annually to the player who most exemplifies the spirit of fair play and outstanding athletic performance of Men's IRT tour professionals.
• 1/20/23: For the 2nd time in three years, Rodrigo Montoya is given the Teporaca de Oro by his home state of Chihuahua for his accomplishments in the sport. Unfortunately he has to miss the Lewis Drug Pro/Am to get the award, costing him valuable ranking points.
• 1/9/23: Despite losing the Longhorn Open final, #3 Conrrado Moscoso ascends to the #1 spot on tour. This happened because the 11-running tournament ranking system expired off the 2021 US Open, which was won by former #1 Daniel De La Rosa, and the differentiation in points lost from that event versus points gained in Austin resulted in Conrrado jumping both DLR and the former #2 Parrilla for the top spot on tour. Moscoso's reign is almost guaranteed to continue for a bit, as the next event to expire off is Arizona 2021, which Conrrado missed and thus has zero points to defend. This is the first time a player from outside the Big-3 countries of the sport has achieved #1
• 1/5/23: IRT and Gearbox officially announce what has been rumored for a few weeks: Gearbox has replaced Head/Penn as the official ball and official equipment manufacturer of the IRT. This ends a nearly 20-year agreement Penn had to provide the offiical IRT ball. Gearbox's balls are known to be more "durable" and "more consistent" ... but are also known to be noticably slower than other balls in the sport. This is projected to impact the game by lengthing the rallies and de-emphasizing power players. The first IRT tournament to use the new ball is the Longhorn Open.

• 12/9/22: In a Facebook Live session, Rocky Carson wraps up his 2022 season. He admits that he is not a "full time" tour player any longer. He played in 6 of the 9 events in the 2022 season (missing the two east coast events in NY and VA, then the last event in Portland). He's stepping back from full time touring so as to focus on US Nationals and team qualifying in 2023. He also discloses that he has been playing with a "slight tear" in his shoulder and that he suffered a back issue after his grueling round of 16 at the US Open. https://www.facebook.com/rocky.carson.3/posts/pfbid02q5pdu3zjUUe9UmXDNhY7EEkos4rrMETtPivxatX9dfcHBce8FkSnbDCws9LXR1QYl
• 12/4/22: Jake Bredenbeck becomes the 44th man to win a Tier 1 at the season ending John Pelham Memorial tournament in Portland. The event is sparsely attended due to a confluence of factors (conflicting with World Juniors, injuries, west coast location, international players being unwilling or unable to travel so far for one event, etc). Furthermore, top 4 players were more or less locked into their season-ending positions prior to the event, irrespective of the results.
• 11/14/22: Alvaro Beltran is awarded the 2022 Sports Athletic Prize of the Year by the Baja California State Athletic Institute. He is Baja California's Top Athlete of 2022.
• 11/6/22: #1 Daniel De la Rosa wins the Sarasota Dovetail Open and guarantees his #1 year end ranking for 2022. He will have an insurmountable lead heading into the final event of the season in Portland. It is his second straight year end #1 ranking.
• 10/30/22: While competing in the pro doubles semi finals at the 2022 3WallBall outdoor championships, long-time veteran IRT player Alvaro Beltran suffers a left arm injury during a chaotic rally where both he and partner Daniel De La Rosa dive for the same ball at 14-14 in game one. Beltran suffers a dislocated elbow that was reset, but X-rays show some fractures and thus he'll require surgery. There does not seem to be any tendon damage (as he could freely flex his fingers). He'll be out of action for a bit, but avoids damaging his hitting arm. 2022 was possibly shaping up to be Beltran's swan song on tour; he turns 44 this year and has seen his singles ranking (and performances) plummet this year. Now this injury may take him out of the rest of the 2022 slate and may speed up his looming retirement (which he's alluded to for months).
• 10/14/22: IRT CEO Mike Grisz steps down to take over as the Executive Director of USA Racquetball. He cedes his role and his shares to his wife, Karen Grisz, a long-time racquetball promoter in the Washington DC area.
• 10/2/22: 2022 US Open is upon us: the IRT draw is down from last year (58 participants this year versus 76 last year). #6 Kane has withdrawn with his leg injury, but otherwise every other player in the top20 (and most of the top 30) is here. For the second tournament in a row, the #16 seed has topped the #1 seed in the round of 16, with #1 player and defending champion Daniel De La Rosa falling to countryman Rodrigo Montoya. Montoya continues his run to the final, where he loses to Conrrado Moscoso, giving the Bolivian his first US Open title.
• 9/18/22: After getting a walk-over from Kane in the semis, Eduardo Portillo became the 43rd ever man to win a pro stop, defeating the surprise finalist #17 Javier Mar comprehensively in the final 7,3. Mar beat the #1 Parrilla in the round of 16 (one of the few times a #1 has ever lost at that juncture in the tour's history), before topping #8 Bredenbeck and #4 Murray to get to his first ever final himself.
• 9/17/22: Long-time #1 Kane Waselenchuk suffers a significant injury at the beginning of the Men's singles semi final in the 2022 Capital Classic in Severna Park, MD. Waselenchuk advanced to the semi final with little fan fare, then faced off against Eduardo Portillo. After losing the first two points of the match, Kane regained the serve, and in the middle of the next rally went to retrieve a passing shot, pushed off his right leg and immediately crumpled to the floor, grabbing his right ankle. He hobbled off the court and immediately forfeited. Eyewitnesses from the club noted that there was an "indentation" in his right leg, but also noted that he was able to walk out under his own power, albeit gingerly. Kane subsequently withdres from the US Open (being held two weeks later), and announced that he was getting an MRI done later the next week. The MRI showed full Achilles Heel tear, and he had surgery on 10/4/22. Recovery time: 3 months in walking boot, then an unknown rehab period. The injury is also preventing Kane from his full time welding job. Kane advised by some doctors that he may never play again. Official announcement and explanation of his injury/recovery from Kane describing his injury and recovery came on 10/16/22 on Sudsy's Beyond the Court.
• 8/27/22: IRT #6 Conrrado Moscoso plays lights out at the 2022 IRF Worlds and wins his first World title. He's greeted back home like a conquering hero, and the social media post announcing his win is shared thousands of times on Facebook by the Bolivian community.
• 8/9/22: Multiple pros, including Mexico's leading players like DLR, Beltran, Montoya, Longoria, and Samantha Salas, post GoFundMe pleas when it is revealed that the Mexican Federation has pulled all funding to support athletes traveling to the World Championships. This is especially curious since the Worlds are being held IN MEXICO, in San Luis Potosi this year. According to other back channel inquiries, FMR nearly cancelled the entire event due to lack of funds, but found enough to host the event at the last minute. FMR's president Miguel Parea releases a statement (here translated to English by JTRball) and publishing that statement in a national newspaper in Mexico explaining it is CONADE (Mexico's National Commission for Physical Culture and Sport, the rough equivalent of the USOPC and the body that oversees all sport in the country) and not FMR that has removed funding. CONADE responds to Parea's letter by releasing a statement that essentially says that FMR owes money to CONADE (and has since 2014) and is not in compliance with a number CONADE regulations. They also note that multiple Mexican players (including DLR, Longoria, Beltran, etc) collectively owe hundreds of thousands of dollars to CONADE and are individually not eligible for federal funding. Later that same day, the FMR Refuted Conade's publication. It seems like a mess. Meanwhile, the amounts the pros are seeking on GoFundMe for the trip seem excessive, especially given the exchange rates between the US and Mexico, enough that some Mexican racquetball enthusiasts on Facebook made comments to the same.
• 7/13/22: Andres Acuna wins the 2022 World Games gold medal over Mario Mercado in the final. This is his first ever adult title in any major tournament, pro or IRF. As the #2 seed of the event (by virtue of his makign the Worlds final last fall), he defeated #15 Lee, then #7 Salvatierra, #3 Mercado, and #9 Montoya in the final.
• 5/15/22: The New York Open was also the debut of the IRT-21 division, with its official IRT press release here. The New York draw featured more than 20 players from around the world competing for significant cash prizes, with Hector Barrios from Bolivia defeating Erick Cuevas from Mexico in the final. The goal of this division is to highlight younger players and give them more avenues to compete against each other and for prize money unavailable to the older players.
• 5/15/22: For just the second time in recorded tour history, a tournament was not played to its completion. In a highly anticipated final between current #1 Daniel De la Rosa and long-time #1 Kane Waselenchuk, Kane dominated the first game 15-4 before approaching IRT commissioner Pablo Fajre with concerns about the state of the courts. Both players agreed to call off the final and split the points/prize money for 1st/2nd place. The IRT issued an press release an hour after the event explaining the situation, which led to heavy criticism of the tour on social media. The root cause of the issue was an overnight HVAC issue between Saturday and Sunday's matches, combined with high humidity in the courts due to rain in the area, which caused wet courts and unplayable conditions.
• 4/28/22: Ahead of the IRT SoCal Open, the IRT makes a slight change to its pay structure. Foreign players had expressed a lack of understanding as to how payouts on tour worked. New commissioner Fajre made a tweak to the structure of events, simplfying the payouts. Now, instead of a pre-arranged amount of money that was associated with making a certain round based on the tiers of an event, tournaments simply award flat dollar amounts per round. So, an "IRT-700" event awards $700 for each round won post-qualifying. Round of 16 losers get $700, quarter finalists get $1400, semi finalists get $2100, the finalist gets $2800, and the tourney winner gets $3500. This structure elimiantes the "Tier1, Tier2, Grand Slam, Tier1+" structure that existed before.
• 4/18/22: After winning the PARC 2022 event on home soil, in an interview with local media #6 Conrrado Moscoso laments the lack of support given by the Bolivian government to Bolivian racquetball players and notes how many have "defected" to represent other countries like Colombia and Argentina. Is this a precursor to Moscoso possibly switching country allegiances?
• 4/3/22: Daniel De la Rosa and Alvaro Beltran take back the Mexican National title from Montoya/Mar, who had won the last three straight. After winning, Alvaro alludes to the fact that this will be his "last chance" at a World title. Rumors have been circulating that Beltran may be considering retirement from active touring for months now, and his inability to stay healthy over the past few events may be contributing to these rumors. If he retires, De La Rosa faces the difficult challenge of finding a new high-level Mexican doubles partner to compete with on both the pro tour and in his home country.
• 3/19/22: Kane shows up at the Chicago event playing a Gearbox racquet, but seemingly without an official racquet sponsor. He cruises to the title, his first since March of 2020 in the final event before Covid, taking advantage of a slew of upsets (both #1 and #2 are out before the semis). He beats Rocky Carson, his long-time rival, in the final; the two players combined for the highest total age of a competed final in pro history.
• 1/23/22: There was a spate of other injury news from this event: #5 Eduardo Lalo Portillo forfeited his round of 16 with a knee injury; reportedly he hurt the outside/meniscus of his knee. After returning to his native Mexico for an MRI, the damage is reported to be limited and he'll be out of action for a month rehabbing, but no surgery required. Beltran had to forfeit out of his round of 16 with what is a chronic groin/hip issue that may become the issue that ends his singles career. Fernandez bailed out of his singles match after 8 points with a back injury, but then played doubles later that evening. Murray forfeited out of the pro doubles with illness (which may or may not have turned out to be Covid) after losing his first round of singles.
• 1/23/22: In his return to the tour, Kane blitzes to the final as the #6 seed, looking as dominant as ever. However, in the final he found a foe in Andree Parrilla who has a history of playing Kane tough. In the end, Parrilla took out Kane in the final by the scoreline of (14),2,10.
• 1/23/22: With no advance notice, Kane enters the draw in Atlanta. A marketing opportunity lost clearly. He makes a run to the final, and there meets Andree Parrilla (who has upset #1 De La Rosa in the semis). The two play an incredible match, with Parrilla finding a serve to frustrate Kane and Kane seemingly running out of gas in the tiebreaker, resulting in an incredible 11-10 upset loss to Parrilla.
• 1/22/22: #5 Up and coming player Eduardo Portillo injures his knee in his round of 16 match in Chicago, forcing him to forfeit singles and withdraw from doubles. He returns to Mexico to find that it is just a strain (not a more major tear), but he'll be sidelined for two months. He likely won't miss any tour events, but he'll be hampered as he recovers.
• 1/17/22: With little fanfare or advance notice, Kane Waselenchuk quietly enters the 2022 Suivant Consulting Grand Slam in Atlanta. It is his first return to the tour since he walked out of the 2021 US Open, and the racquetball world is abuzz.

• 12/31/21 Pablo Fajre is officially named as the new Commissioner of the tour. He's taking over daily operations of the tour with a charge to expand the tournaments for 2022 and to make inroads into Mexico and other places south. Fajre, when commissioner of the WRT, held dozens of events in Mexico and really cultivated the environment, and we hope he can do the same going forward. The tour has not had an official "Commissioner" since Andy Kulbeck left in the mid 2018 time frame (he has since returned as a VP of the tour), and Pablo will take over tournament weekend activities currently performed by Mike Grisz and Mark Gibbs primarily.
• 12/23/21 #13 Sebastian Franco, who has been hampered by injuries for months, travels to Cali Colombia to have a small surgical procedure. He's back in action by mid January 2022 and shows little ill effect from the procedure.
• 12/6/21: IRT #2 Landa vanquishes Moscoso in the semis and Acuna in the final to take the 20th World Championships in Guatemala City. Montoya & Mar take the doubles title over Moscoso and Roland Keller.
• 11/21/21: The final Tier 1 of the 2021 season is in the books, and Daniel De La Rosa has an insurmountable lead at the top of the standings. He will win his first ever Professional Racquetball title. DLR loses a close match in the semis, but it does not matter to his lead at the top.
• 10/26/21: Rocky Carson, who double qualified for the US national team in 2021 (winning both singles and doubles), announces on facebook that he'll be skipping Worlds due to Covid and quarantining concerns. This is a huge decision for Carson, who not only gives up a shot at another World singles title, but who takes himself out of the running entirely for the 2022 World Games. This leaves a hole for both Singles and Doubles; Pratt and Jake were already announced as the doubles team, but team USA scrambled the assignments and had Landa/Jake play singles and Landa/Pratt play doubles.
• 10/17/21: Waselenchuk goes on Sudsy Monchik's podcast and has a long-winded interview in which he explained the factors that led to his forfeiture at the US Open. The "disagreement" was related to the refereeing situation with his pro doubles semi final but had roots in other issues he has with the tour generally, some of which date back years to previous management teams. Kane indicates he'll be stepping back from the tour; it remains to be seen what happens next.
• 10/11/21: the IRT responds officially with the same statement that was read by Dean Baer on the facebook stream prior to the IRT final on 10/10/21 (also posted to facebook here): "The IRT is disappointed in the decision by Kane Waselenchuk not to play in the singles semifinal at the UnitedHealthcare US Open on Saturday. It is an unfortunate decision that detracts from the tremendous play of all of the players and the celebration of the 25th anniversary of this event. The IRT is unaware of any injury or circumstances that would have prevented Kane from playing. The IRT provides the opportunity for open communication between all of our players and management. Our goal is to make the tour as successful as possible. International Racquetball Tour"
• 10/11/21: the 25th US Open finishes with #2 Seed Daniel De la Rosa winning his third successive IRT event and becoming just the 6th player to ever win the IRT US Open crown. He defeats Bolivian Carlos Keller in a riveting tie-breaker final. This crown moves De La Rosa to the #1 spot on tour for the first time and with just a couple of tournaments left he's in the driver's seat to take his first year end title.
• 10/9/21: #1 Seed Kane Waselenchuk forfeits his semi final singles match at the US Open with this statement: "Unfortunately I will be forfeiting my Semi final match today due to diagreements with the International Racquetball Tour. I congratulate Doug Ganim and his team on an incredible 25 years running the US Open. Thank you for your contribution to Racquetball. I mostly want my fans to know how much I love and appreciate their support through the years. This is not an easy decision for me. In time I will relaese more information in regards to this decision to the fans who deserve to hear from me. Best of luck to the remaining competitors this weekend. It's been an honor to win this event 15 years consecutively. Kane Waslenchuk."
• 10/7/21: Some Seeding controversy at the US open, when the doubles team of Kane and Sudsy is given a #2 seed in the event, well ahead of where their points would place them. This pushes the reigning Pan Am games champion team of Montoya/Mar out of the top 4 and forces them to not only qualify, but to face the #1 seeds in the semis. In the end, Kane/Sudsy are upset in the semis by the team that "should" have been seeded second (Murray/Landa) but the #1 seeds DLR/Beltran end up winning the title.
• 9/26/21: A new potential "super team" enters the Chicago event: Kane and Sudsy, who have been doing clinics together in 2021, have entered as a doubles team ... and are promptly seeded 9th due to having no points. This forces them into a way-too-early match-up against the #1 seeds DLR/Beltran. They make the most of it, losing 15-14, 15-14 in a fun match from a neutral perspective, but many in the racquetball world believe the team should have been manually seeded to avoid an early show-down. The same issue arises in Minneapolis a few weeks later and the team is placed at #2, which then causes criticism from the players.
• 9/1/21: A long-lingering sponsorship issue between Pro Kennex and #1 Kane Waselenchuk comes to light on social media, with Kane explaining that he refused to re-sign with the company due to 5 months of payments still owed from his 2020 contract, which ended August 31st of that year. Per Kane, Pro Kennex, like all companies, was badly affected by the Pandemic and used that as an excuse for non payment. But the stand off has continued for most of 2021. As with most once-sided social media posts, there are some lingering questions; Pro Kennex continues to sponsor other players; were they also stiffed for payments?
• 7/14/21: Defending US national doubles champs Sudsy Monchik and Alex Landa are forced out of the 2021 US National team qualifying after Monchik tests positive for Covid-19 just prior to traveling. Landa still competes and makes the US team in Singles, but does not re-partner to compete in doubles.
• Mid 2021: a decision is made by the tour, given the lack of any events between May 2020 and January 2021, to move the tour to a calendar year schedule that runs from Jan 1st to Dec 31st, rather than the traditional fall-to-spring season crossing years. The tour's reasoning is that it is not fair to athletes who may not be able to travel due to the pandemic to not have an opportunity to defend points earned. While this is understandible given the huge gap between events in 2021 thanks to Covid, what it means is that the 2021 year end titles are now determined in part on events that occurred in 2020.
• 3/24/21: The World Singles & Doubles tournament is delayed thanks to covid restrictions in Denver, meaning the IRT will go nearly 8 months in 2021 without a tier 1 pro event.
• 3/17/21: Sportspedia releases its 2021 World Sport Rankings, which attempts to quantitatively measure sports dominance across 150 global sports. Current IRT #1 Kane Waselenchuk comes in ranked #19 and LPRT #1 Paola Longoria comes in #23. This is a great recognition for the sport, which often goes unnoticed when discussing the global greats.
• 3/7/21: Current #1 Kane Waselenchuk and former champ Sudsy Monchik announce a new collaboration, the "Kane & Sudsy Experience." It will be a weekend-long event with both competition and learning modules. The first session is set for April 16-18, 2021 in Vero Beach, FL.
• 1/29/21: The IRT and LPRT announce a joint marketing collaboration agreement between the tours.
• 1/25/21: The IRT has a significant sponsorship issue coming to a head. Mike Lindell, the CEO of MyPillow, has been a long-time IRT sponsor, but increasingly became a heavy sponsor of right-leaning news media throughout the divisive 2020 election campaign. In the wake of Trump's loss in the 2020 election and the spreading of election fraud rumors, Lindell became a vocal defendant of Trump's claims, and frequently repeated them while defending Trump in public settings. This eventually led, in January 2021, to Dominion Systems to inform Lindell of pending defamation lawsuits and, more importantly, to major retailers dropping the MyPillow brand as a way to distance themselves from Lindell's public statements. Twitter (as it had done with Trump's and thousands of other accounts) in the wake of repeated violations of its terms of service. On 1/25/21, IRT majority shareholder Slemo Warigon doubled down on prior social media stances with regard to Lindell and bluntly stated that he is "strongly and totally against any association with the MyPillow CEO who demonstrates that ethics and social justice are immaterial to him." This led to some internal discussions on direction, and then a 2/1/21 press release that does not denounce Lindell (as some had hoped) and attempts to stay above the fray. This leads to the inevitable arguments on Facebook and Reddit, as people make their opinions known and threaten to boycott the IRT as a result of the decision NOT to disassociate themselves with MyPillow & Lindell. Postmortem to this: My Pillow ads continue to run, and the issue has some what fizzled out.
• 1/23/21: IRT #2 Alejandro Landa is named Juarez Professional athlete of the year for the second year running.
• 1/10/21: Samuel Murray becomes the 41st ever tier-1 men's pro stop winner by wining the Atlanta Grand Slam. He defeated four players successively that were likely favored over him by most pundits (Mar, De La Rosa, Landa and Moscoso), each by tiebreaker, to take the title. News of the event is featured on Radio Canada later the following week.
• 1/5/21: the IRT returns to the court for its first tier 1 event since last March, and gets a huge 48 person draw. #1 Kane Waselenchuk announces that he is not playing (but is traveling to the event to provide support); he has not had the time on the court he feel he needs to compete. #5 Alvaro Beltran undergoes emergency gall bladder surgery and misses the event. #16 Sebastian Fernandez seems to be taking a step back from touring as he takes on more responsibility at the family business. Montoya misses the event due to Visa issues, but otherwise most of the top 30 globally is present. We also learned during an interview with Kane (where he announced he wasn't playing) that he's currently out of contract. Kane has long been tied to Pro Kennex, with a racquet line named after him, so this is pretty surprising news. It is rather surprising that the #1 player in the world is out of contract. Subsequent comments from Kane imply that he's owed money from Pro Kennex, which Mike Martinez disputes. Nearly a year later, at the 2021 Us Open, Kane still has no racquet contract, which begs the question; why? Even if he has a legitimate beef with Pro Kennex, why has no one else picked him up?
• 12/15/20: At the PANAM SPORTS General Assembly, Racquetball was confirmed as a full medal sport to be competed at the 2023 XIX Pan American Games in Santiago, Chile. News came out a few days earlier of this news, but this is a reversal of the initial decision to drop the sport from the 2023 games. See official announcement here.
• 11/27/20: Construction commences on the "Kevin Conrrado Moscoso Ortiz Municipal Sports Complex" in Sucre, Bolivia (Moscoso's home town), being built to prepare for the 2021 Bolivarian Games to be held there. It is quite an honor to have a complex named after not only an active player, but one as young as Conrrado. See here on facebook for more information.
• 10/18/20: with the absence of Pro events, a number of top players play the 3WallBall outdoor event in Vegas, giving it one of the strongest draws it has ever had. #1 Kane Waselenchuk commits to playing the event, and is entered with his typical doubles partner Ben Croft. Eight of the top 10 pros are entered (only missing Canadian Samuel Murray and Bolivian Conrrado Moscoso), part of a massive men's 3wall pro draw. Waselenchuk and Croft make the pro final, where they lose in a tiebreaker to defending champs De La Rosa/Beltran. IRT #4 Parrilla wins the Men's singles title.
• 10/12/20: the IRT and LPRT (among other NGAs in the sport) announced their collective support for the "Live Like John" organization, founded in memory of SPC John A. Pelham, a racquetball enthusiast soldier killed in the line of duty in Feb 2014. See here for the official announcement. The plan is for a nationwide tournament series to be launced in 2021, involving multiple professional and amateur organizations.
• 9/20/20: The 2020 Atlanta Open is held, but converted to a Tier 4, and gets a solid draw of pros. Its the first time the mens' pro have been able to play since March, and the fans are treated to a tiebreaker in in the final between the top two seeds.
• 7/15/20: Doug Ganim announces in various forums that the 25th anniversary 2020 US Open will be postponed for one year due to the ongoing Covid19 crisis. Thankfully, per the same press release and the event's home page, all other factors for the event will remain in place; the host city and clubs, major sponsors, etc. In addition, Ganim has agreed to stay on for the 2021 event despite his recently announced retirement.
• 6/16/20: the IRT announces an update on the upcoming season, giving requirements that will have to be met in order to move forward. The tour will abide by CDC guidelines for gatherings, the tour will need to give athletes time to train and get back into playing shape, and most importantly the foreign players will need to be given assurances that they can travel to and from the United States-based events freely and without any risk of not being able to return home. This last point is rather critical; by mid July 2020 the spike of cases in the United States has led to wide-spread banning of US visitors by most of the rest of the world. It is unclear whether residents of these came countries would be banned upon return, or forced into quarantines.

• 6/14/20: After having all its remaining events cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the IRT officially declares the season to be complete. Kane Waselenchuk wins his 14th pro tour title. The rolling points system will unfreeze once the IRT holds its next Tier 1 event, meaning that the first rankings issued after the beginning of the 2020-21 season will feature a pretty significant shift for many players. (Eventually, a decision is made NOT to continue rolling 365-day based points but to use a rolling "last 11 tourneys" to account for this and avoid major point swings).
• 4/1/20: IRT season and 12-month rolling points are frozen due to the pandemic.
• 3/15/20: Covid-19 Corona Virus has had a huge impact on the sporting world, but the IRT is able to complete its Shamrock Shootout before having to take a hard look at traveling pros. During the days leading up to the Chicago event, we learned that the annual WOR florida event was cancelled, as was USAR's intercollegiates and the annual PARC event in Bolivia. It remains to be seen whether the next tier 1 IRT event on the schedule will come to pass.
• 2/18/20: IRT #6 Conrrado Moscoso is named the Tigo Sports Best Bolivian Athlete of 2019. The champion of champions in Bolivian sport came in 3rd last year (to Centellas and Sabja) but was given the top prize this year. Centellas and Keller are also recognized for their accomplishments in 2019.
• 1/25/20: for the first time in recorded seeding history on the Men's tour, all top 4 seeds are upset prior to the semis. #1 Landa, #2 Carson, #3 Parrilla and #4 Beltran are upset, leaving the semis to be contested neatly by the #5, #6, #7 and #8 seeds. Seeding per event started in 2009, so we can't say this is the first time this has ever happened (in fact, during the late 80s when the tour was so deep, it wouldn't surprise me if something like this happened), but it is a first for the data at hand.
• 1/22/20: #2 Alex Landa is named the Professional athlete of the year 2019 in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.
• 1/22/20: Word comes out on Facebook that 5-time champ Sudsy Monchik will be competing in 2020 USAR National Doubles, and his partner will be ... current IRT #2 Alex Landa. Landa, a dual citizen of Mexico and the USA but who has always represented Mexico despite living in the US for years, has followed up on his threat to change countries following the FMR's decision to exclude him from the Pan American Games Mexican team under dubious circumstances. In mid-Feb, Landa and Monchik capture the USA National doubles title.
• 1/17/20: #9 Rodrigo Montoya is recognized by the Chihuahua State organization in his home country with the Gold Teporaca for his accomplishments in the sport and at the Pan American Games. Ironically he has to miss a pro event (the 2020 Longhorn Open) to accept the award, and his absence costs him several spots in the rankings.
• 12/19/19: #2 Carson undergoes a surgical procedure on his meniscus. We have little details as to the source of the injury, the severity or the recovery time but its notable that Rocky did a similar meniscus surgery in Dec 2017 and came back to compete in the first stop of the subsequent year w/o missing a beat.
• 11/11/19: MyPillow signs on to be a major sponsor of the IRT.
• 11/4/19: IRT/IRF streaming deal announced officially: the IRF will stream IRT's matches onto the Olympic Channel, which has more than 3 million subscribers and will greatly increase visibility of the Men's pro tour.
• 10/6/19: Kane dominates the US Open yet again, winning the final over Bolivian Conrrado Moscoso to claim his 15th US Open title. With this result, Moscoso moves into the IRT top 8 despite having just two tier 1 appearances (both grand slam finals) to his name. Kane/Croft returned to the winner's circle in Pro doubles, topping the #1 DLR/Beltran team in a spirited final.
• 10/1/19: the 2019 US Open kicks off and the IRT pro draw has a *massive* showing: 94 players, significantly higher than last year's 69, and a huge Pro Doubles draw. 37 of the top 40 ranked IRT players are present, missing only Mauro Rojas (stepping back financially), Tony Carson (injured) and Michael Arterburn (did not enter). Some doubles seeding controversy; Kane/Croft were handed the #2 seed and the bye into the quarters when (by rankings) they probably should have been the 7th seed or so; this bumps the #5 seeds Jake/Diaz into qualfiers, where they're upset and take to FB to criticize the seeding decision (rightly so). Such a large doubles draw should have resulted in fewer byes for the top teams.
• 9/16/19: the 2nd half of the IRT season is announced, which includes the elevation of the Lou Bradley to a Tier 1, the official return of the Bolivina Grand Slam, and the elevation of the Black Gold cup in June to a tier 1. The scheduled slate for the new season now inclues 14 events, a huge increase from 9 the season before.
• 9/9/19: the IRT is forced to issue a press release explaining the odd double forfeit in the pro doubles final of the season opener in Atlanta. A communication mixup led to players believing the finals were satursday instaed of sunday, and all the finals participants had early morning sunday flights that could not be changed.
• 9/2/19: the IRT and the IRF are rumored to be announcing a streaming deal, where the IRF will begin using the IRT's Pablo Fajre to conduct their streaming operations.
• 8/28/19: Racquetball is featured on ESPN in its top 10 plays, featuring Alvaro Beltran's diving glass-door shattering at the Pan Am Games in Lima earlier in the month.
• 8/23/19: Pro Racquetball Stats is featured by the IRT on its web page.
• 8/20/19: the IRT announces its first change to Satellite event structure under new director Fajre, providing more benefits to Tourney Directors and simplifying the fee structure.
• 8/20/19: The IRT announces that the Longhorn Open, held annually on the University of Texas campus in Austin, will now be a full Tier 1 event. This is great news for the tour; the Longhorn Open is easily the largest non-national tournament in existence, selling out its 380 slots in just 14 minutes last season (where it was an officially sanctioned WRT event ... and was the LAST WRT event ever held). For 2020, they've increased the tournament player cap to more than 400 players outside of the pro division and should get a huge draw based on Austin's proximity to Mexico.
• 8/12/19: the IRT officially announces the return of Andy Kulbeck as Vice President of the tour. His specific duties/responsibilities are not listed in the press release.
• 8/10/19: Mexico Sweeps the Pan Am Games Singles and Doubles titles, taking Mens and Womens, Singles and Doubles.
• 8/7/19: IRT names Pablo Fajre officially the Director of Streaming & Satellite Events and has been charged with expanding the IRT lower tier events in addition to his previous duties of owning Streaming. If there wasn't an official announcement previously of the end of the WRT ... this may be it. Hopefully all former WRT events are now converted to be IRT lower tiered events.
• 7/27/19: Bolivia's Conrrado Moscoso is the flag bearer for his country during the Pan American Games opening ceremony. The ESPN-based broadcast group reads a quick blurb about Moscoso and the sport in general on the main broadcast.
• 7/19/19: Despite winning the 2019 Mexican National title and being the 3rd ranked player on tour. Alex Landa is left off the Mexican delegation to the Pan American Games. He discloses this fact in a long facebook post, calling for the removal of the president of Mexican Racquetball, Miguel Perea. The story also gets picked up by Marca and Cancha and other Mexican sports newspapers, noting that the delegation is Alvaro Beltran, Rodrigo Montoya and Javier Mar. FMR president Miguel Parea responds to criticism by claiming that players were notified of the PARC event "counting" prior to the PARC event. The decision is difficult to defend, given that Landa earned this spot on the court. It seems to outside observers that this decision was FMR's way of penalizing their opinion of Landa's performance at the 2019 Pan American Racquetball Championships, where Landa lost in the quarters to Andres Acuna (a player he regularly dominates on the pro tour) and was accused of not giving maximum effort. Landa also threatens to leave the Mexican team over this decision (something he eventually follows-up on, in November 2019). In April 2020, Alvaro Beltran gave a bit more context to the decision in an interview on the Racquetball Podcast; when Landa lost in the quarters of 2019 PARC, it cost the Mexican team a slot on the Pan Am Games delgation (i.e. they could only send 3 players, not 4). So the FMR decided it was unfair to remove anyone but the player who cost the team the slot ... that being Landa himself.
• 7/7/19. Sportsnet Canada's Kristina Rutherford publishes an excellent long-read article on Kane Waslenchuk titled Tiger Woods doesn't have anything on me, which covers his career, the sport of racquetball, and follows along with Kane's year end win in Syosset in May.
• 7/2/19: IRT announces the first half of the 2019-20 season, featuring two new events from last season. The aforementioned Atlanta season opener is one new event, and a new stop in Arizona in late October. The tour is also projecting at least 6 events in the second half of the season, which means a nice rise from 9 events last season.
• 6/27/19: IRT announces the hiring of long-time USA National team player Aimee Ruiz to serve as the Social Media Manager.
• Mid June 2019: www.irt-tour.com is officially retired, now redirecting to a new url (www.irttour.com) with a new look and feel. This website has built-in hooks to www.proracquetballstats.com to dynamically pull match data, player profile data and other information, which is great for the tour and great for the data to be able to be leveraged as such.
• June 2019: IRT announces that it is returning to Atlanta in September. The Season opener of the 2019-20 season returns to Recreation Atlanta in Lilburn, GA. The club held an IRT event from 2015-2017 but fell off the rotation last season. Prior to this run, Georgia hadn't hosted a pro event of any kind since the VCI series played in Atlanta in the mid 1990s. This is great news for the large Atlanta/Florida playing community and is a great sign that the tour is getting back events that it lost in the 2018-19 season.

• August 2018: Kane Waselenchuk conducts a long-form interview on Dylan Reid's podcast and goes into details on his decision to "retire" from the sport. The gist of the situation appears to be related to compensation; Kane is demanding "additional compensation" for showing up for events and the tour apparently is not agreeing to do so. Then, in a series of Facebook posts and discussion strings, he expands on the reasoning/complaints with the tour, citing a conference call in January 2018 and other events. This appears to be a lingering argument with the tour, which took away 1st place price money to better fund the main draw round of 16 qualifiers.
• Aug 2018: Kane decides to take an appearance fee to appear at a competing non-Tier 1 event in Atlanta in September 2018... then is compelled to instead enter the first Tier 1 of the season when it became clear from the IRT contract that he was facing hefty fines for not appearing. In a response online, Tour owner John Scott defends his statements, has a public back-and-forth with Kane about a Jan 2018 conference call and other incidents, claims that the tour "made no money" in 2017-18. At the end of the discussion, Kane and Scott seem to "agree to disagree" about some unstated conversation and they decide to move on. Perhaps he's not "retiring." This story will continue as we see how many events Kane enters in the new season. Kane subsequently enters the first Tier 1 of the season in Laurel, MD ... and then pulls out after the draws are made citing injuries from a "car accident."
• Sept 12, 2018: Alejandro Landa jumps Kane Waselenchuk for the #2 ranking when a points expiration issue causes the rankings movement just prior to the Laurel event. The draw is re-seeded last minute with Landa as the #2 seed. Landa began the 2017-18 season ranked outside the top 10, a pretty amazing rise up the rankings in a short amount of time. Landa loses in the semis, giving Samuel Murray his first career final. He loses to Rocky Carson in the season's first event.
• 9/23/18: World Champ Rodrigo Montoya injures his right ankle in the final of the Sonora Open, putting his attendance at the US Open in doubt. This could have been a huge blow for the player and the event, as Montoya is one of the top players in the world and doesn't get the opportunity to travel to the US to play IRT events that frequently. 10/4/18: Montoya makes the event and plays with an ankle brace as a precaution, but does not advance nearly as far as expected, losing in the 16s to Mario Mercado.
• 10/3/18: the US Open has an excellent Men's draw of 69 players, and includes 28 of the top 30 mens players by ranking. Importantly, Kane Waselenchuk is in the draw, seeded #3. After an action packed tourney, Kane wins his 14th Title, without dropping a game. Kane does suffer a loss in this event; he and Ben Croft lose in the Pro Doubles final to Beltran & De La Rosa, a rematch of both last year's phenomenal US OPen doubles final and of the World Doubles final in Denver 2018. The mens draw towards the back half of the event goes much closer to chalk than 2017's event, with 6 of the top 8 seeds making the quarters. #10 seeded Andree Parrilla is the big news maker, upsetting #7 Murray and #2 Landa to make the semis. Last year's surprise quarter-finalist Moscoso could not repeat his feat, perhaps being fatigued from entering three events.
• 10/15/18: Commissioner Andy Kulbeck takes a "leave of absence" from the IRT. On 11/8/18, CEO John scott announces that Kulbeck has left the IRT officially but remains associated with the organization as a consultant.
• 10/26/18: CEO John Scott makes several announcements via Facebook. First, he's signed a new "agreement" to serve as CEO til the end of next season as a placeholder paperwork step to help "professionalize" the operations of the tour. He announces a new Tier 1 to coincide with a National Masters event in San Antonio in March 2019, and lastly announces a new Grand Slam Event to be held in April 2019 in Syosset NY, an event he's calling a "Unity event" in that its an attempt to get all the various organizations to work together. Lastly there's a tentative 3rd slam in the works, to be held in South America, in addition to "4-5 more pending Tier ones" here in the US.
• 11/8/18: CEO John Scott announces the new org structure of the tour: Scott as CEO, Grisz as Chairman of the board, Mark Gibbs as CMO, and Mark & Dean Baer are the new player liaisons. Scott also informs the players they can select a player representative. Lastly he officially notes the departure of Kulbeck, who is stepping aside for personal reasons.
• 11/27/18: a mini-brew-ha-ha erupts on the IRT's facebook page over the rolling rankings that come out, showing Kane having dropped to #6. His complaint seems to stem around the fact that there havn't been enough tournaments in the first half of the 2018-19 season for him to build up points that he lost by virtue of missing most of the second half of last season. PRS does some Ranking System alternatives in the blog that show how some different variations of points calculations would change or alter the current rankings. Many people chime in, including two former commissioners and many players and IRT staff.
• 12/12/18: Rball makes the ESPN top 10 highlights again, this time a between-the-legs kill shot from the 2018 Pelham ToC in Portland by Kane in his semis win over defending champ Pratt.
• 1/14/19: CEO John Scott undergoes emergency surgery and nearly dies due to internal bleeding, which requires a second surgery. He misses the important Lewis Drug pro-am while recovering.
• 1/15/19: On the back of his best ever pro season, Jose Diaz breaks into not only the top 10 for the first time, but the top 8, earning a #7 seed for the Lewis Drug and his first professional bye. He's 7th in season-to-date ranks, tied with Alvaro Beltran as of the Lewis and sits 9th in the rolling 12 month rankings.
• 1/18/19: Kane wins the Lewis Drug event, and ascends back to the #1 spot on tour, where he is likely to stay for a while as he does nothing but regain points lost last season. This ends months of "discussions" in various online forums about the value of the rankings systems in use on tour.
• 1/31/19: part-time and former touring pro Tony Carson, who has played a few events since retiring from full-time touring, tears the achilles tendon in his left leg and undergoes surgery. He's likely to be sidelined for nearly a year.
• Feb 1, 2019: John Scott resigns as CEO of the IRT via an facebook post, which is then followed up by an official IRT Press Release here. Scott had undergone emergency surgeries in Jan 2019 and revealed that he's suffering from Bipolar conditions, and he felt his recovery was precluding him from effectively leading the IRT. Current IRT Chairman of the Board Mike Grisz will take on the role as acting-CEO effective immediately.
• 3/13/19: ahead of the IRT Shamrock Shootout in Chicago, the IRT announces that they've teamed up with none other than Pablo Fajre, the owner and operator of the competing World Racquetball Tour (WRT), to do the streaming of their live broadcasts going forward. As former CEO John Scott (who is still the largest investor in the tour despite stepping down as CEO) notes, the tour has chosen Pablo's streaming solution as a replacement for Scott's enetlive.com solution going forward. This is potentially a significant development; does this mean the end of the WRT? Does this mean that Fajre's events will become IRT events? Questions abound.
• 3/17/19: During his post-win interview, Kane announces that he'll be skipping the upcoming Bolivian Grand Slam event for family reasons. Per Kane, flying to Bolivia is a 10-day commitment and he's decided to stay back to spend time with his daughters instead of traveling for the event.
• 3/28/19: The Bolivian Grand Slam event happens, the first time an IRT event has been held in the country. Unfortunately, the event was missing a number of top pros: 5 of the top 10 did not travel. Kane, DLR, Sam Murray, Sebastian Franco, and Jose Diaz miss out on opportunities for double points. The most significant impact will be on Kane and DLR in particular: Kane will lose the #1 ranking if Rocky wins but is not at real jeopardy of losing the #1 overall ranking on the season but he has to attend the remaining events and score higher than Rocky. Meanwhile, DLR's absense will likely drop him to 6th overall and removes most any chance of his retaining his top 4 status on the season. Thanks to the missing players, Montoya, Horn and Bredenbeck all earn top 8 seeds, the first of which for Montoya in particular.
• 3/30/19: Conrrado Moscoso becomes the 40th player ever to win an event by taking his home-town Bolivian Open, defeating Carson in the final. Moscoso ends up beating the 1st, 2nd and 3rd seeded players (Carson, Landa and Beltran) to take this event, though commentary in the chat circles seems to discount the accomplishment due to Moscoso's playing on home ground and being more acclimated to the altitude. The win vaults Moscoso into the top 16 of rankings, and rumors abound that Moscoso will play the remaining slate of IRT events to try to repeat the feat.
• 4/7/19: Up and coming US junior Mauro (Daniel) Rojas announces on Instagram that he'll cease playing US National events, but notes that he'll play Pro events when he can. But his post notes a recent engagement and promotion at work, and seems to indicate more of a focus on work, school and his fiancee.
• 4/22/19: Former CEO John Scott divests himself of all ownership shares of the tour, selling them in totality to Slemo & Charity Warigon. Scott's resignation in Feburary was just the first part of completely stepping away from the sport, a shocking development given Scott's long involvement over the years. The Warigon's (whose son Troy is a part time tour player) hail from Suburban Maryland and now are the majority owners of the IRT. Acting CEO Mike Grisz is now officially the CEO. This movement also marks the complete transition of the tour to a management structure that is volunteer based, which should help improve the finances of the tour significantly going forward. Official announcement of this sale made on 5/7/19 on www.irt-tour.com.
• 4/25/19: Tour Commissioner Andy Kulbeck returns to the fold (perhaps coinciding with the departure of Scott from the tour), travelling to the Florida Pro-Am to help run the tour. He had taken a leave of absence in October 2018 for personal reasons (somewhat related to travel demands of the tour schedule); it remains to be seen what his role will be going forward.
• 4/27/19: Kane loses a quarter-final match to Alvaro Beltran, breaking an 83-match winning streak and becoming the first on-the-court, non injury related match loss since Sept 2013. Beltran loses in the final, giving Alejandro Landa his 3rd career title.
• 5/5/19: Kane wins the final Tier 1 of the season to secure his 13th pro title. The title was in doubt heading into the last event, with Rocky trailing Kane by 136 points, meaning that a certain set of results could have resulted in Rocky overtaking Kane to take the title. However, when Kane secured a spot in the finals, he earned enough points to guarantee the lead, and upon winning the event, he ensured that even the remaining non Tier1 events would have no bearing on the year end title race.
• 5/19/19: Doug Ganim announces that he's retiring as Executive Director of the US Open after its 25th iteration in 2020. He also alludes to possible changes coming in the structure of the event after he retires, due to the "extremely high cost structure" of running the tournament in its current format. USA Racquetball owns the tournament and has paid Ganim to run it since its inception, but these words have to be concerning to the pro tours since the US Open is by far the biggest pro event on the schedule each year, and most years is the sole Grand Slam.
• 6/6/19: Jason Mannino announces on facebook that he and Cliff Swain will be playing in the 2019 US Open. It sounds like they'll play doubles together, and possibly singles too, which would be pretty amazing.
• 6/14/19: The final IRT sanctioned event on the schedule occurs; the Black Gold event in Chihuahua, with a massive 47-person draw that includes a number of top 10 IRT pros, the elite of Mexican rball, plus a travelling contingent of top Bolivians.

• June 2017: Prior to the start of the new season, Major news is announced on Facebook and other social networking platforms: the IRT tour has been sold to a group of investors led by IRT Network's owner John Scott. The new company (E.J. Productions) will package the tour and its broadcast network together, talks of new juniors programs and may also eventually include the LPRT. Current IRT President Jason Mannino moves into a "consultant" role while Scott assumes the IRT Presidency (with the title "CEO."). Scott soon names former LPRT commissioner Andy Kulbeck to be the new IRT commissioner as he steps into more of an executive/management position.
• Sept 2017: First event rebrands "Open" as "IRT Futures" and opens it up to anyone outside the IRT top 8 by ranking (not seeding, as Parrilla was seeded 8th but played in the event. IRT also announces an increase in total purse and prize money in the Futures event that makes it rather competitive with the WRT, perhaps an attempt to keep the draw sizes high.
• Sept 2017: First event of the year has a huge draw (37 players) and a number of the top WRT players ... and unsurprisingly the seeds 5-8 all lost early. WRT regulars Parrilla, Montoya, Gerardo Franco and Horn all made the quarters, with other WRT regulars like Bredenbeck and Fernandez putting up tough fights in the 16s. The Rojas brothers were missing (wedding), and Pratt no showed (hurricane), but this was one of the better draws in recent memory. Kane pounded Montoya in a match that was closer than the score in the semis and cruised to the win.
• Sept 2017: immediately after the event, IRT announces an "Exemption rule" for its top 8 players, enabling them to play one non-IRT sanctioned event each season. This implies that the non-compete still exists for the top 8 players, which raises a thorny question for those players who are good enough to be right on the cusp of the top 8 but who face an earnings-limiting decision if they venture too close to the top 8. One has to wonder if the absence of Alex Landa (ranked #9 on the tour at the end of 2015-16)'s absence from the opening event played a part.
• Sept 2017: someone in the investor group has some sway at ESPN: a highlight of Kane from the opening tournament making a kill shot between his legs makes ESPN Sportscenter's top plays of the week.. I can't quite tell though but it does look like its a clip the 2016 Atlanta event, not the event that just occurred. Its a shame they didn't use the Kane-Montoya rally at 4-0 in game one, one of the better rallies i've ever seen on tour. Nonetheless, its Racquetball on Sports center, so perhaps I doth protest too much. Note: this 4-0 rally DID make it onto ESPN sportscenter top 10s a few weeks later coinciding with the beginning rounds of the US Open, on 10/4/17.
• Sept 2017: a "petition" appears on all major Racquetball discussion outlets (Facebook, reddit, 40x20) which read like a rant about the prize money changes, the costs, the food and the spectator ticket prices for the US Open. It clearly addresses some points of contention with some of the lesser players and again highlights a growing complaint in the player base: the IRT's "protection" of its top 8 ranked players with byes while the WRT provides no such protection. New owner John Scott wades into the discussion asking for patience, but it should be interesting to see if there's some players who purposely miss the marquee event of the year. Participation in the IRT pro draw is down 33% from 2010 to 2016 on the Men's side and the tour probably wants to reverse that trend.
• Oct 2017: a robust draw for the first US Open underneath new ownership, reversing a 7 year trend of declining Men's pro draws. However there's notable absences; all three Rojas brothers are absent, including 5th ranked Jose and 7th ranked Marco. The youngest brother Daniel (Mauro) made some comments about dissatisfaction with the organization of the tour as his reason for not showing, but the absence of Jose in particular is interesting. Marco has apparently graduated and taken a FTE teaching job, which may mean the end of his touring days. Jose's linkedin page lists him as working full time; it seems that they have retired from touring at this point. Meanwhile, the US Open also features the return of former #1 Sudsy Monchik, who has become rejuvenated coaching the Ecuadorian nat'l team. He's teamed up with another former #1 Cliff Swain to play pro doubles, in what could be a fascinating matchup of power forehands in the doubles draw. The draw features a number of dark horses, some of which face unfortunate seedings (Landa-Montoya in the 32s for example, while others (Javier Mar) have somewhat clear paths to the quarters. The play did not disappoint: Monchik makes the quarter finals as the #53 seed, beating Gerardo Franco in qualifying and then #12 Camacho and #5 Allen in 5 games before falling to Beltran (The Monchik/Swain doubles combo lost their first match). Monchik's first pro appearance since Feb 2012 was a rousing success. Veteran International player Fernando Rios, seeded #70 after having all his prior pro points expire, took out promising US junior Dylan Reid and #6 seeded Sebastian Franco to make the round of 16 as the #70th seed before falling to Landa in four. Bolivian Carlos Keller Vargas advanced to the main draw and took a game off of De La Rosa before falling as the #67 seed. Reigning Mexican champ and #23 seed Javier Mar easily handled #10 seed Murray and #7 seeded Mercado in straight games before being outclassed by Rocky in the quarters; he's clearly better than the #23 player in the world. Meanwhile, the 2017 US Open was definitely a "coming out" party for several juniors who are not that well known to the rball world. Conrrado Moscoso, who was playing in his first IRT or pro event and seeded dead last at #73, advanced to the quarters and kept Kane on the court for nearly 1hr 15minutes as the 22-yr old showed what those who have followed the international game have known for a while; he's legit. Canadian junior #52 seed Nicolas Bouquet took out two higher ranked players (Cubillos and Collins) before falling to Beltran in the 16s. Mexican junior Eduardo Portillo, who is only 17 and still has one more year in 18U at the int'l level, advanced to the round of 32 as the #64 seed (again, this was his first IRT event) and stretched Kane to 6,9,9 in a match where he absolutely flummoxed the champ). Seven of the final 16 players were upsets by seed, and the final 8 featured the top four seeds plus the #11 (Landa), #23 (Mar) and aforementioned Monchik (#53) and Moscoso (#73). There's often talk about how "thin" the depth on tour is; perhaps the fact that there's constantly new faces challenging and taking out anyone seeded 5th or lower is evidence of how "deep" the player pool is outside the top 3-4 guys. Lastly, a mention for Landa, who still seems to only play every other tour event but yet is a constant threat to make the semi finals (he's made 4 semis out of the last 6 tournaments played). After outlasting Montoya in the 32s he made the semis and took a game off of Carson before falling. In the end, Kane beat Rocky in a 4-game final to capture his 13th US Open title. Kane looked tired and sluggish, perhaps the aftermath of an amazing and emotional Mens doubles final the previous evening that had many observers calling it the best game of racquetball they've ever seen. The 2017 US Open did see Kane's amazing consecutive games winning streak come to an end; Beltran took a game off of him in the semis. His streak ends at 113 straight games won, dating to May of 2016 (where, ironically, Beltran was the last previous player to have taken a game from him). This is by far the longest such streak in the tour's history, and includes the entirety of the 2015-16 season as noted elsewhere.
• Nov 2017: St. Louis event features more than 400 High Schoolers ... but just 22 players in the pro draw. No Rojas brothers, Mercado, no Montoya, Landa or Parrilla. As a result, Horn gets a top 8 seed ... then gets switched to #5 in the draw. Parrilla had announced on Instagram his intent to rest all of November in order to prepare for the final WRT event, noting he had played 22 tourneys already in 2017.
• Dec 2017: Kane withdraws from Portland tourney, and former touring pro Tony Carson plays his 2nd tourney in a row after several seasons off and quickly dispatches De La Rosa in the 16s, leaving a wide-open draw. Furthermore, the event competes against the year-ending WRT tournament, which takes away a number of the players who would normally make this draw more interesting. The four quarter-finalists from the top side of the draw featured a combined 5 career semi finals and zero finals; in the end #8 seed Columbian Mario Mercado made the final, where he was easily dispatched by #14 seed Charlie Pratt for Pratt's first career victory. Nonetheless, Mercado's finals appearance marked the first time in tour history that a player from outside the 3 core racquetball countries (USA, Canada, Mexico) made a final.
• Dec 2017: just after the 12/2/17 Portland event, #2 seeded Rocky Carson underwent a small medical procedure/surgery on his knee, repairing a small meniscus tear. The timing of the surgery and rehab gives Rocky just 5 weeks between events, but he comes back the 2nd week of January 2018 to make the semis.
• Dec 2017: Announcement made on Facebook that the tour, effective immediately, is changing its scoring rules to match Amateur/International scoring rules (two games to 15, tiebreaker to 11, all games win by one). Also announced that line judges will be used on an "as needed basis" depending on the availability of camera angles. Instant replay will continue to be the primary appeal method. Official announcement here.
• Jan2018: #1 Waselenchuk suffers what looked initially like an innocuous knee injury in his easy semi-finals win over Mercado, but defaults the final the next day, giving DLR the title. The injury turns out to be a Grade 2 MCL sprain, which keeps Kane out of the next four tournaments and costs him nearly 3 months on tour. Details of the injury were sparse; it was known there was an issue with his knee, but the severity and nature of his injury wasn't publicly disclosed until mid March's announcement about his getting the green light to return. Amazingly, despite missing 3 straight tourneys Kane somehow maintained his season-to-date points lead over Rocky, though Carson eventually surpassed him for the #1 ranking in the rolling rankings. Kane's absense opened a massive door on tour, with three first-time tournament winners winning the three events he missed. Read on.
• Jan2018: #8 seeded Alejandro Landa becomes the 2nd first-time tourney winner in as many months on tour, winning Sioux Falls. The tournament also sets a first on tour: the first time that all four semi-finalists were non-Americans. Just 2 of the 8 quarterfinalists were from the USA in this event.
• Mar2018: #7 seeded Sebastian Franco, appearing in his first final, also took his first tour title and became the first player outside of the top-3 countries to win on the tour. Two weeks later, #9 Andree Parrilla beat #11 seeded Bobby Horn to become the 4th player on the season to get a first win, the 39th distinct winner in the history of the tour, and the first time (that we know of) where the finalists were both outside the top 8/qualifiers. Amazing.
• Mar2018: Rumors surfacing that an "extra" IRT event may be in the works, with rumors that its being financed by none other than #1 Kane Waselenchuk in an attempt to ensure there's enough tier 1 events to allow him to retain his title after missing so much time. My "back of the envelope" math indicates that Rocky's inability to capitalize on his absence has left open the door for Kane to win the remaining two events and ensure the title...we'll see what happens.
• Apr 2018: Despite the IRT issuing a press release indicating Kane was ready to resume playing ... he hosts a Facebook Live/AMA session in early april where he announces that he's not ready to come back. This has huge implications on the end of year seeding. Meanwhile, Rocky fails to make the finals in the 6th straight event, the 5th straight following his knee procedure, yet even despite this drop in form (Rocky made the finals in each of the first 4 events of the year), he's some how in position to take the year end title.
• Apr 2018: a "major" announcement from the IRT: a sponsor (Mark Gibbs and wife) has now essentially paid for free broadcasting of all rounds on the IRT going forward; no more paid subscriptions on IRTNetwork.
• Apr 2018: Kane finally returns to the tour, entering the Florida event (the last singles event of the season). However, he entered the tournament trailing Rocky Carson by enough points that he did not control his own year-end title destiny. He needed Rocky to lose prior to making the finals ... which did not happen. Carson downed #4 Landa in the semis 9,12 to secure a place in the finals and secure enough points to guarantee himself the year end title. This secures Carson's 2nd year end title, his first coming a decade earlier in 2008. Carson, at the age of 38years, 323 days immediately becomes the oldest player to win a year end title, surpassing Cliff Swain's feat at the age of 36years in 2002. Kane finishes the 2017-18 season with no on-the-court losses but having missed four of the eleven events on the season thanks to his January knee injury. Carson becomes the first player to win a year end title despite not winning a single tournament since the 1988-89 season.
• Apr 28, 2018: Immediately after downing Carson for the final title of the year, and hours after he was dethroned as champ after a decade on top, Kane announces that he is "90% sure that he's retiring" in his post-game interview on the court (go to the 46:30 mark of the Facebook live video). He's going to "take the summer" to think about it but says that he "isn't enjoying playing as much as he used to" and he may just show up at the US Open to "play spoiler" next year. He qualifies his announcement with a quick facebook post saying that his announcement had nothing to do with "his injury or travel.". If Kane is indeed retired, here's a career wrap-up post on Facebook detailing his accomplishments. [Editor's note: by Oct of 2018 its clear kane has NOT retired; the Apr 2018 statements were heat of the moment frustrations with the tour, as became evident later on in public forums and discussions].
• May 2018: Final season points are published and here's a link to the PRS facebook wrap-up post for the season.

• Sept 2016: First event of the year: still no Croft; his shoulder injury may be career-ending. Tons of "upsets" in the 32s, as the guys ranked 9-16 take a beating at the hand of players who don't play the tour as frequently. Franco, Zelada, McClellan, Collins, Mercado and Pratt all upset by lower ranked (but probably better) players. Long time player Alejandro Landa entered his first IRT tournament since the 2015 US Open and promptly beat #5 seed Jose Rojas in 3-straight; he then advanced past fellow upset winner Bredenbeck to make the semis as a #21 seed (the highest seeded player to make a semi since I started capturing seeds in 2010). It seems like every time Landa enters a tournament he upsets a ranked player and makes the quarters or semis.
• Sept 2016: Other start-of the season observations: the diversity on tour is starting to really show. Just four of the tour's top 10 players are now American-born; 4 from USA, 1 Canada, 2 Mexico, two from Columbia and one from Costa Rica. 9 of the next 10 ranked players are from the USA, but the real power on tour is slowly migrating south. This is no surprise; the rise of the WRT (which is heavily populated with Central and South american players) and the rise in popularity of the game in these countries will only continue to drive this trend.
• Oct 2016: en route to his title, Kane had an interesting and notable win over Andree Parrilla in the round of 16. The score line was 0,0,0, a rare triple donut on the pro tour, especially that deep into the main draw. Many observers noted the message being sent; Parrilla was one of the leading players on the WRT, the rival tour that had been growing in size and popularity, and some racquetball fans had started to equate the talent levels on the two tours. Kane seemed to be sending a message here to the young Parrilla (who had just turned 20 and was just out of juniors), and to those who questioned the relative talent levels of the two tours, with this beatdown.
• Oct 2016: Kane handily wins his 12th US Open (9th in a row) with a 2,2,6 win over #2 Rocky Carson. As noticed by Evan Pritchard at theracquetballblog, Sebastian Franco's quarterfinal appearance is the first time a South American has advanced to the quarters of a major tournament. Up and coming player Jake Bredenbeck had split the first two games with Daniel De La Rosa in their quarterfinal when he injured his shoulder diving, causing him to retire. Later that night though, he showed up in his Pro doubles match and played *left handed* ... even drive serving at some point. However the news on his shoulder is not good: he tore the labrum in his shoulder. He opted to rehab instead of going straight to surgery, so we may not see him on the tour for a while (he actually continued to play both IRT and WRT events left handed for months afterwards).
• Oct 2016: Relatively new touring pro and Maryland native Mauricio Zelada takes an offer to start working for Gearbox Racquetball in San Diego and abruptly quits the IRT. He finished 2015-16 season #12 with two quarter final appearances, but thanks to his involvement with Gearbox presumably will now exclusively play on the WRT. He also broke his contract with the IRTNetwork, which may have some longer term effects on the viability of that company to continue operating.
• Nov 2016: Landa strikes again: as a #15 seed he takes out #2 Seed Rocky Carson in a 2+ hour marathon match in Atlanta. Its just the third time that a #1 or #2 seed has lost a non-forfeit match in the round of 16 since 2010. Thanks to a compressed schedule for the tournament and the existence of doubles, Landa has just 90 minutes to rest before he plays his quarter final match (which he wins in 3 close games over Allen). He loses in 5 close games to De La Rosa in the Semis (who injures himself at the end of the 5th game and defaults the final), but all told he spends more than 8 HOURS on the court over the course of just 2.5 days, making the semis in singles and finals of doubles.
• Jan 2017: Kane cruises through the draw again and has won every event thus far on the season without dropping a game; he's 60-0 in 21 matches (one forfeit win).
• Mar 2017: Andree Parrilla makes the final of the Lombard event as a #14 seed; that's the lowest seed to make a final (not including the under-seeded returns of Kane from suspension in 2008 nor Alvaro from injury in 2010) since Derek Robinson's run to the finals as a #15 seed in Columbus 1998. Along the way he beat #3 seed De La Rosa in a 5-game stunner in the 16s, then got revenge against Alejandro Landa (who had beaten him the previous week in mexican Nationals). Then in a 2 hour marathon he took out #2 Carson, holding off rocky's late charge after jumping up big in the final game. In the final, Parrilla loses the first two quickly but pushes kane to 12-10 in the third game, falling in 3 straight but making an impression. The win jumps him from #14 to #10, just one slot ahead of Landa, whom he beat for the first time ever competitively en route to the finals.
• Mar 2017; one week after the Lombard event, Kane is a late withdrawl from the Ohio event due to flu-like symptoms. This makes for a wide open draw, with all four top seeds (Carson, Beltran, DLR and Rojas) having taken round of 16 upsets at some point this season. The tournament ended up with a first-time semi finalist (Canadian Samuel Murray) but more or less went chalk, with #1 seeded Rocky taking out #2 seeded DLR in the final. Kane's points lead afforded him this break; he need only win one more event this season to wrap up the title. However it moves Rocky to the #1 seed for the next tournament.
• May 2017: Kane Waselenchuk finishes the 2016-17 season Undefeated (29-0) but more importantly, he finishes the season without having lost a GAME (85-0 in the match database). Four times during the season he was stretched to a 12-10 game win, and had to mount a huge comeback in the semis of the final 2016-17 event (Jose Rojas was up 10-4 in game one of their semi finals) to set this record. Kane secures his 12th pro tour title in the process and does not look like he's slowing down anytime soon.
• May 2017: Season ending standings observations: the top 7 for the year are identical, in the same order, as last season's. In #8, Sebastian Franco just beat out Mario Mercado for the last protected seed. However, the 9-16 saw some significant movement and a number of new names that could shake up the tour in the coming years. Parrilla and Landa finished 10th and 12th respectively despite playing the IRT just part time. Horn finished 13th in his first year touring "full time," Samuel Murray finished 14th in a huge jump from last year, and Bredenbeck finished 16th despite missing half the season through a shoulder injury. All five of these players have posted significant wins over higher ranked players in the past couple of seasons, and it could make for a very deep tour if they can play full time in 2017-18.

• Sept 2015: Alvaro Beltran reportedly fined for playing in a competing tour event held by the WRT in his home town of Juarez Mexico. Given that nearly every regular player ranked outside the top 10 also plays WRT events, we wonder what the offical rule is with IRT players. I suspect the IRT is either top-8 or top-10 protected by non-compete contracts, similarly to the way that certain players can or cannot play in non Tier-1 events.
• Sept 2015: Ben Croft returns to the tour after rehabbing from a serious shoulder surgery and drops what he calls "a rehab start" game in the round of 16 to Felipe Camacho. Croft notes that he only was present at the event so as not to drop round of 16 points and was clearly not ready to play, having only even been on the court once prior to the event. Croft took to social media to call out Camacho as an "A player" as he apparently was smack-talking on the court during a match where Croft was clearly struggling. Camacho's best ever result on tour prior to this was likely a round-of-32 defeat of Mauro Rojas in Fresno 2015 and had never even come close to advancing past the round of 16 beforehand. Camacho eventually beat fellow upset winner Bradley Rogers in the quarters to advance to the semis for the first time of his career.
• Oct 2015: Waselenchuk wins an unheard of 11th US Open title in October, beating upset-minded Daniel De La Rosa in the final. Thanks to a rankings quirk, Kane entered the event seeded #2, which enabled De La Rosa to meet the #1 seeded Carson in the semis, where he prevailed in a barn-busting 12-10 5th. De La Rosa at age 23 is who many pundits believe may take over on tour, but he falters in the every next tournament, dropping a round of 16 match to Sebastian Franco (who then goes on to make his first career semi). De La Rosa struggles in the next few tournaments, losing in the quarters in Davison and then no-showing in Garden City. The US Open semis-loss is the second such upset loss in the season's sole major for Carson, who similarly was upset in the semis of the 2014 US Open, a loss that significantly hurt him at season's end (when he lost the points by just 32 points).
• Oct 2015: A number of regular player absences at the Atlanta event made for some weird seedings: #11th ranked Felipe Camacho was seeded 5th by virtue of Waselenchuk, Croft, and Marco Rojas missing the draw, and then Camacho getting the lucky seeding scramble. Other regulars on tour also missed the draw: Diaz and Fuhrman opted to play in the WRT event close to home. Thanks to the weakened draw, both DC-area native Mauricio Zelada and Matthew Majxner made a quarter final for the first time, each "upsetting" a player ranked slightly ahead of them at the time. Felipe Camacho also made the quarters in this tournament, with only Daniel De La Rosa facing a seeded tour player in his quarter final. This has turned into a game-changing season so far for Camacho.
• Nov 2015: Waselenchuk withdraws from Davison event with a shoulder injury, too late to re-make the draws so he gets yet another "loss by forfeit" instead of loss on the court. The main beneficiary is Brad Schopiery, who gets his career best result with a bye into the quarters, where he pounded Felipe Camacho to make the semis (previous career best: round of 16). The bigger news was the huge upset of Swain over Beltran in the round of 16, who then made shorter work of #6 seed Allen to make the semis at the ripe old age of 49. Fringe tour player Tom Fuhrmann opted to enter the competing WRT event instead of the IRT event, perhaps signifying a change in his playing status. Croft still MIA, nursing his surgically repaired shoulder.
• Nov 2015: Sebastian Franco is the next recipient of a gift into the semis as De La Rosa forfeits his round of 16 match in Garden City. This enables Franco to get an easy quarter final win over Scot McClellan to make his 2nd semis of the season. In the next event, yet another surprise early round loss from Alvaro Beltran (this time to Mario Mercado) paves the way for yet another of the tour's newer players to make their way into the later rounds for the first time. Mercado, who had never advanced beyond the round of 16, makes the semis in St. Louis. It seems like every week there's another first-timer in the semis this year, perhaps a sign that a changing of the guard is coming. Camacho, Franco, Schopiery, Swain, Mercado. Lots of surprises this year.
• Dec 2015: Ben Croft announces that he has to take the rest of the season off due to lingering issues with his off-season shoulder surgery. Croft has only played in 2 events and has fallen out of the top 8 at this point (he sits at #11 as of this writing), so (in his words) there's little incentive to continue to play to keep his protected ranking so he might as well shut it down for the season. He hopes to come back perhaps by the last event of the season.
• Mar 2016: Kane wins the Lombard, IL event and gives up a grand total of 19 points in four matches. Just a crazy show of dominance in the event. His Semi-final win over Alvaro 2,0,0 was "injury aided" but he dominated DLR in the final.
• Apr 2016: Kane withdraws from the Ohio event last minute due to a medical issue. Statement from the tour: "Top ranked Kane Waselenchuk pulls out of The 8th Annual Raising Some Racquet For Kids tournament in Ohio. After trying to battle through the pain, Kane was admitted into the hospital this morning for emergency incarcerated hernia surgery. We will keep you updated as information is released." Post at IRT-tour.com: http://www.irt-tour.com/kane-did-great/ . This injury clearly was still affecing him a month later at the Florida event, where he played a tough Bredenbeck opponent and had to retire in the 5th. This is troublesome for Kane, because in his absense Rocky picks up two tournament wins and, with two events back, Kane basically has to at least win one of them to guarantee the year end points title.
• May 2016: Sebastian Franco continues to make his mark on the tour; he's now made 4 semis and a quarter final this season after not ever advancing past the round of 16 in seasons' past. He entered the Florida event ranked 9th but easily handled the 8th ranked Camacho (himself also experiencing a big 2015-16 season) to advance. He also easily handled upstart Bredenbeck to make another semi. Franco may not quite have the points to put himself into the top 8, but he's proved that he can beat those guys in the 5-8 section of the rankings.
• May 2016: Faced with having to win one of the remaining two events, Kane cruises through the draw in Portland, showing a bit of rust but otherwise winning. In the final against De La Rosa, observers on irtnetwork.com's live feed noted that Kane looked like he was playing hurt and were postulating that he may very well forfeit the match after losing the first game 11-5. However, disagreement midway through the second game resulted with the two coming nose to nose on the court. This seemed to energize Kane, and he ended up stepping up his game (injury or not) from there out, taking the 2nd game and eventually the match (5),9,3,3. This win sealed Kane's 11th title thanks to Rocky's semis loss to De La Rosa. For good measure, Kane went on to take the season's final event the following weekend in Reseda, again beating DLR in the final to seal his latest dominant title.
• May 2016: final top 10 observations: De La Rosa finishes the season by making 4 of the last 5 finals, but it wasn't enough to get him past Rocky Carson for #2 on tour. However one has to think that the torch may have been passed in terms of who is the 2nd best player on tour.

highlights

• Three missed tournaments early in the season (plus a fourth tourney with a forfeit loss in the quarters) due to the same inner-ear condition that plagued him earlier in his career cost Kane Waselenchuk the #1 seed in tournaments starting in 2015 ... but more importantly, looked (at least for a bit) likely to cost him the #1 season end title. It did not look like there would be enough events in the year to make up for the third dropped event, giving Kane a huge dis-advantage over players like Rockey and Alvaro (who never miss an event). As late as May, Kane was still the #2 seed and #2 ranked (by a nominal amount of points). But according to points analysis, thanks to a late-season tourney addition, the last event of the season in Fresno ended up being a winner-take-all between Kane and Rocky; whoever wins, takes #1 for the season. Sure enough, Kane swept through the tournament w/o dropping a game and clinched his 10th #1 title. He was 42-1 on the season (his sole loss being a quarter final default in the Nov 2014 Kansas event), but more impressively he only lost TWO GAMES the entire season. He was 123-2 in games for the year; he dropped a game to Beltran in the semis of Sarasota, and he dropped one game to Rocky in the San Marcos final. Just an unbelievable show of dominance from the 10-time champ. Any question about who the greatest player to ever play this game should now be more than answered. Kane now has 10 titles, missed two seasons in his prime, and hasn't lost on the court in a non-injury situation in years. The better question for Kane might be whether he's defeated again before he retires.
• Long time part-time player Alejandro Landa burst onto the scene early, making the semis of the first two events that he played on the season, including the US Open. It remains to be seen of Landa will play more of the tour; he's never played more than half the events in a season but has multiple quarterfinal and semi final appearances. He was the highest seed, by far, to make a semi-final on the season (seeded 13th and 14th in his two runs).
• Beltran achives a #1 seed in the St. Louis event that immediately follows the US Open, by virtue of his briefly passing Rocky in the rankings and Kane skipping the event. With only 14 entries to the pro division, IRT commissioner Mannino and IRT staff member John Scott are forced to play to fill out the round of 16 draw. Entire pro draw will take place in just two days. Opportunistic players looking to gain valuable ranking points (to say nothing of prize money) must be kicking themselves at the missed opportunity.
• Long time tour player Chris Crowther missed an event for the first time since the 2005-6 season under rumors that his sponsor (E-Force) was no longer paying his travel expenses. This likely ends the effective career of Crowther on the pro tour, with his having spent the last decade in the top 10 (and mostly in the top 6). He played a couple of WRT events close to home, but his last match on tour looks to be a round of 16 forfeit to Swain in Davison. He still finished the tour ranked 12th despite missing the last half of the season.
• Top-10 player Tony Carson suddenly dropped off the tour in November 2014. Reportedly he stopped playing due to a combination of injury and work reasons. He's re-appeared at the end of the season, presumably healthy again, but he played only a handful of events afterwards (mostly in the mid-west, presumably drivable from his him in Colorado).
• Long time tour player Ben Croft underwent shoulder surgery in late April 2015, causing him to miss the events at the tail end of the season. Luckily he hadn't missed a tourney all year so he should maintain his top 8 ranking despite the injury. He was 5th on tour when he went under the knife and fell to 6th in the season-ending rankings. He returned for the first event of the new season.

highlights

• Kane continues his dominance on tour, winning his 9th title with a couple of tournaments to spare
• Kane's sole loss on the season was in the season opener to Jose Rojas, where he was hampered by an injury and lost in four. Rojas went on to take that tournament for his 2nd pro title.
• Kane wins the 2013 US Open, and in doing so wins his 71st pro title, breaking Cliff Swain's record of all time pro titles.
• Despite Kane's dominance on tour, thanks to missing two events early in the season he was actually seeded 2nd at the season's fifth event (Rocky was seeded first). Kane won that event and every event the rest of the way.
• Rocky and Alvaro continued their even-handed competition for the 2nd/3rd spot on tour, trading off spots in the final for most of the season. In the end, Rocky squeaked out the #2 spot for the season.
• The big riser for the year was Daniel De La Rosa, who finished the season comfortably 5th in the rankings playing the tour full time for the first time (the year prior he was in the top 10 despite missing half the events).
• Jansen Allen broke into the top 8 thanks to a consistent run of quarterfinals, but could not keep that lead going into the start of the next season (where he was seeded 9th in the opener, just missing out on the bye into the 16s.
• Legend Cliff Swain played just four events but finished 13th on tour thanks to becoming the 2nd oldest player ever to make a pro semi final in his father's memorial Red Swain event in November 2013.
• Charlie Pratt had a career best (to that point) semi-final appearance in Florida in early 2014; this helped push him to an 11th place finish on tour, putting him back in the top-10 periphery where he had resided from 2009-2011.

highlights

• Kane wins his 11th straight "Major" in October, and collects his 8th US Open title.
• Kane wins his 12th straight "Major" in May, finishing off a 41-1 season.
• Kane's sole loss on the season was an injury forfeit loss in the final of the March 2013 Denver event.
• Alex Ackermann and Daniel De La Rosa have major runs at the US Open, which assists both of them to top10 or near top 10 season-ending rankings.
• Ruben Gonzalez plays his final pro tournament at the US Open in October, losing in the 32s but still ranked #16.
• Tony Carson breaks into top 8 at the expense of Andy Hawthorne in Nov, finishes 7th on the season.
• New Jersey Open missing Kane (knee injury recovery), Croft (getting married), Pratt (ankle injury). Allows surprise semifinalist Nick Montalano. Montalbano's career best showing prior to this was making three main draws (losses in rounds of 16).
• There was some rumors of Kane's possibly losing the season-ending title by virtue of missing too many events, which was partly due to Rocky's having earned more cumulative season points by the time the last event had rolled around. This turned out to be baseless; the rules on the tour allow the dropping of two events, which in Kane's case were two missed events due to injury. In reality the only way Kane would have been in jeopardy is if he missed the season-ending event.

highlights

• Kane featured in nytimes article http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/14/sports/self-taught-racquetball-player-kane-waselenchuk-in-a-class-by-himself.html
• Kane fft in NYC pro am final ends a streak of 134 (137?) on-court wins
• Kane's injury causes him to miss the next two events, which were subsequently won by first time winners Ben Croft and Jose Rojas. Rojas win over Beltran extends his own futility in finals to 1-20.
• Ruben's farewall tour, failing to make the top 10.
• Rojas ' climb up the rankings; finishing 3rd on tour.
• Sudsy returns and plays a few events.
• Vanderson announces retirement at the end of the season; he continues to play most of the events in 2012-13 though, still finishing in the top 10 on tour.
• Beltran returns in earnest to the tour, making four finals, finishing the year 5th but probably supplanting Rocky Carson as the 2nd best player on tour with several head-to-head wins towards the end of the year.

• Kane Waselenchuk completes his third straight dominant tour victory, winning 12 of the 13 tournaments he entered and with a 52-1 match record (his lone loss a semi-finals forfeit to Huczek in NYC in January 2011), and extends his personal streak of matches won on the court (i.e., not counting forfeits) to well over 100. The real news of this season follows...
• The 2010-11 season marks an interesting transition for the tour, and Racquetball in general. This is the first season in years without the major sponsors of Verizon, Motorola or Choice Hotels. The US Open, a staple for 15 years in Memphis with marquee host club The Racquet Club, has moved to Minneapolis. And, after being held at the Downtown YMCA in Houston for 28 straight years (every year since 1983), USAR national singles is moving to a new site. The 2011 National event will be held in Fullerton, California and will be combined with a Pro event called "Ektelon National Singles," marking a new era for the two marquee events on everyone's racquetball Calendar.
• On the IRT side, 2010-11 marks the first new season under new leadership. Mannino's first order of business was to implement some rule changes designed to address fan concerns about pace of play and player behavior. However, the re-introduction of 2-serves to the pro game marks a seismic shift in player strategy. And, the first three events of the season the impact of this new 2-serve rule was evident. Power players and heavy drive servers were experiencing better success than the control players. Chris Crowther made the final of the 2nd event of the season despite having advanced past the quarters in exactly one tournament in over 100 attempts previous and was ranked 5th on tour after languishing for years on the periphery of the top 10. Ben Croft made the semis of the first three events, catapulting him to the #2 ranking on tour after the US Open and resulting in a #1 seed in the 2010 Corona Open draw when Waselenchuk skipped the tournament to nurse an injury (coincidentally, the first time in the history of the tour that a #1 seed in a pro draw did not have a previous tournament win). And, Mitch Williams had two semis appearances (and one injury fft) despite himself only ever advancing past the quarters twice in 70 pro tournaments prior to this season.
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• Meanwhile, the control players on tour struggled to keep up. Huczek dropped out of the top 4 rankings within the first three events for the first time in a decade. Vanderson struggled in the early parts of the season and (making matters even worse for Shane) he was forced out of the US Open to deal with a horrible family tragedy, missing out on valuable rankings points (and prize money) at the worst possible time. Carson made two of the first four finals of the season ... but was upset in the round of 16 at the US Open and in the quarters of the Cali Major, costing him major tourney points that are sure to be felt at the end of the season. Beltran (whose game isn't necessarily a control or a power game) slowly worked his way back from an injury that basically cost him the entire 2009-10 season, making the finals of the US Open and putting himself on track to regain top-4 status.
• Injuries and absences on tour started to add up. For the 2nd time in two seasons Mitch Williams had to retire from a match with an arm injury. This time, it cost him a finals spot in the US Open and resulted in a labrum tear (or was it a dislocated shoulder?) keeping him out for 4-6 weeks. After a setback during rehab, he retired from the tour effective 1/31/11. Meanwhile, Alvaro Beltran's attempt to return from a season-ending knee injury in 2010 saw him make a couple of finals earlier in the season, but he re-injured the knee and (apparently) had a second operation, costing him the bulk of the 2010 -11 season. He returned for the final event of the season still maintaining the #10 ranking, but at age 32 and being right at the typical age that pro racquetball players retire anyway, Beltran may be done on tour.
• Speaking retirements, Jack Huczek suddenly announced his retirement from the pro tour on 5/24/11. Huczek has finished his MBA from Oakland University and has taken a job with Ericsson. Rumors persisted about a disagreement between Huczek and tour management, which would be a shame if true b/c Jack retires essentially in his prime.
• The intended effect of the 2-serve rule has yet to affect the consensus #1 player, who continued his unbeaten streak into its third season. But Kane was dropping games in the early part of the season. The 2-serve rule allows power players such as Crowther and Croft to control sections of the match with the serve and gain traction towards taking games off of Kane. However, Kane himself has a fantastic drive serve to right-hander's backhands that can be lethal as well.
• Up and coming players for the season were led by Charlie Pratt, who made 5 quarterfinals on the year without ever having made one previously. Pratt suffered an upset though at the season ending event at the hands of another rising junior, Taylor Knoth, who reached the quarters of the Ektelon Nationals. Tony Carson got some marquee wins and made four quarter finals this season, including at the season's ending grand slam. Jose Rojas' first full season on tour saw him reach a couple of semis and consistently place at least in the quarter finals, and he had reached the #5 ranking by the end of the season. Finally Anthony Herrera made a quarter final for the first time in his career.
• Heading into the 2011-12 season, the pro tour may face a crisis of a different order. There's so little money on tour that there is barely a "tour" at all. With Williams, Huczek and possibly Beltran retiring, there may be barely enough guys regularly touring to fill out the top 8 seeds at each tournament.

If his 2009 title (while going 49-1 on tour) was considered "dominant," then there's no other way to describe his 2010 title other than "other-worldly." Kane won all 8 of the tournaments he entered (he missed one event mid-season due to the flu), ended the season in the middle of a 58-match winning streak (easily the best ever seen on tour), and ends this season having won the last 14 touranments he has entered. However, the most astonishing accomplishment of the season was his "games" won-lost record. He finishes the season a perfect 34-0 but was 102-3 in games. He only lost three GAMES all season. There is not much room for improvement on Kane's season.

In other tour news, It was a tough year on the tour's players from an injury standpoint. Alvaro Beltran missed basically the entire year after tearing knee ligaments just before the season started. He made just one appearance; making the semis in the season's last event in his home country in Tijuana. Mitch Williams suffered a partially torn labrum in his hitting shoulder but only missed one tournament because of lucky scheduling. Jack Huczek started the season as a model of consistency, becoming the beaten finalist in each of the first 6 tourneys before suffering a lingering right quadriceps injury that cost him his competitiveness for the rest of the season. Ben Croft served a 3-tournament suspension at the beginning of the season for events stemming from an on-court incident with Chris Crowther late last season but roared back to make the semis of the US Open in his return. He also made his first final of his career and finished 6th in the year end rankings. Jason Mannino ended a 15-year touring career by being appointed the new commissioner of the tour and winning the one event that Waselenchuk missed. And lastly Jose Rojas played 6 of the 9 events on the year, made two quarterfinals and broke into the top 10 for the first time.

After a two year absense from the tour, 3-time pro champion Kane Waselenchuk made his return at the season opening 2008 Motorola IRT World Championships in Denver. Having absoloutely zero rankings points he was forced to qualify for a number of events at the beginning of the season, leading to discussions about whether in the future a "protected" ranking should be used for players who have laid off the tour for injury or other reasons (the ATP Tennis tour uses such a system for 6-month or greater injury layoffs for its players and creates an artificial ranking for such players for their first few tournaments back. However, the situation arises so rarely in Racquetball that a policy change may be deemed unnecessary).

Kane won his first three tournaments back and was undefeated half way through the season before Alvaro Beltran beat him in the semis in January 2009's California Open. This loss would prove to be the ONLY loss of the season for Kane, who finished the year by sweeping the tour's three Majors, winning 10 of the 11 tournaments he entered, and compiling an astounding 49-1 record for the season. Statistically speaking, this was the greatest season ever (surpassing Marty Hogan's 44-1 record in 1977). Kane completes the season easily winning his fourth Pro title at the age of 27 and starts discussions about whether or not "King" Kane can surpass Cliff's 6 titles.

Kane also reached a number of interesting landmarks. His 24-match winning streak to end the season is one of the tour's longest in recent memory (though not close to Hogans' 54-match winning streak in the 76-77 season). He pushed his career W/L Percentage to .847, surpassing (for the time being) Hogan's long standing career mark in known sanctioned Pro events. He swept the three major tournaments (the first time that had happened since he himself performed the feat in 2004-5). And he had even veteran players wondering if he had any competitors that could stand in his way of 3-4 more titles in a row.

From the onset, the 2007-8 season looked as if it would be a statement season by Huczek. He had won his first title the prior season had won most of the tournaments he had entered. The tour's other top competitors had the summer to consider their games and how to adjust to a suddenly dominant-looking Huczek. Kane was still suspended and no one knew if he would ever return. Were we about to see a significant shift away from the power games of the tour's more recent dominators? It seemed so: all four of the tour's top players were less pure "power" players and relied more on finesse and athleticism. It seemed like a Yellen-esque transition away from the power game of the early 80s.

The tour was jolted at the season opening Motorola 2007 World Racquetball Championships in Denver. This was the first event of the season and was a new Grand Slam tiered event. Some people complained about having such an important points event so early in the season, and in a high-altitude city to boot (however; Tennis has always started its season with the Australian Open; so having a major event early on is not unprecedented in a racquet sport pro circuit . Players who stayed in better shape or who were used to playing at altitude had the advantage. Sure enough, for the first time in recorded pro tour history the #1 and #2 seeds were ousted in the round-of-16. Through expiring points, Mannino actually entered the season ranked #1 and lost to Polo Gutierrez 11-8 in the fifth while Huczek fell in 4 games to veteran journeyman Javier Moreno. The door was opened and #3 Rocky Carson took advantage, winning the Grand Slam event and taking a commanding points lead over his closest rivals.

The season devolved more or less to be the Rocky-Jack show. Of the tour's remaining 13 events that year, Rocky and Jack met in the finals no less than 10 times. Rocky took 6 of those 10 meetings, the most important of which was at the US Open in October. By winning the season's first two majors and consistently reaching the finals, Rocky was able to open up a slight gap over his rival and eventually clinch the title prior to the season ending Pro Nationals. The season was cruel to Huczek, who after his season opening loss made EVERY tournament final the rest of the way. It wasn't enough. Eyewitnesses reported that Rocky had "figured out" Jack's game at Memphis; while the stats don't necessarily show this, Rocky definitely held the upper hand and never seemed like he was going to relinquish the title all season.

The racquetball world is shocked when 3-time defending pro tour champion Waselenchuk tests positive for banned substances and is suspended from competing for two years. This suspension gives the tour's top players (Huczek, Mannino, Carson and Beltran) renewed hope for a #1 ranking. Jack Huczek, who nearly pipped Kane for the 2005-6 crown, took control of the tour early by winning the first four events. However, at the season's first Grand Slam Huczek was upset in the semis and Mannino took the crown and significant points burst.

Mannino kept the pressure on Jack, winning 2 of the next 5 events, but as the season wound down Huczek found his rhythm and pulled away. Mannino suffered a couple of quarterfinal losses later in the season that cost him the points needed to challenge Jack for the title. At the season ending grand slam Pro Nationals event, Huczek beat Jason in the final and took the title by about 150 rankings points. Jack finishes the season winning 9 of 13 events but splitting the two majors with Mannino, who finishes second. The season also demonstrates the gulf in talent between the top four players and the rest of the tour; only 8 of the season's 52 semi finalists were not from the top four.

Amateur/IRA champs pre 1974 (per USRA website)