Friday March 29th, 2024
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Egypt’s Raneem El Welily and Mohamed Abouelghar Take Home the China Squash Open

Another day, another couple of squash titles.

Staff Writer

In some smashing news this fine September day, world number 2 Raneem El Welily won the China Squash Open for the second time in her career by defeating France’s Camille Serme in the final by 3 sets to 1, according to Kingfut.

“I’m very happy that I’m through, it’s always good to play against Camille, she’s very fair on court and I really enjoy playing with her. I’ve won this tournament here before and done so badly afterwards in a previous season, so I’m just happy with the win for now, I’m not thinking about anything else. The plan this season is to take it one match at a time, one point at a time and one rally at a time. Hopefully I can play this well again this season, I’ve got to play harder to improve and work on new stuff,” she told PSA World Tour.

Mohamed Abouelghar, on the other hand, won the biggest PSA Tour Title of his career by defeating world number 10 Paul Coll by 3 sets to none. The biggest surprise however came in the quarter-finals as Abouelghar, a major underdog in this fixture, beat former world number 1 Gregory Gaultier in what has become the most important win in the 24-year-old Egyptian’s career.

Speaking to PSA World Tour after the final, an ecstatic Mohamed Abouelghar said: “It’s the biggest title for me so far and maybe it’s my lucky place, so I want to thank everyone involved. Being able to back up yesterday’s win after the win over Greg and to win today in three games against such an athlete is just incredible for me.”

I expected before the match that it was going to be hard work, and if I wanted to have any chance against Paul I had to be patient and not go for shots as often as I would like I think when I was sharp when I went short and I’m happy that it paid off. Not many people get the chance to travel all over the world doing the thing they love so I’m just happy to be one of these people. I’ll just enjoy every minute and the results will take care of themselves.

Egyptians are truly a phenomenon in squash; as of today, six out of the top 10 men and four out of the top 10 women in the sport are Egyptian. There really must be something in the air.

Main image from PSA World Tours