A capacity crowd was entertained with top squash in two very different finals on Friday night at the Pretoria Country Club.
The ladies final was a tense and emotional affair with lots of contact, lets, strokes and arguing about the referee’s calls. In between the two ladies played great squash. Nouran el Torky took the first game but in the next two she didn’t have answers to Nadine Shahin’s clever variations. Shahin sent her all over the court and used her cross court drop to great effect.
El Torky wasn’t going to take it lying down and fought back to take the match to a decider with a narrow 14-12 win in the 4th. Typical of the evening the last game produced 3 “no let” calls in the first 5 points. El Torky made too many mistakes and hit a few loose shots from which Shahin took full advantage with her killer volleys and drops to close out the match 11-5.
Taking into account that she is only 16, Shahin delivered a commendable performance. The final score was 9/11,11/7,11/6,12/14,11/5.
In the men’s final 3rd seeded Englishman Tom Ford took on 4th seeded Muhammad Saqib Yousaf from Pakistan. Yousaf started strongly and went up 6-0 before hitting 2 tins to give Ford his first points. The strong contingent of Pakistani supporters were however soon quiet as Ford took a grip on the game that he never relinquished until the end. With patient lengths setting up unplayable drop shots and excellent movement to every corner of the court, Ford started outplaying Yousaf.
In the third Yousaf had a brief period where it seemed he could make a comeback but the patience game seemed to be unsuited to his preferred shot playing style. Ford won the match in 38 minutes, less than half the time it took him to beat local player Thoboki Mohohlo in the quarter finals. It was also a welcome change from earlier in the evening that the match had minimum instances of interference, with both players moving well to and away from the ball.
The final score was 11/8,11/5,11/6.
In the A section tournament Andrew Martin beat Jason Kershaw 14/12, 11/6, 13/11 in the final, with Lawrence Kuhn coming 3rd. Sachika Ingale beat Karen Schultz in the ladies A section final 11/5, 5/11,11/8, 6/11, 13/11.
Full results:
