ToC Wednesday First-Round Focus: Hana Moataz Rallies Past Lucy Turmel by Rob Dinerman
Dateline January 19, 2023---
Trailing two games to love after losing the second game in
disheartening fashion by failing to convert a pair of game-ball
opportunities, PSA tour rookie Hana Moataz resolutely bootstrapped her
way to an 8-11, 11-13, 11-8, 11-7, 11-4 victory over Lucy Turmel
Wednesday evening on the opening night of the 2023 Tournament of
Champions before an enthusiastic crowd at the New York Athletic Club.
It was the only five-game match of the round-of-64 in the women’s draw.
Moataz’s second-round opponent Friday evening will be Melissa Alves, a
straight-game winner over Grace Gear in the match that immediately
followed Moataz-Turmel.
Throughout the first four games, the difference between Moataz and
Turmel was almost indecipherable, not more than an extra tin here or
nick there sprinkled throughout games that were characterized
throughout by long, all-court and attritional exchanges, with neither
player able to establish a significant lead and every point devolving
into a battle for leverage and court positioning. Turmel had hit
several winners on well-disguised backhand working-boasts late on the
second game (including on the final point), but Moataz took that option
away during the last three games by tightening up her drives down the
left wall and increasingly pinning Turmel deep in the court.
A former two-time (in 2020 and 2022) Intercollegiate Individuals
finalist and captain of the 2022 Harvard women’s team that won the
national team championship last winter, Moataz gradually wrested
control of the play as the match progressed and fully asserted herself
in the fifth game, ripping backhand cross-courts past an increasingly
fatigued Turmel and pouncing on every loose ball in an exhilarating
sprint to the finish line. It will be interesting to see if Moataz can
continue that momentum in her upcoming match against Alves, another Ivy
League alumna and a member of the University of Pennsylvania team that
won the 2015 Ivy League pennant.
