World No 1 El Sherbini Wins 2017 Weymuller Open
by Linda Elriani

October 23, 2017













photos courtesy Kelley A. Holmgren

Hi Everyone,

Today was the final day of our 2017 Carol Weymuller Open. It's been a tremendous week of squash and the PSA players have definitely left everyone inspired and motivated. The tournament is obviously named after Carol Weymuller herself. Carol started the junior squash program here at The Heights Casino many years back with her late husband Fred, and it has obviously grown and expanded along with the sport. We always like to thank Carol for all her hard work and dedication back at the start, as we wouldn't be where we are today with our program if she had not been forward thinking enough to develop squash in this area.

At 7.30pm the bleachers were packed with eager members, anticipating the outcome. Our 2017 finalists were Joelle King from New Zealand. She is the 2015 Carol Weymuller finalist and current world # 10 playing against Nour El Sherbini from Egypt, who is the world champion, defending Carol Weymuller Champion and world #1. Both players looked bouncy and eager to go on knowing this was their last huge effort after a very successful and tiring week at the Weymuller.

Nour and Joelle will go off to other countries to play other tournaments soon. For the rest of 2017 they will both be competing in Hong Kong, Saudi Arabia, the World Championships in Manchester. Their next big PSA event of 2018 will be back in NYC for the TOC in Grand Central Station in mid January, so we are lucky to all these amazing players back in the city in the near future.

In the head to head Nour is 5-1 up, but both players have had plenty of experience in finals. Joelle has played 20 finals and she won 10 of them and Nour has been in 22 finals and has won 11 of them!

This match was going to be particularly interesting as both players, whilst very much on-form, play with quite different styles. Joelle like to plays a pretty fast, precise and attacking game, stepping forward on the court and has more traditional tactics of cutting the ball off around the T. Nour varies the pace and goes short whenever possible with wonderful creative shots whenever she feels there is a apace open on the court. She tries to twist and turn her opponent and take away their rhythm. Who was going to manage to force their game plan over the other? We'd soon find out!!!!

Literally the only part of the match that Nour looked a little tentative was the first 4 points and then her total brilliance kicked in! Nour went from 3-1 down to 7-3 and even though Joelle tried incredibly hard to take the T it was so difficult as Nour was hitting all her targets so well and relentlessly. Joelle could see a little bit of light at the end of the first game and managed to squeeze back 4 points with the help of a couple of errors from  Nour, but Nour still took the first game 11/7.

In the second Nour was flawless and was 5-0 up before we knew it! Joelle wasn’t really doing anything wrong, it was just that Nour was so awesome and seemed to be getting better by the minute! Nour’s shot choices were creative and accurate and she certainly wowed the crowd with her wizardry. Nearer the end of the game there was one particular rally that was very impressive and long, with Joelle mostly in control, but Nour kept getting every ball back! It was as if Joelle should have won the rally as least 3 times before she finally did and Nour ended up on the floor from her huge efforts to stay in the rally. It left me feeling that this is the amount of work that Joelle has to put in today if she is going to have a chance to beat Nour, and it didn’t look as though today Joelle quite had that in her. Joelle worked so hard yesterday and played so incredibly well that it is hard to back it up the next day against the world’s best player! Nour went on to win the second 11/5.

In the third Nour just dominated. Joelle made a few errors but Nour was just plan amazing. She was so focused and calm and really looked to be in her zone. Joelle kept trying to break Nour’s rhythm but to no avail, Nour just steam trained through to take the final game 11/3, making history at the same time, being the first player to ever win the Carol Weymuller three times in a row!!!

Nour El Sherbini beat Joelle King 3-0…11/7, 11/5, 11/3 in 33 minutes.


After the final I interviewed the very happy Nour. She said "I think it’s my best match since I’ve been in the US for the last 2 weeks. My shot s were working, I was moving well and I was thinking not to finish everything too quickly. I felt confident going for my shots. I think it was my day!! Joelle has been killing it the last 2 weeks. I think that she has beaten most the top 5 now, Nour, Raneem, Nicol, Laura, everyone! I’m glad it wasn’t my turn! Thank you and see you next year!

A slightly disappointed Joelle said “With Nour you just have to blind on. I wasn’t seeing the ball quite as sharp and my decision making was not quite as crisp and I was kind of behind the whole way, maybe it was a bit of fatigue. But credit to her, she just did not give me anything and played great squash. The last six weeks have been amazing. It’s been a great block. A couple of weeks of training and then onto Hong Kong!”
 

I'd like to say a HUGE thank you to some key people who have put a lot of time, effort and generosity into making this tournament what it is.

Firstly our corporate sponsors Corcoran, who generously support us year after year (15th year this year!) and help so much towards the prize fund and Leslie Marshall for helping us with this.

To Lassen and Hennigs who very generously provided a wonderful spread
of breakfast food for our players each day. It's very much appreciated and enjoyed!

To Five Acre Farms for providing delicious organic food and drink this week. It's been a pleasure to sample it all!

To Euphebe for providing us with their delicious food on Thursday and Friday at the matches.

To Key Food for providing the tournament with sports drinks all week and keeping everyone hydrated and energized!

To all our amazing members who bought tickets for the quarters, semis and finals which contributed towards the prize fund. We wouldn't have a tournament if we didn't have this incredible support. We had such a great entry yet again and the matches were so strong and of such high caliber all the way through from the qualification to the final.

To all the PSA players for choosing to come and play our event and for playing such beautiful squash and inspiring all of us, especially our juniors, and taking the time to get on court with them at the Play a Pro. Their sportsmanship this week has been remarkable and they are true credit our sport.

To all our members who opened up their homes to house the PSA players and to Clare Bradshaw who excellently organized the housing of all the players. The PSA players seem to love the warm hospitality that our members give to them.

To all the social media that put up my reports and Jean (and Kelley’s) amazing photos so quickly and brilliantly every day.

To Will Bunn, our adult squash chair for all his support throughout the Weymuller and this new squash year.

To Mary Lou Bunn and Eliza Alsop for co-chairing of the Weymuller for the first time this year. They did a tremendous job and ran an amazing Weymuller@Lunch and a fantastically fun Weymuller@Dinner.

To Paulina Rojek, our media manager, for working so hard and taking care of the Weymuller facebook, instagram and tweeting.

To Nate Chura, tennis pro and reporter, who did some wonderful YouTube interviews during the Weymuller with the PSA players.

To Rita Lascaro for her expert help with our tournament materials.

To Jean Ervasti who is our amazing Weymuller photographer. Jean takes such wonderful photos and we appreciate her taking the time to do this for us (and the late nights she had to entail to do so!) and providing the rest of the world with wonderful mementos of the action here this week and to Kelley Holmgren for her fantastic photos on the couple of nights that Jean couldn’t join us.

To Mike Riley and Jamshed Gul Khan for all their refereeing throughout the week. We really appreciate all your time, efforts and dedication with our event.

To Alberto, our tournament DJ, who is did all our music at the Weymuller, by the courts. He did a wonderful job and it was so much fun and adds such a great vibe to the tournament.

Then last but certainly not least, Cristian, Flor, Dani, Jayson, Carson, both Franks , Shakespeare,  Zhanna, Christy and the list goes on and on. Our Heights Casino staff is an amazing team, who are all dedicated people, who all pull together and make every event we run here a success. Thanks SO much.
 

Thanks again and we hope you all enjoyed the 2017 Carol Weymuller Open as much as we did and we look forward to running it again next year.

Congratulations again to Nour El Sherbini and good luck to all the PSA players for their next tournaments and beyond!

Linda