Weymuller Quarters Update: Late-Game Rallies Drive El-Weleily Past King  
by Rob Dinerman

Dateline October 4th --- Trailing 6-4 in the opening game against an opponent who had nearly beaten her in the same venue the year before, third-seeded Raneem El Weleily embarked on a 10-0 run and similarly rallied from mid-game deficits in each of the two ensuing games as well en route to an 11-6, 7 and 9 victory Friday night over fifth seed Joelle King in the quarterfinal round of the 40th annual Carol Weymuller Open at the Heights Casino Club in Brooklyn. El Weleily, who recorded her first career Gold-level WSA tournament win here in 2011 and climbed out of a two-games-to-love hole to defeat King, 13-11 in the fifth on her way to a runner-up finish last year, will now face top seed Nicol David, a convincing victor this evening over Dipika Pallikal, in what should be a memorable top-half semifinal Saturday afternoon.

    King, who straight-gamed El Weleily's Egyptian compatriot Omneya Abdel Kawy in the round of 16, played perhaps her best squash of the match tonight in charging from 1-4 to 6-4 in that first game. She was making a noticeable effort to force the pace, cutting the ball off in mid-court, getting very low to create greater leverage (no small feat given her above-average height) and aggressively pounding low, hard drives off both flanks. But at this juncture, and just as she appeared ready to seize that game, her spurt was abruptly truncated by four consecutive tins that gave a reprieved El Weleily enough of a cushion to nail a pair of winners, following which a shaken King hit a ball back at herself in mid-court for a game-ending stroke call.

   Deflated by both the fact and the manner in which that game had swiftly slipped out of her grasp, King then yielded the opening three points of the second as well before an El Weleily error got King back on the scoreboard. The New Zealander then ran off a few more points, eventually taking the lead at 6-5, only to again succumb to a sequence of her tins and El Weleily winners that accounted for a pair of three-point El Weleily skeins sandwiching one El Weleily tin for 6-1 overall and a two games to love lead. The hot court (caused mostly by the unseasonably warm weather conditions in New York this entire week, with temperatures hovering in the high 70's) and consequently lively ball may have played a role in some of the tins, as it was difficult to make a ball sit down without cutting one's shot very fine. In King's case, this dynamic had to have been compounded by an awareness both of how well El Weleily was moving and how dangerous she can be as a counter-puncher when pouncing upon a loose ball up front.

   King courageously bootstrapped herself to leads of 7-4 and then 9-8 in the third game, though she never really looked like she was in control of the play. El Weleily for the third straight end-game then asserted herself, hitting a sweet forehand straight drop winner off a King backhand working boast, then gluing a forehand drive so tightly on the right wall that King's response drifted just out of court. The shot that converted the ensuing match-ball was pure genius, a look-away backhand cross-drop that no one in the arena, including King, could possibly have seen coming. El Weleily shaped her stroke as if she would be driving the ball down the left wall before instead gently nestling it into the front-right nick, a dramatic calling-card flourish if there ever was one that caused a flatfooted King to smile in rueful admiration as she shook her conqueror's hand while the spectators loudly applauded what they had just been privileged to have witnessed. The execution of that last salvo was flawless but it was the selection rather than the execution that made it truly special, and all the more so for coming with the score at 10-9 and the outcome of the game still very much in play.