Mohamed Elshorbagy Is Sky Open Champion by Howard Harding 24 November 2013
- Mohamed Elshorbagy collected his second PSA World Tour title in eight
days - and established a career-best 10-match winning streak - when he
upset top-seeded Egyptian compatriot Karim Darwish in the final of the
Banque Misr Sky Open, the PSA International 50 squash event at the Sky
Resort in New Cairo, Egypt.
Ranked six in the
world, Elshorbagy is enjoying the form of his life: Last week in Doha,
the 22-year-old from Alexandria captured his first PSA World Series
title at the Qatar Classic - again defying the world rankings by
beating world No 5 Darwish en-route to the final.
Elshorbagy (pictured
above in Sky action with Darwish) went into the final 3-9 down to
Darwish on a career head-to-head tally over the past four years - but
had only dropped a single game in his three wins over the former world
No 1 from Cairo.
And the young
pretender clearly took full advantage of Darwish's demanding route to
the final, which had included two five-game marathons in which the
32-year-old had had to recover from two games down.
Darwish had no answer
to the youngster's pressure as Elshorbagy romped to an 11-2, 11-7, 11-8
victory in 43 minutes to win the seventh Tour title of his career.
"I had to be very
focused from the very first point today as I knew if this gets very
tough I could be in trouble mentally as I could feel last night I was
tired mentally," Elshorbagy told www.squashsite.com later.
"After winning the
first game I knew he would give it a big push in the second as we both
know there was no way today he could come back from 2/0 down as
physically it would have been close to impossible after the amount of
hard matches he had.
"So after the few long
rallies we had in the second I knew that was good for me and I started
going short more at the end of the second and I could feel he was
struggling to move there because I could feel he was tired.
"I am just very happy I could back up after Qatar and the worlds."
RESULTS: PSA International 50 Banque Misr Sky Open, New Cairo, Egypt
