Sobhy Stages Major Comeback to Knock Off El Sherbini and Qualify into Women's TOC Main Draw by Rob Dinerman Dateline January 19th
--- Trailing 2-0, 7-3 against a world-class opponent and 2013 British
Open finalist who already had engineered 11-point and 7-point runs
against her and appeared to have victory well in hand, Harvard junior
Amanda Sobhy determinedly embarked on an 8-1 game-ending skein of her
own and emphatically made that reversal stick by surging to an
inspiring 6-11 10-12 11-8 11-6 11-5 victory over Nour El Sherbini
Sunday afternoon at the Princeton Club in the final women's qualifying
round of the 2014 Tournament Of Champions in mid-town Manhattan. Nearly
all of Sobhy's two-time defending Howe Cup champion Crimson teammates
were on hand to cheer their star player on and she responded with a
scintillating display of power, speed and creativity as she forcibly
pressed her advantage during the final few games.
As noted, it was El Sherbini, making her return to tournament play
after an extended recuperative lay-off, who played at the higher level
early on, especially in running out the first game from 4-6 and moving
to a 4-0 lead in the second. She was lacing the ball down both walls,
then babying drop shots into the nick, while Sobhy, irked at the way
that first game slipped away, committed a number of tins. She spent
much of the second game trying to make up the early deficit, finally
evening the score at 10-all, but on the ensuing point, a frantic
cat-and-mouse exchange at the front-left part of the court, she slashed
a forehand right back at herself which she was unable to avoid,
following which she was wrong-footed by an El Sherbini backhand that
whistled past her and died in back.
Relieved at having repulsed Sobhy's late-game salvo and thereby amassed
a two games to love lead, El Sherbini raced out to a 5-0 score in the
third. She was moving beautifully, showing no signs of the leg issues
that have occasionally plagued her in the past, and her bold volleying
thrusts were adding to her point total and, importantly, taking the
pro-Sobhy crowd out of the game.
The turnaround began innocently enough, with a Sobhy forehand straight
drop. The next three points saw a number of difficult El Sherbini
retrievals that extended the rallies (all of which nevertheless wound
up in Sobhy's column) but exacted an increasing price in fatigue and
exertion, and, when Sobhy completed her charge through that game with a
nick-finding drop shot at 10-8 (punctuated by a clenched fist and a
self-exhorting yell), it was clear to everyone in attendance that El
Sherbini, though still ahead two games to one, was in very deep trouble.
To El Sherbini's credit, she played both valiantly and at a highly
praiseworthy level throughout the fourth and fifth games, never giving
up even as the score mounted inexorably against her and always pressing
the action whenever she could. The extraordinary effort expended by
both players was night-and-day different from the prior match, in which
an out-of-sorts Dipika Pallikal, looking like she would have preferred
to have been somewhere else, moped her way to a decisive loss to Annie
Au. That El Sherbini still lost the last two games by convincing
margins was totally due to the consistent brilliance of Sobhy's
production. She was carrying the play throughout, hitting the ball too
hard, too precisely and, most relevantly, too EARLY for El Sherbini to
do anything but scramble and react, and the combination of severe
cross-courts, sharply-angled working boasts (whose effectiveness,
abetted by the slow front wall of the host club, was requiring El
Sherbini to be fully stretched out in her retrievals) and nervy drop
shots continued to throw points onto the pile. Sobhy's most notable
improvement has been in her quickness to the ball and her overall match
fitness. By the end (a dead-nick forehand straight-drop), Sobhy's
Harvard teammates were at full vocal throttle, but this return to the
competitive arena for El Sherbini may well prove to be a painful but
necessary and ultimately beneficial stepping stone to great
accomplishments in the near future and a return to the top tier of the
WSA circuit.
