Massaro Beats El Welily, El Sherbini Over Gohar to Set Women's World Championship Final by Sean Reuthe photos PSA
April 29, 2016 -
The top two players in Women’s squash, World No.1 Laura Massaro and
World No.2 Nour El Sherbini, will go head-to-head for the Naza PSA
Women’s World Championship crown after semi-final victories over Raneem
El Welily and Nouran Gohar, respectively, in Bukit Jalil, Malaysia set
up a repeat of the 2013 World Championship final - where Massaro won
her maiden World Championship title.
Massaro’s clash with El
Welily saw the lead change hands multiple times throughout a
tightly-contested fixture, with neither player being able to maintain
their momentum when they were on top. Massaro eased to the opener in
comfortable style, before El Welily levelled in the second and almost
took the third, but surrendered a five-point lead to hand Massaro the
initiative.
A blistering start to the fourth from El Welily
brought the match back to all square once more but Massaro again took
the reigns in the fifth to amass four match balls. El Welily fought
back to send the match to a tie-break, but Massaro held out and a fine
boast evaded her opponent’s grasp to give the Englishwoman an 11-2,
7-11, 11-9, 6-11, 12-10 victory.
"I think Raneem and I aways have battles and she’s such a good player," said Massaro.
"If
you don’t play her in exactly the right way then you get severely
punished. She played well in patches, I played well in patches and in
some ways it’s a fair result. I’ve played two World Championship
semi-finals on a tie-break against her so I guess that was going
through my mind because, if I had done it before, I knew I could do it
again.
"It would be amazing [to become World Champion for a
second time]. All week I have been saying that you can’t win the World
Championship in the first or second round but you can certainly lose
it. All I’ve done is given myself a chance and that’s really exciting
for me."
Egypt’s El Sherbini followed up her superb
quarter-final victory over eight-time World Champion Nicol David with a
dominant display against compatriot and World Junior Champion Gohar.
El
Sherbini had been pushed all the way to five games by Gohar in last
month’s Allam British Open final but the 20-year-old, who became the
first female Egyptian to win that tournament, was on fire this time
around and controlled proceedings as she prevented Gohar from building
any rhythm.
After seeing off eight-time World Champion and
Malaysian icon Nicol David in the previous round, a superb 29-minutes
of squash from the most in-form woman on the PSA World Tour saw her
take out Gohar with 11-5 victories in all three games to reach the
final.
"Me and Laura have played a lot against each other and she is playing really well this tournament," said El Sherbini.
"We
always play out five games, but I’m going to keep going the way I am. I
am going to give it everything and I’m sure it is going to be a good
match.
"I really want to win this tournament, for my
country, for Raneem and Nouran and for everyone. I really want this
badly so I am going to give it everything and hopefully it will be mine
this time."
Result - Semi-Final: Naza PSA Women’s World Championship
[1] Laura Massaro (ENG) bt [3] Raneem El Welily (EGY) 3-2: 11-2, 7-11, 11-9, 6-11, 12-10 (61m)
