Amanda Sobhy Advances to First Career World Tour Finals Knock Out Rounds

Team USA’s Amanda Sobhy is through to the knock out stages of the CIB PSA World Tour Finals following group stage victories over Joelle King and Georgina Kennedy, Friday, June 24, in Cairo, Egypt.

The World Tour Finals is the PSA’s season culminating event that features the top eight performers from the season’s Platinum events. The eight men and women are split into two groups of four and play a best-of-three round robin format with the top two players advancing to the semifinals.

In her fourth career tournament appearance, the world No. 4 opened up her campaign Wednesday with a 2-0 loss against world No. 1 Nouran Gohar. Sobhy, the four seed, kept her title hopes alive with a 2-0 win over New Zealand’s five seed Joelle King on Thursday, setting up a must-win against England’s world No. 8 Georgina Kennedy.

The American produced a clinical performance against her fellow Harvard graduate on Friday, dispatching Kennedy 11-4, 11-4 in twenty-one minutes to advance to the semifinals for the first time.

 

“I’ve actually been in the other position before, where I wasn’t going to go through but held the fate of my opponents in my hands, and somehow I played the best squash,” Sobhy said afterwards. “Somehow I just tried to control what I could control, which is my gameplan. It’s possibly the hottest conditions I’ve ever played in; I tried to slow it down as much as possible, slow it all the way down. Just to buy myself time and conserve as much energy as possible and I did that and I’m happy to win in two. She’s a fighter, she’ll get everything back and I wanted to crush her confidence as much as possible and not give away any points because it’s so hot and every point is a long rally so I can’t really afford to do that. So, I wanted to be clinical, which I did, and I’m very happy about that.”

Sobhy will now face recently-crowned world champion Nour El Sherbini in the semifinals Saturday, June 25, at 8:15pm local time, 2:15pm ET. Watch all of the action live on SquashTV.

“Nour and I haven’t actually played at all this season, so it’s awesome to play someone new,” Sobhy said. “I know even though she has a little bit of an injury, her shots are unbelievable and I know she’s going to be much deadlier. I’m excited to have a new opportunity to play someone different at the end of the season. I haven’t done too well here in the past and the fact that I’ve qualified into the semis along with the Egyptians makes it three-and-a-half Egyptians! It’s awesome to be up there among the top three who have been kind of raising the bar and hopefully I can give them hell tomorrow!”

For more tournament coverage visit psaworldtour.com.