Amanda Sobhy, the most decorated American squash player of all time, will return to the PSA Squash Tour for the first time since rupturing her Achilles eight months ago this weekend in the season-opening CIB Egyptian Open Saturday, August 31.
The thirty-one-year-old is no stranger to coming back from a ruptured Achilles. In 2017, while ranked what was then a career-high ranking of world No. 6, she sustained a ruptured Achilles in the final of the Cuidad de Floridablanca in Colombia. Sobhy worked her way back into the world’s top ten by 2019 and reached new heights 2021 when she became the first American to ever reach No. 3 in the world rankings.
Sobhy maintained her status in the world’s top five from 2021-2023 and was in the best form of her career starting the 2023-2024 season when she reached three consecutive PSA Platinum semifinals at the Paris Open, Qatar Classic and U.S. Open. In December of 2023, Sobhy defeated world No.1. Nour El Sherbini to reach the Hong Kong Open final—her fourth career PSA Platinum appearance. In the first game of the final the unthinkable happened—another Achilles rupture.
Over the past eight months, Sobhy has implemented a rigorous yet measured recovery regimen that has culminated in a second career comeback from a major injury in the first major tournament of the season. Sobhy recently spoke of her recovery and ambitions for the upcoming season and beyond.
“I’m so excited to be competing again, I feel like I have this new perspective, and I’m grateful to do what I love and have fun on court again,” Sobhy said ahead of her first match of the season. “I’ve been feeling the itch to compete over the last couple of weeks, especially after some recovery fatigue this summer. There was a point that I hit where I was like ‘I’m so tired of all of this, I can’t keep doing recovery and rehab all the time. I have to get out there and compete again. Even if I get destroyed, I need to go out and see what I can do.’ I’ve missed that—the competitive and performance side of being a professional.”
Sobhy’s second Achilles recovery had both parallels and differences from the first. Many of the mental and physical challenges remained the same, but Sobhy refined her approach and focus the second time around.
“The first time I really had no idea what I was doing, I didn’t have the right team around me and I took it as an opportunity to not play squash and enjoy myself,” Sobhy said. “I’m not in my early twenties anymore, so I knew things affect me a lot more. I also knew from the first time around that I might have had fun in the short term, but five months in, I was nowhere remotely close to like what where I wanted to be—and that really affected me mentally and caught up with me. So this time I was like, ‘OK, I want to take care of myself this time around. I really want to put the work in from the start. I want to take care of my mind, body, spirit and properly build up and do this second rehab much better.’ I learned as well that having the right team around me is crucial.”
Between March and April, Sobhy focused on her rehab work as she transitioned out of the boot at her home club, Kinetic Indoor Racquet Club in Florida, and at the Arlen Specter US Squash Center in Philadelphia. From April through June, she expanded her program with more plyometrics and squash-specific movements with the support of Costa Performance in Boca Raton. Sobhy’s overall regimen involved five days of training a week for six months before she was eventually fully cleared to get back on court by her surgeon in June.
“We were steadily increasing little by little, which was really nice, and for me, personally it took so much stress off of me,” Sobhy said of her first six months of recovery. “Just to not have to manage my own recovery because I know I’m not the expert here. I have the experience of the first recovery now, but they’re the experts. So to be able to put my faith in my team and have full trust in them was huge.”
Since her clearance to return to court, Sobhy has been focused on getting her match fitness up to speed and working on court with her coach Wael El Hindi. When Sobhy steps on court Saturday, it will be without any pressure on herself. Sobhy aims to use her first few events this fall as benchmarks to improve upon with each event. Sobhy enters the $300,000 Egyptian Open draw with a pinned ranking of world No. 10 and will face the winner of England’s Grace Gear or Malaysia’s Rachel Arnold Saturday, August 31, at 10:30am ET. Should she progress, Sobhy would likely face world No. 2 Nouran Gohar on the glass court.
“This is what I’ve been training for over the last eight-plus months and I really have nothing to lose,” Sobhy said. “I don’t have any expectations going in. I’m going to compete and to see the level that I’m at. I’m looking at the big picture. I’m going to play a tournament, assess everything and build upon it then play another tournament. So it’s essentially using tournaments as assessments of the work that I’m putting in to make sure I’m moving in the right direction rather than putting too much emphasis on a particular tournament or ranking. It’s a cool and different mindset than my previous comeback. Hopefully I can win my first round and I get to play Gohar on the glass—I want to play on the big stage and against one of the best players in the world and see where I’m at. I’ve been out for a season, so I need to find out what the level of the tour now going into the new season and what I need to do to be the best player in the world.”
Sobhy’s big picture approach extends beyond this season to the LA28 Olympic Games where squash will make its Olympic debut. This summer, Sobhy found inspiration in Olympic gymnasts Suni Lee and Rebeca Andrade who overcame major injuries to achieve Olympic success in Paris.
“To compete in the Olympics would be the best ending to my whole squash career and life story as a pro squash player,” Sobhy said. “I’ve gone through a lot, I’ve overcome a lot, I’ve faced a lot of hardships and adversity. It wasn’t easy. And to be able to end it off with an Olympic medal and hopefully a gold medal just shows that everything I’ve been through was worth it. In the past I’ve been working from season to season and now it’s a four year plan. As Sha’Carri Richardson said, ‘I don’t want to be back, I want to be better.’”