Trio of U.S. Open Past Champions Advance to Quarterfinals

October 10, 2018

The 2018 FS Investments U.S. Open Championships are down to the last eight in each draw, as three former champions—Ali Farag, Laura Massaro and Gregory Gaultier—all advanced from the third round Tuesday at Drexel University’s Daskalakis Athletic Center.

Seven of the day’s eight matches played out according to seeding with Wales’ world No. 12 Tesni Evans producing the sole upset of the day against New Zealand’s world No. 4 Joelle King. Following the comeback theme of the tournament, King controlled the first game 11-7 and edged a close second 14-12 to earn a 2-0 lead. Evans earned new life by taking the third 11-9, and pushed ahead to claim the match in five 11-7, 11-5.

“I saw Amanda [Sobhy] come from 2-0 down yesterday,” Evans said. “I was getting completely outplayed for the first two games, she had me everywhere and was all over me, so something had to change. I tried to change my game a little bit and luckily it paid off in the end.”

Evans will face England’s Sarah-Jane Perry as both players prepare to make their U.S. Open quarterfinal debuts Thursday. Perry, world No. 8, has defeated Evans in all six of their previous PSA encounters.

“I’m not going to lie if you look at the head-to-head then I’m not looking very good,” Evans said. “I’ve never beaten her before, but it’s another opportunity to have another go and I’m really looking forward to the quarter-finals and I will give it everything in that match.”

Elsewhere in the women’s draw, two-time champion Laura Massaro held off a five-game comeback after holding a 2-0 lead against three-time champion Nicol David. The vintage match-up marked the thirty-third PSA match between the two legends of the women’s game in a rematch of the 2013 final that saw David win in five. It was Massaro who pulled away in the fifth game to make it a 2-1 record in Philadelphia against the eight-time world champion, adding to her 2015 quarterfinal win.

“Before the fifth, Nick Matthew came over to me and said ‘you need to get your body language up, you’ve got to hit the ball the way you know you can hit it and it comes down to whether you want it or not,’” Massaro said. “Sometimes it just needs to be simplified like that and I just went on there and tried to fight. It was tight but I’m just happy to get over the line in the end.”

Massaro will face world No. 2 and two seed Raneem El Welily, who prevailed in a lively three-game match against Team USA’s Olivia Blatchford.

“Olivia played really well today and she really pushed me,” El Welily said. “It was hard to break her game down and it was a challenge today. She is one of the best players on tour at the moment, she has a great game and she’s improved a lot, every movement has improved a lot.”
On the men’s side, defending champion Ali Farag progressed to the quarterfinals in a difficult three games against up and coming Welshman Joel Makin.

“You can see how hungry he is,” Farag said. “He never gives up on any ball and never gives you any cheap points, which is great to see. On court with him it is never easy and being 9-2 up in the third he still caused me problems. I think the second game was crucial, I think if he had have won that then the dynamics of the match would have changed and I got away with a 3-0 win.”

Farag will face three-time champion Gregory Gaultier, who defeated Egypt’s Zahed Salem in four games to set up his second match against Farag in two weeks, following up Farag’s Oracle NetSuite Open victory in San Francisco.

“I feel pretty good after San Francisco, I just want to save my body because I have had a lot of injuries in the past,” Gaultier said. “I was missing a lot of tournaments last year because of injury and I want to make sure I can play every round. I’m looking forward to the next match and I’ll make sure I do some training tomorrow to get a bit sharper for the next round.”

Wednesday’s first half of quarterfinal play commences at 5pm local time.

View all results on usopensquash.com/2018-draws.

Purchase tickets on usopensquash.com/tickets.

U.S. Open to Celebrate Women in Sports Day Wednesday

October 10, 2018

The U.S. squash community will celebrate Women in Sports Day with a panel discussion, reception, player clinics and awards presentations at the 2018 FS Investments U.S. Open on Wednesday, October 10.

The panel discussion, starting at 4pm, is open to the public and titled: “Leave it all on (and off) the court: building and maintaining a healthy body throughout your squash career.” Those who cannot attend the panel discussion in person can follow and join the online discussion with a live stream on the U.S. Open Facebook page.

High school students from SquashSmarts, Philadelphia’s after-school squash and mentoring program and official community partner of the Arlen Specter US Squash Center, will participate in an on-court clinic with PSA professionals at Drexel’s Daskalakis Athletic Center.

Following the panel discussion and clinic, Women in Sports Day will honor several individuals whose efforts continue to improve the lives of women and girls through the transformative power of sport.

Julieanne Harris, the Director of Squash at Philadelphia Cricket Club, will be awarded the Achievement Bowl. Australian born Harris, took up squash at age twenty-three. She moved to the U.S. in 1983 with her husband Bill Lane and worked at Western Athletic Clubs in San Francisco and Santa Clara before moving to the Philadelphia area in 1988. She started the squash team at Agnes Irwin School and was the assistant women’s team coach at Penn before coming to Philadelphia Cricket Club in 1992. Since then, she has led one of the country’s most successful junior programs. Nine of her Philly Cricket players have made Team USA’s national junior team and many more have been national champions in singles and doubles. She has also twice coached the U.S. junior women’s team at the World Junior Championships, in Norway in 1991 and Malaysia in 1993.

Alexandra (AK) Frazier will be honored with the Women in Sports Day Special Recognition Award, given for her efforts to support girls’ and Women’s development through sports. Frazier is the founder and President of Women Golfers Give Back, which since its inception in 2003 has raised over $1 million to support girls’ golf programs throughout the Philadelphia region. Frazier is also the Executive Director of the Valentine Foundation, which funds programs designed to make girls’ and women’s lives more equitable as well as fund leadership training for women executives in the non-profit sector.

SquashSmarts Learn From the Pros on Character in Sports Day

October 10, 2018

The fifth-annual Character in Sports Day at the 2018 FS Investments U.S. Open included a clinic for boys from the SquashSmarts program on the courts at the Kline & Specter Squash Center at Drexel. Three PSA players—Alan Clyne, Nele Gilis and Todd Harrity—joined thirty SquashSmarts student athletes at the practice, giving them a first-hand look at life on the professional tour.

The group practiced for an hour and then had an in-depth question-and-answer session, talking about perseverance, match-day nerves and training ideas. Clyne, who attended a similar session last year, spoke about how to handle adversity; Gilis talked about her toughest match ever; and Harrity talked about the players on tour he most admired.

SquashSmarts, now in its eighteenth season, are the official community partner of the Arlen Specter US Squash Center due to open in two years. Founded in 2001, SquashSmarts is a free, intensive out-of-school academic and athletic mentoring non-profit changing the lives of Philadelphia’s public school students. It operates daily out of two facilities—the Lenfest Center in North Philadelphia and Drexel’s Daskalakis Athletic Center.

Markoe & Spahr Honored at Character in Sports Day

October 10, 2018

The fifth-annual Character in Sports Day at the 2018 FS Investments U.S. Open was highlighted by honoring Abby Markoe and Chris Spahr.

Kevin Klipstein, the president and CEO of US Squash, welcomed a large crowd to Drexel to celebrate sportsmanship. Throughout the 114-year history of US Squash, Klipstein said, the association has celebrated the intrinsic values of squash: courtesy, fair play, graciousness, honesty and an abiding sense of respect and fellowship with opponents. Because of the uniqueness of squash—unlike most other racquet sports, squash opponents physically share the same space—sportsmanship is a core proposition of the game. “At US Squash, we are focused on lifelong engagement in the game,” Klipstein said, “and sportsmanship is central to that vision.”

He then gave the 2018 Feron’s Wedgwood Sportsmanship Trophy to Abby Markoe. A lifelong player, Markoe captained the team at George Washington University. In 2008 she helped found SquashWise, the urban squash program in Baltimore. Based at Meadow Mill Athletic Club, it has a 100% high school graduation rate and 80% college matriculation rate in a city where fewer than 70% of students graduate from high school and only 42% go to college. Markoe leads a staff of five full-time employees and operates an annual budget that has grown from $150,000 to $800,000. Next week SquashWise celebrates its tenth anniversary.

“Squash has opened up a lot of doors for me,” Markoe said. “a lot of new relationships personally and professionally. I am an advocate for racial and gender equity and access to the great values of squash are central to that effort.”

The Feron’s Wedgwood Sportsmanship Trophy, started in 1979, is US Squash’s oldest sportsmanship award. Previous winners include U.S. Squash Hall of Famers Goldie Edwards (1980), Carol Weymuller (1988) and Demer Holleran (1989); last year’s recipient was Hope Prockop.

Klipstein later brought Kristen Callahan and Chris Spahr onto the ASB GlassCourt. Kristen Callahan, Bob Callahan’s wife, said that sportsmanship was the most important thing to Bob. They then awarded Chris Spahr the 2018 Robert W. Callahan Sportsmanship Award.

Spahr is the squash director at the University Club of Boston. The son of the late national champion Kit Spahr, he grew up in Philadelphia and played on undefeated teams at Haverford School. At Franklin & Marshall, Spahr was a three-time All American and two-time captain, helping lead the Diplomats to a No. 2 national ranking. Spahr has captured two masters titles in doubles, the 40+ in 2007 and the 45+ in 2012, both with fellow Bostonian Doug Lifford. He has also played in every Can-Am Cup since its inception in 2008 and famously called a ball down on himself at 14-all in the fifth in the deciding match of the 2016 Can-Ams. After ten years as the head squash pro at the Field Club in Greenwich, he has spent the last eighteen years at the University Club, coaching hundreds of juniors and running dozens of tournaments each year. He and his wife Catherine are the parents of two squash playing children, Dartmouth’s Carson Spahr with whom he has won seven U.S. Father & Son titles, and Caroline Spahr, who played for Team USA in the World Juniors last summer.

“This is the greatest honor I’ve ever gotten in squash,” Spahr said. “Bob was sheer class—a tremendous person and leader. As a coach, a player and a father, I am humbled to receive the Callahan.”

The Robert W. Callahan Sportsmanship Award was started in 2014. Previous honorees include Ed Chilton, Rich Sheppard, Richard Chin and last year’s honoree Mark Talbott. Bob Callahan was the men’s coach at Princeton for thirty-two years before he died in January 2015 at the age of fifty-nine. His teams won three national titles and more Skillman Awards than any other college in the nation. He founded the world’s oldest squash summer camp and in 1998 directed the World Junior Men’s Championship. He was inducted into the U.S. Squash Hall of Fame in the Class of 2011.

Sobhy Dethrones Defending U.S. Open Champion El Tayeb in Five-Game Comeback

October 9, 2018

Amanda Sobhy celebrates the major upset in front of the home crowd

Team USA’s Amanda Sobhy pulled off the biggest result of the 2018 FS Investments U.S. Open so far, dethroning women’s defending champion Nour El Tayeb in a five-game comeback Monday night at Drexel University’s Daskalakis Athletic Center.

El Tayeb, world No. 3, stepped onto the ASB GlassCourt for the first time since last October when she claimed the first PSA World Tour Platinum title of her career. At first it seemed as though no time had passed. In the first two games, El Tayeb executed the same devastating shot-making that saw her cast aside the world’s best last year.

Buoyed by a vocal home crowd, Sobhy dug in during the third game. She regained her composure and provided fewer opportunities for El Tayeb to attack on her way to an 8-3 lead. El Tayeb came firing back however, rattling off six straight points to go within two points of clinching the match up 9-8. Sobhy then used precision of her own to slot two winners and then slammed the door shut with an emphatic volley nick to clinch the game 12-10.

From the start of the fourth game onwards, Sobhy used her momentum to her advantage, hitting winners and forcing errors from El Tayeb to claim the fourth game 11-6, and maintaining a lead in the fifth until she earned four match balls and capitalized on her first opportunity.

“It’s a special win for me,” said Sobhy, who currently sits at No. 18 in the world rankings. “I was thinking about this match since the summer. I know how good she is and she won it last year, but I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it. I narrowly lost to her in five at this year’s British Open and I knew that I’m right there with the top three still, but I just need to break through and I’m so pleased with how I fought back today and having my whole support team here is huge for me and a big confidence booster. The fact that I came back from 2-0 down and fought and just physically came back and mentally dug in is just massive.”

Sobhy reached the U.S. Open semifinals in 2016, but missed out last year’s tournament due to a torn Achilles suffered in March 2017. Sobhy’s quarterfinal opponent on Wednesday will be France’s Camille Serme, who defeated Sobhy in the 2016 semifinal en route to winning the tournament. Last week in San Francisco, Serme defeated Sobhy in four games in the second round of the Oracle NetSuite Open.

“It’s amazing to be back here,” Sobhy said. “I missed it last year, I was down here, but it was a really rough time for me with my progress just being stalled, and I was really hopeless. Coming back here, it’s the biggest and most prestigious tournament in the U.S. and I did my rehab in Philly so it is a second home for me. I love having the crowd on my side and I thrive on that. It’s a huge energy booster for me and I hope they just keep on rallying behind me.”

Sobhy provided one of two five-game upsets on the women’s side, with the first courtesy of Egypt’s world No. 30 Yathreb Adel, who knocked out compatriot Salma Hany. Adel had already upset world No. 7 Nouran Gohar in Saturday’s second round. Adel will have another opportunity to upset a fellow Egyptian on Wednesday when she faces world No. 1 Nour El Sherbini.

The first four men’s quarterfinalists were determined according to ranking, but not entirely according to seeding. Egypt’s Mohamed Abouelghar opened the 2018-2019 PSA season in stellar form by claiming the China Open last month, which shot him up to world No. 9 this month. Abouelghar continued his fine form in Philly by dispatching world No. 10 and seven seed Karim Abdel Gawad in three games. “I would say that was my finest performance today and I had to be at my best to beat someone like Karim,” Abouelghar said. “We have played over 200 times in training and we always go to five-setters, but today, I thought ‘forget everything and just adapt to whatever he throws at me,’ and I’m happy it worked out well.”

Abouelghar will face world No. 1 Mohamed ElShorbagy in Wednesday’s quarterfinals after the top seed managed to hold off India’s Saurav Ghosal in a tight three games. “I will just take it one match at a time and hopefully the results will come,” Abouelghar said. “I know sometimes I put too much pressure on myself, but now I just let the results take care of themselves.”

Tuesday will decide the remaining four quarterfinalists in both draws with match play set to commence from 12:00pm.

View all results on usopensquash.com/2018-draws.

Purchase tickets on usopensquash.com/tickets.

SquashSmarts Honors Philadelphia Youth Sports Leaders

October 9, 2018

(l-r standing) Chris Tejada, Ransom Gayman, Ann Marie Horner, Terry Horner, Beth Devine, Quinetta Bowden and Ross Bolling; (l-r sitting) Melliah Santos and Dasha Hammond.

Beth Devine, Anne Marie Horner and Terry Horner were honored by Philadelphia’s youth squash and education program SquashSmarts at the FS Investments U.S. Open with the 2018 SquashSmarts Distinguished Service Award.

The three are leaders with the Philadelphia Youth Sports Collaborative: Beth Devine is the executive director and Terry Horner is the board chair. Through PYSC, they have helped to dramatically enhance the capacity of sports-based youth-development organizations like SquashSmarts to provide high-quality programs in Philadelphia. SquashSmarts was a founding member of PYSC in 2009, which now has thirty-five member organizations including such prominent programs as First Tee, Girls on the Run, Philly Girls in Motion and Outward Bound.

Quinetta Bowden, SquashSmarts’ middle school academic director, and Ross Bolling, SquashSmarts’ middle school squash director, introduced Devine and the Horners. Bowden and Bolling both spoke movingly of them and PYSC’s commitment to giving children access to opportunities. “PYSC is a guiding light in our community,” Bowden said, “and because of PYSC, SquashSmarts is a better program and Philadelphia a better city. Game on, Philly.”

More than two hundred SquashSmarts staff members, students, parents, donors, advisors and board members joined the SquashSmarts VIP Night celebration Monday night at the U.S. Open. Founded in 2001, SquashSmarts is an award-winning, free, intensive out-of-school academic and athletic mentoring program changing the lives of Philadelphia’s public school students. Students are recruited in middle school from Roberto Clemente Promise Academy, Mary McLeod Bethune Elementary, and Overbrook Educational Center. Operating out of two facilities—the Lenfest Center in North Philadelphia and Drexel’s Daskalakis Athletic Center—the program has students attend practices three days a week for seven years. SquashSmarts is the official community partner of the recently announced Arlen Specter US Squash Center.

Previous SquashSmarts Distinguished Service Award honorees include: PYSC co-founders Wendy Palmer and Nancy Peter (2013); alumni coaches Sakora Miller, Kareem Price, Devonte Harris and Mithun Das (2014); founder and President Andrew Nerhbas (2015); volunteers Karen & George Gowen and Judy & John Wisniewski (2016); and executive assistant Jeanie Shanahan (2017).

Marathons Abound in U.S. Open Second Round

October 8, 2018

Olivia Blatchford Clyne (l) and Declan James celebrate their second round victories.

The second round of the 2018 FS Investments U.S. Open Squash Championships yielded an intensely competitive slate of matches on Sunday with twenty of the thirty-two matches going longer than three games.

The second round of competition at Drexel’s Daskalakis Athletic Center marked the first appearance of the top seeds after receiving byes on Saturday, and not all seeds survived the day.

The highest-ranked player to fall on Sunday was two-time quarterfinalist and world No. 7 Nouran Gohar, who was edged by fellow Egyptian world No. 30 Yathreb Adel 11-9 in the fifth game after seventy-six minutes. The victory marked the twenty-two-year-old’s first against Gohar since the 2014 British Junior Open.
“I am very happy and I am very thrilled to be through today,” Adel said. “It is never easy playing a compatriot. Nouran and I are very good friends and we train a lot together so, I knew it wasn’t going to be easy. I just had to focus and keep my momentum going throughout the whole match and I am very pleased to be through.”

The undisputed match of the day took place on Kline & Specter court No. 5 in an all-English fixture between Declan James, world No. 20, and Adrian Waller, world No. 37. Waller appeared to be on the brink of an upset with a 2-0 lead until James forced a fourth game. The next two games extended to 19-17 in the fourth and 16-14 in the fifth as James fought off eight match balls along the way, clinching after an incredible 101 minutes.

“I haven’t had a match that long for a long time,” James said. “The work you do in the gym away from the court is for that exact situation when things aren’t going well and you have to dig. I was struggling half way through the fifth game, but I said to myself it’s going to be ten more minutes of pain and then it’s going to stop. So I just kept fighting and fighting and that’s what happens when you do that to the best of your abilities. You can’t play your best squash everyday, but it’s the days when you aren’t playing well that you somehow manage to find a way to comeback, and I’m so proud that I was able to do that today.”

Team USA will have two representatives in the women’s last sixteen as Olivia Blatchford Clyne and Amanda Sobhy both progressed in four-game encounters on the ASB GlassCourt.

Blatchford Clyne, world No. 16 and the only American to receive a first-round bye, edged out an evenly-matched encounter against world No. 20 Emily Whitlock, 14-12, 12-10, 13-15, 11-8 in fifty-eight minutes.

“Emily is a great player,” Blatchford Clyne said. “Our rankings are pretty much the same so it’s evenly matched. I think it was one of those things where you have to keep going. The way I was trying to play was the right way, but Emily kept coming back and when she adapted, I had to adapt and thankfully I did that and executed it.”

Blatchford Clyne will now face Egypt’s world No. 2 and two seed Raneem El Welily Tuesday at 6:45pm local time. Sobhy, who won a quick opening match on Saturday, faced a more difficult test against world No. 13 Victoria Lust, who claimed the first game of their match 11-9. From 10-all in the second, Sobhy leveled the game score before pulling away to win the third and fourth 11-1, 11-6.

“Lusty and I have played a lot of times,” said Sobhy, the former world No. 6. “We know each other’s game and I know how deadly she can be, but I was looking forward to getting into a solid match. She played really well so I really had to step up and play at that top level and I’m happy to win and move onto the next round.”

Sobhy will now face defending champion and world No. 3 Nour El Tayeb Monday at 5:45pm.

“You get the nerves, it’s been a while since I’ve played here and sometimes you put too much pressure on yourself and forget to enjoy yourself,” Sobhy said. “There’s no pressure on me tomorrow so I’m just going to go out there and give it everything I have got.”

All matches coalesce on the ASB GlassCourt for the remainder of the tournament, featuring round of sixteen matches to be played Monday and Tuesday beginning at 12:00pm each day.

View all results from the weekend on usopensquash.com/2018-draws.

Purchase tickets on usopensquash.com/tickets.

Navy Dominates Intercollegiate Doubles

October 8, 2018

Intercollegiate Doubles 1 — Caption, l-r: Michael Kacergis, Senen Ubina, Jonathan Lentz, James Kjorlin

Caption, l-r: Michael Kacergis, Senen Ubina, Jonathan Lentz, James Kjorlin

The thirty-ninth annual U.S. Intercollegiate Squash Doubles Championships were completed Sunday with riveting results. Philadelphia Cricket Club hosted the tournament, which was originally started in 1942.

Twenty-one teams came from Connecticut College, Cornell, Fordham, Franklin & Marshall, George Washington, Hobart, Penn, Rochester and Yale but it was the U.S. Naval Academy which again dominated the tournament. In a Navy v. Rochester semi, Navy’s Jonathan Lentz & James Kjorlien survived two 15-14 games to get past Rochester’s Ashley Davies & Ricardo Lopez in three. In the other semi, top seeds Senen Ubina & Michael Kacergis also took a 15-14 game over Cornell’s Charles Culhane & Andrew Muran in their three-game sweep.

Last year Ubina and his then-partner outlasted Lentz & Kjorlien in a five-game barn-burner. Today they again went to five and again Ubina and Kacergis survived to capture the Butchet-Ball Cup: 15-11, 15-13, 13-15, 14-15, 15-6.

It is an end of an era for the Ubinas. His older sister Maria Elena collected five intercollegiate titles while at Princeton (three women’s and two mixed) and now Senen bows out with three titles, making them the most successful intercollegiate doubles family in squash history. They pushed beyond the Deans (Alex and Jamie with five titles) and McGuinnesses (Trevor and Andrew, five) and the Franks (Garrett & Reade, four).

Drexel Day at the U.S. Open

October 8, 2018

Since 2011, Drexel University has hosted the FS Investments U.S. Open Squash Championships. The country’s open national championships, founded in 1954, have been played at more than a dozen locations around the country, including Boston, Chicago, Houston, Minneapolis, New York, Providence and San Francisco. And now it has found a home in Philadelphia.

The eight-year partnership of US Squash and Drexel has given the tournament unprecedented stability. In 2013 the Open, for instance, became the first major pro squash event to achieve prize money parity, setting the standard for squash equality world-wide. The innovative, fan-friendly set-up in Daskalakis Athletic Center has enabled court-side celebrations like Women in Sports Day and the U.S. Squash Hall of Fame induction ceremonies. Last year, the Open hosted the world’s first squash film festival.

For Drexel, the U.S. Open has been a signature in the university’s expansion of squash on campus. Under the leadership of John Fry, the squash-playing president of Drexel and former chair of the board of US Squash, and Drexel’s Athletic Director Eric Zillmer, squash has become a major feature of Drexel’s recreational and varsity athletic programming. Today both the men and women’s teams, led by former world No.1 coach John White, are among the top dozen programs in the nation. This past month, Drexel and US Squash announced a $40 million project to transform a 40,000 square-foot armory on Drexel’s campus into the Arlen Specter US Squash Center, complete with twenty courts, robust community access programming in partnership with Squashsmarts, the U.S. Squash Hall of Fame and the US Squash headquarters.

To celebrate the partnership, today was Drexel Day at the U.S. Open. Hundreds of students, faculty and staff came to the DAC to watch some of the thirty-two second-round matches. Prized club-level tickets were raffled off. Mario the Magnificent, Drexel’s famous mascot, appeared courtside and even joined Mohamed ElShorbagy at an autograph session. Three students competed in a hitting challenge, trying to hit a shot that ended on the Drexel logo on the back wall. Each received an oversized Dunlop ball; Dunlop is the official ball of the championships.

Perhaps the most exciting part of Drexel Day was the speed challenge. For a long time, there has been no official world record for the hardest squash ball hit. In 2005 at the Canary Wharf Classic, John White, now the head squash coach at Drexel, hit 172mph on a radar gun. In 2011 using a special off-court radar gun at the U.S. Open, Cameron Pilley reached 175mph; in 2014 Pilley pushed the record up to 176mph at an exhibition in Hertfordshire, England. Using a new high-performance sports radar gun that is used in Major League Baseball.

The 2018 speed challenge featured Team USA’s Christopher Gordon and two members of Dragon’s varsity team, Anna Hughes, a junior from New Zealand, and Matias Knudsen, a first-year student-athlete from Colombia. Gordon topped out at 137 miles per hour; Hughes reached 110mph; and Knudsen scorched the gun with a final hit of 159mph.

Team USA’s Harrity and Sobhy Provide Home Victories on First Day of U.S. Open

October 7, 2018

Sobhy Harrity saturday — Amanda Sobhy (l) and Todd Harrity

Todd Harrity and Amanda Sobhy provided a pair of stirring victories for Team USA on the ASB GlassCourt during opening day of the 2018 FS Investments U.S. Open Squash Championships Saturday in Philadelphia. The 2018 U.S. Open marks the first PSA World Tour Platinum event for the 2018-2019 season with thirty-two first-round matches staged over the course of the opening day on the ASB GlassCourt and three of Drexel’s Kline & Specter courts in the Daskalakis Athletic Center.

Sunday will see the tournament’s top seeds called into action against the first-round victors.

Four Americans took to the glass court during the afternoon session, including Sobhy, Harrity and Penn’s wild cards Reeham Sedky and Andrew Douglas.

Sobhy, world No. 18, made quick work of Hong Kong’s Tong Tzs-Wing in three games and twenty-four minutes to mark her Philadelphia comeback after missing the 2017 event due to a torn Achilles. Sobhy will now face England’s Victoria Lust on the glass court Sunday at 5:45pm.

“I missed out last year and that was probably one of the lowest times for me and so just to be back here is huge,” said the American former world No. 6 and 2016 Open semifinalist. “I love this venue. I ended up having to move down to Philly for five weeks during my rehab so it is like a second home for me now and I know that whenever I’m here I’m in good hands.”

Team USA’s biggest breakthrough came in the form of Harrity, a Philadelphia-native and Princeton graduate. Harrity, world No. 48, was making his eighth consecutive U.S. Open appearance, but also his ASB GlassCourt debut having never progressed past the qualifying rounds. The twenty-eight-year-old made the most of the spotlight against Australia’s world No. 23 Cameron Pilley, grinding out a come-from-behind sixty-six-minute victory 4-11, 7-11, 11-6, 11-8, 11-5.

“Obviously Cam is just coming back from injury so I noticed he wasn’t moving well,” Harrity said. “But sometimes that’s the hardest thing to cope with because it’s something else to think about and distract you from just playing. I wasn’t really feeling my shots and I was trying to hard to expose his movements, but I’m really proud that I didn’t let my nerves get the best of me and ground it out to get the win.”

Harrity now faces world No. 1 and the tournament’s top seed, Mohamed ElShorbagy, Sunday on the glass court at 4:45pm local time. “I get to train and practice with Mohamed in Bristol a lot, there’s no pressure on me,” Harrity said. “I’m just going to have to come outside of myself a bit and it’s a good chance to get more experience on this stage.”

Sedky, the 2018 intercollegiate champion and senior, acquitted herself well against world No. 19 Hania El Hammamy, but faltered late in the fifth game after holding a 2-0 lead. Douglas, a sophomore, joined Sedky in making his glass court debut against France’s Mathieu Castagnet, but lost in three games.

The first round produced nine matches that went the distance to five games between closely-ranked players.

View all results on usopensquash.com/draws.

Sunday sees another slate of thirty-two matches played out on the same four courts as the draws whittle down to sixteen players by the end of the day.

Tickets are available on usopensquash.com/tickets.

October 19-25, 2025Philadelphia, PA