12:52 am
8 Dec 2024

Orfi & Farag Celebrate Singapore Open Success

24 Nov 2024

Egyptian duo Amina Orfi and Ali Farag are the Vitagen Singapore Open champions after beating women's world No.3 Hania El Hammamy and men's World Champion Diego Elias, respectively, on a dramatic finals night at the OCBC Arena.

17-year-old Orfi has become the youngest player in history to win a Gold-level event after the No.5 seed battled past top seed Hania El Hammamy, winning 9-11, 11-9, 11-13, 11-1, 11-9 after 96 absorbing minutes.

Orfi replaces current world No.1 Nour El Sherbini as the youngest player to win a Gold event when she won the Texas Open in 2014 at the age of 18. It's Orfi's sixth PSA Squash Tour title and she will now aim to win a maiden Platinum title at the Milwaukee Hong Kong Open between December 2-8.

"I feel so happy that I won, I can't believe it at all," said Orfi afterwards. "This is my biggest title and my biggest win so far, I'm very happy with how I played.

"The bounces were on my side and she hit a lot of unforced errors. That bought me the confidence I needed. I didn't know when the next time that I would reach a Gold final would be, so I took it step by step, and I was motivated by Siva's win in London this year. I told myself I could do the same."

Meanwhile, Farag has won this tournament for the second year running after the world No.1 came back from two games down to overcome Peru's Diego Elias, winning 6-11, 7-11, 11-8, 11-1, 11-4 in 70 minutes.

For the first two games it was Elias - who had overturned a 2/0 deficit in his semi-final match with Paul Coll - who dictated the tempo of the match and slotted a range of winners to outclass the world's best male player.

Farag began to weave his web as he drew Elias into his game plan, making the rallies physical and testing the movement of his opponent. After seeing his lead slip away, Elias required treatment on a hip issue in the fifth game and he couldn't prevent Farag from closing out a win which brings him his 43rd PSA title.

"I'm very happy to get away with the win," said Farag afterwards.

"I was a little lucky because Diego didn't have much in the tank from yesterday, he was absolutely cruising in the first two games, but I was lucky he got a bit tired at the end. I was telling him after the match that I'm pretty sick of him, I've played him five times this season and all of them have been really tough.

"I also want to congratulate the women. Amina is doing incredibly at the age of 17. Hania is a dear friend and a great person before being a great player. I know she will come back stronger. Both of them are making Egyptian squash and women's squash very proud."

The next stop on the PSA Squash Tour will be the Hong Kong Open. The event will be shown live on SQUASHTV.