All posts by Alan Thatcher

French ace back up to career-best ranking By SEAN REUTHE  France’s Gregoire Marche has risen two spots to a joint career-high ranking of No.16 in the PSA Men’s World Rankings for July. The 29-year-old from Aix en Provence closed out his season by winning the 5R Montpellier Metropole Open last month, taking the title without [...]

Millie makes major rise in rankings as Nicol David bows out By SEAN REUTHE  England’s Millie Tomlinson has broken into the top 20 of the PSA Women’s World Rankings for the first time after the July rankings were released. Tomlinson began the 2018-19 PSA World Tour season ranked at No.27 in the world, but has [...]

Rösner and Coll are top men’s seeds in Nantes  By SEAN REUTHE French No.1 Camille Serme will headline the Open de France – Nantes 2019 Presented by Tailor Capital when the PSA World Tour Silver tournament takes place between September 9-14 at the picturesque Chateau des ducs de Bretagne. The Open de France – formally [...]

Wael El Hindi and an international support team give Abou the edge  By ALAN THATCHER – Squash Mad Editor Mohamed Abouelghar came very close to a surprise win over Karim Abdel Gawad in the recent PSA World Series Finals in Cairo. It was a quality performance from the 25-year-old, showing just how much he has [...]

Support for SquashSmarts as sponsorship helps access, equality, community and excellence By SEAN REUTHE  Tickets are now available for the 2019 FS Investments U.S. Open Squash Championships, which takes place between October 5-12, via usopensquash.com/tickets. FS Investments, title sponsor of the 2018 U.S. Open Squash Championships, has committed to serve as the tournament’s title sponsor [...]

‘Squash players will love the social side of padel, which is not always the case with tennis’ By ELLIOT SELBY  Following Saturday’s introductory article about the growth of padel in the UK, Elliot Selby, a member of a very prominent squash family, writes about his love for this fun doubles game which is spreading rapidly [...]

New courts spring up across the UK as Andy Murray invests in padel By ALAN THATCHER – Squash Mad Editor Squash clubs investing in adding padel tennis courts to their mix of facilities are reporting significant financial benefits. There are more than 60 padel courts in the UK, many of them built during the past [...]

Raneem roars back to win women’s title  By SEAN REUTHE in Cairo Egypt’s Raneem El Welily and Karim Abdel Gawad are the 2018-2019 CIB PSA World Tour Finals champions as they rose to respective wins over France’s World No.3 Camille Serme and World No.7 Mohamed Abouelghar at Cairo’s Mall of Arabia to take the honours [...]

Serme sinks Gohar to fly the flag for France (and the rest of the world) By ALAN THATCHER and SEAN REUTHE Mohamed Abouelghar gained his first win over Tarek Momen and Camille Serme, the only non-Egyptian in the semi-finals, beat Nouran Gohar after a titanic first-game tiebreak to reach the finals of the CIB PSA [...]

Abouelghar powers through with seven Egyptians in last eight By SEAN REUTHE in Cairo  Men’s World No.1 Ali Farag and defending women’s champion Nour El Sherbini saw their title challenges at the 2018-2019 CIB PSA World Tour Finals come to an end as group stage action drew to a close on day four of the [...]

Nottingham host 19 teams on tough weekend By ALAN THATCHER and MARK FULLER Much as the team at Squash Mad detest the ridiculous name thrust on racketball by a drunken think-tank committee, we salute the efforts being made to repair the damage. This culminated in the introduction of the first combined inter-county finals competition at [...]

Hot and humid in Cairo as ElShorbagy turns up the power By SEAN REUTHE in Cairo The penultimate day of group stage action at the 2018-2019 CIB PSA World Tour Finals saw all six matches go the way of Egypt as defending champions Mohamed ElShorbaby and Nour El Sherbini impressed in front of their home [...]

Tesni Evans battles back for big win over Joelle King By SEAN REUTHE in Cairo  Egyptian duo Raneem El Welily and Mohamed ElShorbagy have become the first players to qualify for the semi-finals of the 2018-2019 CIB PSA World Tour Finals after they beat World No.3s Camille Serme and Tarek Momen, respectively, during the second [...]

Record numbers set for July showdown By DONNA HELMER – Squash Mad Correspondent A record numbers of players are expected to turn out for the newly merged HEAD National Racketball Championships at Edgbaston Priory Club next month. The two-day event, which takes place over the weekend of 6-7th July, is expected to lure a huge [...]

Shock on day one of PSA World Tour Finals  By SEAN REUTHE in Cairo  The opening day of the 2018-2019 CIB PSA World Tour Finals saw defending women’s champion Nour El Sherbini fall to a surprise defeat against England No.1 Sarah-Jane Perry as the season-ending tournament got under way at Cairo’s Mall of Arabia. The [...]