Nick Matthew stays in front. Picture by STEVE CUBBINS
Nick Matthew stays in front. Picture by STEVE CUBBINS
Matthew Tops PSA World Series Standings
21 May 2012
By HOWARD HARDING
A blistering victory in Sunday’s final of the Allam British Open Squash Championship has taken Nick Matthew back to the top of the 2012 Dunlop PSA World Series Standings.
The 31-year-old Englishman ended a run of four successive defeats by Ramy Ashour to overcome his Egyptian rival in straight games before a sell-out crowd at the O2 Arena in London.
The triumph in the fourth PSA World Series event of the year makes Matthew the first Englishman to claim a hat-trick of titles in the 82-history of the world’s most famous squash tournament.
Matthew, winner of the first World Series event of the year at the JP Morgan Tournament of Champions in New York in January, moves ahead of fellow Englishman James Willstrop by just ten points.
Willstrop, the world number one and winner of the Davenport North American Open in February, fell to Ashour in the British Open semi-finals.
But Ashour, who also beat Willstrop in last month’s final of the El Gouna International Open in Egypt, strengthens his grip on third place in the latest standings – 100 points ahead of fourth-placed Frenchman Gregory Gaultier.
Peter Barker, the left-handed Londoner who caused one of the biggest upsets at the O2 Arena by beating Gaultier to claim an unexpected place in the semi-finals, leaps 11 places to eighth place – a position he shares with Germany’s Simon Rosner.
The top eight players in the list at the end of the year qualify for a place in the 2012 ATCO PSA World Series Finals in London early next year.
