Tuesday, July 22, 2025

World Junior Squash 2025: Egypt enjoy perfect opening

Tournament hosts Egypt signalled their intent early by recording a perfect day as the 2025 World Squash Junior Championships got underway at Black Ball Sporting Club, Cairo.

With a bumper 123 matches taking place across nine courts, there was plenty of action to be enjoyed in Cairo as the world’s best squash talents aged under 19 began their bids for the title of world champion.

Hosts Egypt, defending an unprecedented quartet of titles across the individual and team championships, showed no signs of nerves on home court, with all 12 of their representatives securing wins.

Among those victorious today was defending women’s champion Amina Orfi, with the Egyptian – who is ranked No.5 in the world and is hoping to become the first ever player to win the championship four times – steamrolling South Africa’s Elzandri Janse Van Rensburg 11-0, 11-0, 11-1.

“I just want to play: I’m competitive and it doesn’t matter who my opponent is!” Orfi revealed afterwards.

“After playing so many tournaments, I’m not really feeling pressure.”

Orfi wasn’t the only player to record such a victory, with France’s Amir Khaled-Jousselin recording two bagels of his own in a crushing 11-0, 11-0, 11-1 win against Norway’s Philip König.

The story of the men’s event today, though, was a series of epic five-game comebacks, with six players recovering from a losing position to win in matches that went the full distance on the traditional courts.

Switzerland’s Leandro Vogel came back from two games down and a tie break to clinch a 9-11, 8-11, 12-10, 11-6, 11-8 win over Poland’s Mateusz Ptaszek;  Japan’s 17/32 seed Ren Makino came back twice to defeat England’s Ronnie Hickling. Australia’s Marcus Wang did the same to beat Poland’s Dominik Mozer;  Macau, China’s Ka Hei Lei recovered from 0-2 down to overcome Australia’s Haider Naqvi; Germany’s Oleksii Bielikov surged back from the same scoreline to get the better of South Africa’s Juan-Corné Brand in a match that featured three tie-break games; and Hong Kong, China’s Larry Wong defeated of Poland’s Franciszek Michniewicz after trailing 1-2.

Click here to view all the results from day one.

Read more

Latest News