Ramy Ashour wins the World Championship in 2014
Injuries bring a sad end to Ramy’s playing days
By ALAN THATCHER – Squash Mad Editor
Ramy Ashour, probably the most gifted and entertaining player to ever pick up a squash racket, has announced his retirement from the professional game.
He took to social media to tell his army of fans about his decision to quit in a private post on Facebook, in which he revealed that numerous attempts to deal with troublesome injury issues had proved in vain.
At 31, he announced plans to stay in the game as a coach, mentor and promoter of a new tournament in New York in May when he will experiment with a new scoring system.
Ashour won three World Championship titles, lifted the British Open once, held the world number one ranking position for 21 months, and was rated the number two player in a PSA poll to establish the greatest player of all time.
Ashour quickly bridged the gap when he moved up from the junior game into the senior ranks.
He won his first world title at the age of 19 in 2008 in Manchester, beating fellow Egyptian Karim Darwish in the final.
He was runner-up to Amr Shabana the following year but went on to beat Mohamed ElShorbagy twice, in 2012 and 2014, the latter occasion crowning a return to action after a six-month lay-off caused by injury.
Ashour reached one more world final, finishing runner-up to Karim Abdel Gawad in Cairo in 2016.
Ashour became the first Egyptian for 47 years to win the sport’s oldest tournament – the British Open – in 2013, which came in the midst of a 49-match unbeaten run as he won nine successive PSA Tour titles.
Since making his PSA debut in 2004, Ashour has lifted 40 PSA Tour titles, reaching 59 finals, while he won 358 of his 435 matches on the PSA Tour. Ashour’s final tournament win came at the Grasshopper Cup in March 2018 as he tore through the draw without dropping a game, again beating ElShorbagy in the final.
Ashour was also voted as the second greatest male player of all time in the summer of 2018, with thousands of squash fans taking part in a poll conducted by the Professional Squash Association (PSA).
His last PSA title triumph was just over 12 months ago at the 2018 Grasshopper Cup tournament in Zurich.
POST YOUR TRIBUTE: Squash Mad readers are invited to post their own tributes to Ramy Ashour in the Comments Section below.
Pictures courtesy of Patrick Lauson and PSA
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