Nour meets Nour in repeat of women’s world final
By SEAN REUTHE

PSA World Championship finalists Nour El Sherbini and Nour El Tayeb have been drawn in the same group in the women’s event of the 2018-2019 CIB PSA World Tour Finals, with the six-day, season-ending event beginning at Cairo’s Mall of Arabia on Sunday June 9.

The top eight men and women on the PSA World Tour Finals Leaderboard will do battle for the prestigious title and the lucrative $320,000 prize fund. Players have earned qualification points at all PSA World Tour events throughout the 2018-19 season, while the reigning PSA World Champions and all PSA Platinum event winners qualified automatically.

Players will compete in group stages between June 9-12 which are held under a best-of-three games format, with the top two from each group progressing to the knockout semi-finals and beyond. The finals revert to the traditional best of five scoring.

Defending champion El Sherbini, who came second on the women’s World Tour Finals Leaderboard, became a three-time World Champion at the age of 23 when she overcame El Tayeb in the final of March’s World Championships held in Chicago’s Union Station. The pair will lock horns once again in Cairo, and they will be joined in Group B by British Open champion Nouran Gohar and England No.1 Sarah-Jane Perry.

World No.1 Raneem El Welily topped the women’s World Tour Finals Leaderboard and she features in Group A alongside British Open runner-up Camille Serme, Hong Kong Open winner Joelle King and World No.9 Tesni Evans.

Group A of the men’s event is headed up by World No.1 and last year’s runner-up Ali Farag. A sensational season which saw him lift major titles at the World Championships, J.P. Morgan Tournament of Champions, Qatar Classic and El Gouna International resulted in him finishing first on the World Tour Finals Leaderboard.

He is joined in Group A by Black Ball Open winner Karim Abdel Gawad, New Zealand’s Paul Coll and World No.7 Mohamed Abouelghar.

World No.2 Mohamed ElShorbagy, who beat Farag to lift a third British Open crown two weeks ago, will line up against World Championship runner-up Tarek Momen, Germany’s Simon Rösner and Peru’s Diego Elias in Group B.

The group stages begin on Sunday June 9 at 19:00 (GMT+2) with El Welily and Evans getting the action under way. Six matches will be played per night for the first four days of the event until the group stages have drawn to a close.

Group stage matches will take place at 19:00, 19:30, 20:00, 20:30, 21:00, 21:30 between June 9-12. The semi-finals will be held at 19:00 on Thursday June 13.

The finals will begin at 19:30 on Friday June 14.

Every match from the tournament will be shown live on SQUASHTV (rest of world), Eurosport Player (Europe only), ON Sport (Egypt) and the official Facebook page of the PSA World Tour.

Squash fans can stay up-to-date tournament by visiting the official website and can purchase tickets for the semi-finals and finals here.

2018-2019 CIB PSA World Tour Finals, Cairo, Egypt, June 9-12. Group Draws.

Picture and graphics courtesy of PSA