The quarter final round of the 2012 Comfort Inn Open, presented by the Evergreen Squash Club and the Province of British Columbia/Hosting BC, was played this evening at the Evergreen Squash Club on Vancouver’s North Shore with the Egyptians sweeping the table.
Unlike the matches to date, there were no upsets as all the higher ranked players prevailed. And unlike the opening main draw matches last night where four of the eight matches lasted an hour or more and four of the eight matches went to five games, no matches exceeded 50 minutes, there were no five setters and there were three 3-0 results.
The match of the evening featured a five time participant in Comfort Open play, the young former 2007 British Open Junior Champion, Tarek Momen, against fellow Egyptian and 2012 British Open Junior finalist earlier this month, Mohamed Abouelghar, who had advanced to the quarters through the qualifying rounds. The pair treated the packed gallery with an amazing display of squash with Momen prevailing in overpoints in the fourth.
Hisham Ashour showed some of his impressive arsenal of “deception” shots but had to stay with hard steady squash in order to prevail in three hard fought games with countryman Ali Anwar Reda.
Omar Mosaad secured his place in the semis with a relentless display of hard grinding squash that continually kept the very fit Olli Tuominen ) in a defensive mode through the entire three games.
And, in the final match of the evening, Amr Shabana demonstrated to the crowd that his game was back in form and showed no signs of the slow start we saw in yesterday’s opening round as he put away Australian, Cameron Pilley, in three very competitive games. The Shabana magic was on full display tonight and it will be interesting to see if any of his countrymen are up to knocking him off the top of the pyramid.
Tournament Page: www.squashsite.co.uk/2009/comfortinn2012.htm
