Nouran Gohar, the 16 year old Egyptian Squash sensation, took the Cannon Kirk Homes Irish Open title in front of a capacity crowd. The young Egyptian impressed the crowd with her ferocious hitting and light-footed court coverage. Sarah Kippax, fourteen years her senior, put up a good battle and had the match delicately tied at 1:1, but got slightly unnerved in the third game when two or three decisions didn’t go her way. Gohar, showing no nerves, took the match and title on her fourth matchball. “This is certainly the biggest win of my career to date, and I am particularly happy because I just lost to Sarah in Toronto in like 20mins. I won the Prague Open a few weeks ago, but this is certainly the biggest win to date!”
The men’s final was similarly exciting and went down to the wire. Tournament MC Damian O’Riley had warned the crowd that both players were supremely fit and had featured in some of the longest matches on the PSA Tour to date. And while it wasn’t over two hours, the two battled each other for a good 90 minutes. Adrian Waller took the initiative early and found himself 1:0 and 10:7 up. But the young English player lost his nerves slightly when he wasn’t awarded a stroke at 10:9 up, and he lost the game in a tie-break with three quick errors. Despite losing the third game too, Waller regained his composure and closed the match out playing immaculate Squash in games four and five, but his Scottish opponent Alan Clyne showed unbelievable fighting spirit, returning seemingly lost shot after lost shot.
For the 24 year old this too was his biggest win of his career: “This has been my best result yet – I set myself the goal to win this tournament, which isn’t unrealistic as number two seed. The top four seeds were very strong and close together, so it’s good to get through and I can take a lot of confidence from this. “
A long and exciting week of Squash comes to an end, all made possible by our dedicated sponsors – Cannon Kirk Homes have supported the tournament for ten years, and countless volunteers who worked tirelessly behind the scenes. Full match replays should be up on aertv.ie in a few days!