[1] Ali Farag (EGY) bt Omar Mosaad (EGY) 11-2, 11-8, 11-7 (39m)
First game was all about Ali, 9/1 11/2 but in 11m, meaning that the score doesn’t tell how the both worked. The second, Ali was a bit away with the fairies, while Mosaad played his best squash and went up 3-0, 6-2, 8-4 before Ali got it back together, stepped up the court, scoring the next 7 points to take a comfortable lead 11/8 2-0.
Third sees Omar very positive, setting up the points but finding a few errors at crucial times, and it’s 8/4, 10/6 11/7…
Ali
When you play Omar, you have got to accept that in some patches of the match he is going to play better than you. In the second, I gave him too many errors, most of them were not unforced errors, he put pressure on me and made me do those errors.
We only played once on the Tour, but we trained for years together in the same club. Now I moved to another club, but we still train together regularly. He knows what to expect, knows my game inside out… But Karim Darwish devised a game plan for me, and it worked.
In the second, I was down 8/4 but I didn’t want to let it go as I knew that if it had gone 1/1, we would have had a completely different match.
It’s very very very very very very special to be here; I grew up coming here as a 6 years old, watching the legends like Barada, Shabana, Karim, Ramy and so many others. We played here again in 2016, it was not a platinium event, but thanks to CIB and Hussein Abaza, Amr Mansi we have a great event back at the Pyramids, a lot of trouble I’m sure with security and all, but we hope that we will make it worth it.
