Nathan solid but Marwan too sharp

R3: [6] Marwan ElShorbagy (EGY) bt Nathan Lake (ENG) 11-8, 11-4, 11-9 (37m)

A very good match from Nathan, who took the game to the hot favourite of the event, playing very fast and hitting hard and low, trying to twist and turn Marwan and pushing out of his comfort zone.

It was a great plan, speed and power made the accuracy a bit wobbly at times, enough to give Marwan confidence he would control the end of the games. But an excellent display of squash skills from Nathan and an equally excellent response from Marwan…

Marwan
It was a good and solid performance today, I was much sharper than my first match, I was moving well, seeing the ball better. To be honest, I surprised myself because I was sharper today on a traditional court that I would expect to be in the earlier rounds. I felt good and it’s a good sign for me.

We train quite a lot in Bristol, Nathan is a very underrated player, out of all the English Players I played with, for me, he is the one with the more potential. So we know each other’s game quite well.

Happy with my performance, going to enjoy my day off, onto the glasscourt, it’s a completely different event from now on.

Between Mazen and Saurav, you can’t predict the result at all, it could be a 3/O for either of them in 30m or a 5 setter in 90m+! To be honest, I don’t care who I play and I don’t care that Karim is out of the draw. And yesterday, when I was watching Ali, I didn’t think “oh, he may lose, I’ll have an easier draw”, but I was just enjoying Nicki playing good squash. I have to beat them all. I don’t want to have it easy. I’ve learnt from my mistakes, you’ve got to think of yourself.

Nathan
I think I played well, he is obviously in great form. The only thing I was a bit disappointed in was the lack of variety in my hitting, but that’s due to the quality of his hitting.