Quarters Part ONE
Tonight’s matches are all repeats of recent clashes, and there’s a lot of history behind one of them in particular.
The men’s matches see 5th seed Paul Coll taking on Fares Dessouky, aiming to keep his giant-killing run going, although Coll has won the last three meetings, the most recent in this year’s British Open.
Top seed Ali Farag meets Daryl Selby with the unseeded Englishman yet to take a game off the world #1 in four attempts, including a couple of weeks ago at the U.S. Open.
Billed quite properly as a ‘blockbuster’ clash, the first women’s match pits Raneem El Welily against Nour El Tayeb. Suffice to say that they’ve met 6 time this year already with each taking 3 wins but never two in a row, and the match is a repeat of February’s Chicago world semi and this month’s U.S. Open semi.
Nouran Gohar and Sarah-Jane Perry have a 2-2 head to head, but the Englishwoman’s wins were over 5 years ago and Gohar, rising to world #2 in a couple of days, is the player in form although her 2-0 win over SJ in June’s World Tour Finals was very close .