Amina Orfi
Perhaps the breakout player of the season.
Amina Orfi was already on squash fans’ radars when she won the 2022 World Junior Championship, and she has followed that up with several spectacular results on the PSA World Tour this year.
The Egyptian showed she was no pushover in a tight 3-2 defeat to Sabrina Sobhy in the opening round of the CIB Egyptian Open before racking up three Challenger Tour titles at Jodhpur, Sutton Coldfield and Delhi.
However, at the PSA World Tour Bronze-level Squash On Fire Open, she truly announced herself to the world. Aged just 15, Orfi stunned in Washington D.C. as she downed established stars of the tour Lucy Beecroft, Sivasangari Subramaniam, Nada Abbas and Sabrina Sobhy to reach the final.
Although she lost out to Tinne Gilis in the final, Orfi proved that the run was no fluke as she gatecrashed the last 16 of the World Championships just a few weeks later, eventually losing out 3-2 to Hania El Hammamy after beating Ineta Mackevica and Olivia Clyne earlier.
Having rocketed up the rankings from World No.429 in August to World No.43 today, it’s no surprise that Orfi – still only 16 years old – is already being talked about as a potential future World No.1
MAZEN HESHAM
What a year for Mazen Hesham. His talents have never been in question, with the mercurial Egyptian ever present at the game’s biggest tournaments in recent seasons.
This year, however, was a special one for ‘the Falcon’. With his injury troubles largely behind him, Hesham has demonstrated his thrilling brand of squash on a far more consistent basis.
Nowhere was this more keenly felt than at the Bronze-level Malaysian Open, where Hesham brilliantly fought back from 2-0 down in the final to Tarek Momen to win his first title since the 2015 Houston Open some seven years prior.
Since then, Hesham has gone on to reach the finals of the Silver-level Motor City Open and the Bronze-level Hong Kong Football Club Open, as well as the semi finals of the Platinum level British Open and two Gold-level events: Houston Open and Optasia, the latter of which was achieved with an impressive 3-2 win over Ali Farag.
Can ‘the Falcon’ soar to even greater heights this year?
KARIM ABDEL GAWAD
What can we say about Karim Abdel Gawad. Many thought that the former World Champion would never recover from the injury that had kept him off the tour for nine months, and fewer still would have predicted the return that he had once he stepped back onto court.
After a first event win over a year at the Optasia Championships and a quarter-final finish at the British Open, Gawad headed to the PSA World Championships to test his physicality on the biggest stage in squash. The tournament was almost perfect for Gawad as he rolled back the years to defeat the likes of Youssef Soliman, Marwan ElShorbagy, Diego Elias and Mohamed ElShorbagy, before losing out in the final to Ali Farag.
To go from nine months on the sidelines to reaching another World Championship final is simply amazing from ‘The Baby-Faced Assassin’.
