Amina Orfi won the biggest title of her career at the Singapore Open in remarkable fashion, coming back from 2-1 down to take victory 3-2 in a 96-minute battle with top seed Hania El Hammamy.
In this article we at Cross Court Analytics will take a look at the stats behind the victory that made her the youngest winner of a Gold level title on the PSA Squash tour.
To cut to the chase, Orfi won with relentless length hitting that was reminiscent of new World No.1 Nouran Gohar. She made El Hammamy hit from deep 70% of the time and only allowed her to hit 21% of shots around the mid-court. In comparison Orfi’s quality length hitting allowed her to control the T, hitting 28% of shots from mid-court and as a result only 60% from deep. As such she also volleyed more then El Hammamy, raising the pace of play in combination with thunderous hitting, lifting fewer than 1 in 20 shots. In contrast El Hammamy tried to counter by slowing the game, lifting 1 in 8 of her shots.
Orfi’s approach was clear, and this consistency allowed her to notch up a staggering winner to unforced error ratio. Orfi made just 4 unforced errors across all 5 games while hitting 21 winners; in her attempts to disrupt the Orfi barrage El Hammamy made far more errors, 23 in the 5 games whilst also hitting 24 winners.
Even more than usual, the majority of play was focused down the backhand side of the court and in particular the back left corner. Orfi returned 73.2% of her shots out of the back left to the same area of the court, with another 10.5% falling slightly short into the midcourt. Infrequently (9.6% of the time) she went deep crosscourt, leaving just 3% of her shots into the front. Trying to avoid this pattern El Hammamy showed more variation, going short from the back left 7.5% of the time (2.5x more than Orfi) and crosscourt to deep right 1.5x more often than Orfi, often a lift to change not just the angle but the pace.
Play was more varied down the right wall, with Orfi nearly even between straight and crosscourts, again getting most (75%) of shots to deep in the court. Again on this side El Hammamy sought to avoid the backhand barrage, hitting more than 3 in 5 shots straight from this corner and 1 in 10 to the front of the court.
When the ball did go short, the contrast in approaches was also clear. El Hammamy kept the ball at the front more often, over 50% of the time on the backhand and over 40% on the forehand, Orfi below 40% of the time on both sides, seeking to return to the length battle.
Looking at where both players hit their winners to, the trend continues. El Hammamy had most success taking the ball in short, accounting for 63% of her winners, in particular the straight drop, with 27% of her winners to deep. Orfi has a more rounded chart, hitting an equal number of winners into the front of the court as the back.
Seeing where Orfi hit most of her winners from we can piece together the gameplan – she hit most of her shots from all areas of the court to the backhand deep corner, looking to force a weak shot into the front or mid left, before using a range of options to finish the rally.
While we have talked a lot about Orfi and her incredible achievement, we must not forget that El Hammamy played 4 very good games of squash and could have won 3-0, nevertheless in searching for winners her unforced error count crept up just a little too high. In particular the straight drop was an effective weapon for her, accounting for 17 winners – 6 on the volley and 11 on the bounce – while also limiting Orfi’s options. In searching for those winners however El Hammamy hit 11 errors on the straight drop, 7 on the volley (remember Orfi only hit 4 in the entire match!)
On another day those winner attempts may go in however there is no doubt Orfi’s persistent hard hitting and continual retrieving invited a lot of pressure on those drops, possibly leading to the errors. In fact there is very little difference in the metrics in points won by each player, the rallies did often come down to the last shot. The only real difference is that in rallies that Orfi won she hit more from the front of the court i.e. when she was able to retrieve El Hammamy’s drops, and when she was able to get on a loose ball at the front quickly and put it away.
It will be interesting to see the evolution of Orfi’s game going forward as she matures and adds more facets to her game, and the plans her opponents bring as they can generally know what to expect when playing her, something very consistent that leaves the onus on the other player to change the game and do it well enough to not get picked off.
Looking at the winner and error counts by game we see El Hammamy hit 6 winners in each of games 1 & 3, far more than Orfi (2 then 3), and while she hits 5 then 6 unforced errors in these games she is also able to squeeze 2 then 4 forced errors out of Orfi, being overall +3 (winners and forced errors subtract unforced errors) in Game 1 and +4 in game 3. In game 2 that Orfi wins she is +1, with Orfi also hitting 4 winners, and then -4 in the Orfi dominated game 4. It all came down to Game 5 and El Hammamy came out firing with 7 winners and just 3 unforced errors, however Orfi was able to match with 7 winners of her own and astoundingly no unforced errors in either the final nor penultimate games, a showcase of her resilience and tenacity as mentioned by the SQUASHTV commentators.
How will the tour cope with such a strong mental and physical force going forward? An intriguing game of cat and mouse looms in 2025.
Jesse Mills
