Amina Orfi has done what no woman in squash had done before, and she did it at 18.
The Egyptian teenager beat compatriot Nour El-Sherbini 6-11, 11-6, 11-9, 7-11, 14-12 in Saturday’s Professional Squash Association World Championships final in Giza to become the youngest women’s world champion.
At 18 years and 10 months, Orfi also became the first player to hold the world junior and senior PSA championship titles at the same time.
“I’m speechless,” Orfi said after bagging her 12th PSA title. “I worked so hard to get here and had so many tough losses this season.”
Orfi denied 31-year-old El-Sherbini a ninth world title. El-Sherbini won her first at the age of 20.
The final became the eighth-longest women’s match of all time and the second-longest women’s PSA World Championships final, behind Rhonda Thorne and Vicki Hoffman’s 118-minute match in 1981.
El-Sherbini won the opening game comfortably as Orfi struggled to find her rhythm. Orfi then took the next two games to move within one game of her first world championship title.
The eight-time champion responded in the fourth game to force a decider. After repeated tie-breaks in the fifth, Orfi sealed the win with a backhand that El-Sherbini could not return.
Orfi, ranked number three in the PSA rankings, had already come through another major test in the semi-finals when she beat top-ranked Hania El-Hammamy in four games.
She lost the first game 10-12, then won 11-7, 11-8, 11-9 against the 26-year-old Egyptian.
“I knew there was going to be pressure on both of them, Hania being world number one and Nour being a title away from breaking the record [for most world titles],” Orfi said. “I knew I had the least pressure, and I went for it. I’m just so happy.”
In the men’s final, reigning champion Mostafa Asal kept his title with an 11-4, 11-1, 12-10 win over seventh-seeded Youssef Ibrahim.
The win gave Asal, 25, the second world championship title of his career.
Ibrahim reached his first world championship final after beating second-seeded Paul Coll and fourth-seeded former world champion Karim Abdel Gawad in the quarter-finals and semi-finals.
Asal stayed in control throughout the 57-minute final.
“It feels amazing to win the world championships in front of your family and friends,” Asal said. “Credit to Youssef Ibrahim. To even be playing here with his shoulder injury, he’s superhuman. He’s a good friend of mine, and we grew up together.
“It’s so hard. I got edgy in the third game. The pressure was on for sure. It’s never easy playing in Egypt to defend a world title. There’s so much pressure playing in front of everyone here.”
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