R1: It’s Superman in 5 against the Bullet!

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[3] Paul Coll (NZL) 3-2 Mohamed Abouelghar (EGY) 5-11, 11-7, 11-2, 10-12, 11-5 (65m)

It was double NZ delight in the penultimate round of matches at the El Gouna Squash Complex on day one as Paul Coll and Joelle King came through thrilling five set matches to reach the second round.

Coll was first to book his place as he downed the talented Egyptian Mohamed Abouelghar in just over a hour’s play. Coll lost the opener 11-5 but responded in perfect fashion, tightening up his play to win 11-7, 11-2 to silence the home crowd and need just one more game to advance.

Abouelghar battled back to take command of the fourth game and made use of a few uncharacteristic errors from Coll to hold a game ball to force a fifth. Despite Coll sending it to a tiebreak, the Egyptian managed to win 12-10 to set up a final game. Coll regrouped strongly in game five and started to force errors from the racket of Abouelghar, which untimely led to his demise in the tie.

Paul: : “I started well then we had quite a big injury break then I won one point after that in game one so that wasn’t ideal. I’m happy with how I came out in the next two and it was quite up and down in the fourth game so I was disappointed with that.

“I didn’t feel like there was much rhythm in the game and that sort of suited him. I knew errors would come from him but equally, you can’t just wait for those, you need to be proactive yourself and I think I did that quite well off his loose ones so overall just glad to be through.”