Egyptians Farag & Momen Set Up Channel VAS Title Challenge

Egyptian stars Ali Farag and Tarek Momen will line up in the final of the Channel VAS Championship at St George's Hill in Weybridge after respective wins over Karim Abdel Gawad and Diego Elias.

World No.2 Farag - winner of the Oracle NetSuite Open two weeks ago - advanced to his second PSA Tour final of the season after overcoming compatriot Karim Abdel Gawad, the former World Champion, by a 3/1 margin.

Gawad ran away with the opening game as he displayed some deft touches and outrageous winners to prevent Farag from finding his rhythm. But Farag took control in the second and third games before closing out the match 7-11, 11-5, 11-2, 11-9 after edging Gawad in the fourth.

"I watched his match yesterday [against Saurav Ghosal] and that was by far the best that any player has performed this season," said Farag on the eve of his 25th PSA World Tour final appearance.

"I could see Saurav was playing really well, but Gawad was on fire and I was prepared for this. I knew that I would have to do a lot of running and would need to stay as tight as possible to stop his attacks.

"I needed to attack whenever I had an opportunity, but it was really physically tiring and demanding. I had a game with Bassim [Haidar, Founder, Chairman & CEO of Channel IT Group], the official sponsor, yesterday and he made me ready for that one and sharpened me up."

World No.4 Momen will appear in the final of the PSA World Tour Gold event for the second time after claiming an emphatic straight games victory against Peru's world No.13 Diego Elias.

Momen avenged his 2016 final defeat to world No.8 Paul Coll in the previous round, with a sublime display seeing him eliminate the Kiwi without dropping a game.

And the 30-year-old looks like the man to beat in Weybridge this year after an imperious display saw him dispatch Elias in a 15-13, 11-8, 11-4 scoreline.

"He's a very tough opponent, and if you give him an inch, he has so many varieties of shots, he can make me move a lot," said Momen, who has reached the climax without dropping a game.

"I did quite a bit of running today, so I'm going to need some recovery work done. The quality of the game was so high, and I'm very pleased with the way it turned out. I'm also very happy for the audience to be entertained the way they have been this week.

"I've been in so many finals before where I've had extremely tough 3/2 matches back-to-back, they've affected the way I was playing in the final and they hindered my performance. I was very cautious of that, and I knew that if I wanted to do well in the final then I would have to make the matches as short as possible."

Momen will look to win his first PSA Tour title since 2014 in the final and will meet Farag for the fifth time on the PSA Tour. Their head-to-head record currently stands at 3/2 to Farag, who won the last time they met on the Tour, at April's El Gouna International in Egypt.