Seeds Suffer In San Francisco

Satomi Watanabe, Amina Orfi and Aly Abou Eleinen all progressed to their maiden Gold-level semi-finals on the PSA Squash Tour after claiming upset victories on day four of the Silicon Valley Open 2024 presented by Oracle NetSuite.

On an action-packed quarter-finals night in San Francisco, all four lower-seeded players claimed victory at the Squash Zone in Redwood City, with No.8 seed Youssef Soliman the other winner of the evening, producing a remarkable comeback to defeat No.2 seed Karim Abdel Gawad in five games.

In the women's draw, Japanese No.1 Watanabe ended Amanda Sobhy's hopes of a title-winning return to action on home soil with an impressive four-game victory over the 31-year-old former world No.3.

Watanabe, who recently lost to Sobhy at the Platinum-level Paris Squash 2024, overturned this defeat with a gutsy performance, taking the match by an 11-7, 11-8, 6-11, 11-9 scoreline.

Despite playing the home favourite before a sell-out crowd, it was Watanabe who came out of the blocks the quicker of the two players, finding her marks in the back two corners with powerful, low hitting.

Although Sobhy rallied to take the third game and reduce the deficit to 2/1, Watanabe wasn't to be stopped, taking an early lead in the fourth game and never looking back, sealing victory after 39 minutes of play.

After the match, Watanabe said: "Amanda has obviously come back from the injury and is playing so amazing right now, so I knew it was going to be tough. My plan was to try to hit the ball deep and low. I was just trying to put her in the back corners before I went in short, and I think it worked well.

"I'm just trying to take it one match at a time - it's not going to be an easy match tomorrow against Amina. It will actually be the first time that we meet on tour, so hopefully I will have a good gameplan and it will be a good match."

Teenager Orfi, meanwhile, delivered a statement straight games victory over No.2 seed Georgina Kennedy to progress to the last four.

The pair had met once on tour before - a gripping five-game duel at the Hong Kong Football Club Open last year - but this time Orfi was able to power through to victory in more routine fashion, taking the match by an 11-9, 11-6, 11-3 scoreline.

In the men's draw, No.8 seed Soliman mounted a stunning comeback as he came from 2/0 down, 9-6 down, to conquer No.2 seed Gawad in a thrilling encounter.

In a match of two halves, Gawad completely dominated the opening 30 minutes of the match, firing in winners at will and displaying the form that has brought him such vast success throughout his career.

The former World Champion was within touching distance of the semi-finals at 9-6 up in the third game, but from there, the momentum swung dramatically in Soliman's favour.

After clinching a third-game tie-break, Soliman managed to put plenty of work into Gawad across all four corners of the court, and clinched the following two games by 11-5 and 11-9 scorelines to progress to his first Gold-level final since March 2023.

"I know to get a win against Gawad is amazing, especially after the way he started, he was like a storm. I thought that it wasn't going to go my way, but I told myself to fight. To get this win over him, it meant a lot.

"This season I knew that I could challenge the top guys. I think I have the performances to beat any of the top ten. I've been ranked 10 and 11 over the last couple of years, and I needed a win like this to prove that I can be a top eight player."

The final winner of the evening was Egypt's unseeded Eleinen, who overcame French No.1 Victor Crouin in three games.

Eleinen, who defeated former World Champion Tarek Momen in the previous round, continued this fine form to down the No.7 seed by an 11-6, 11-8, 12-10 scoreline with some clinical and accurate squash.