Season Review: Amanda Sobhy

“The season has been long which is the understatement of the year. I don't even know when the season really started to be honest. But I would have to say this season there was a lot of just change and growth, for in terms of my game on the court and my life off the court and the things I did kind of off the court as well as just what I've been able to achieve on the court to it's probably the most like the most impactful season of my career, I want to say, and just a lot of change a lot of growth.

“Looking back at it, there's been my best result of winning the Oracle NetSuite Open. Then I've also had some tough, early-round losses and kind of feeling plateaued in my career as well. So I needed to make a change in terms of whom I'm working with, my coaches and my team and feeling like I needed to shake things up and do things differently, in order to be excited about the rest of my career, which I want to be because I've been doing this for a long time and I don't want to keep doing the same things over and over again. But also I want to make that jump up and really challenge the top players, I knew I needed to change. So I think, overall, this season, there's just a lot that happened both on and off the court.

“I have a very strong game naturally and the way I've been doing things, I think has gotten me so far. But the big thing was the consistency of being able to be a bit more accurate, with my shots and where I'm placing the ball and consistency in my movement and making things a lot more efficient, which I knew there need to be a bit of a change. But I just didn't know, who was going to help me make that change. So thankfully, like I found that down in Florida with Wael El Hindi. That's been amazing and has totally made me excited about the nature of my game, instead of focusing on what I need to do to beat these players now, it's what do I need to do to just make my game a little bit more complete and sustainable and just elevate my game to the next level.

“So I think that's the biggest thing, I’m super happy about the season, consistency and accuracy and being able to execute my game plan for a long period of time. So it's not being able to do that for a few points. But then, mentally and physically you drop off, you have to be able for these top players, you have to be able to sustain for 90 minutes, if you want to beat them and you can't really have any room for error.

“But it's more about just focusing on my game as well too. Focusing on the things that I can improve on in my game instead of focusing on like my opponents and like what they're doing there. They're [the World’s top three] definitely a notch above. But I think, if have an amazing day, I feel like I have the game to beat anybody but it's just being able to be consistent to have those days consistently instead of just having the one-offs and then a few poor performances and I think that's kind of key when you're at that top level, what's going to keep you at the top is consistently. Being able to perform really well over and over and over again, even on days that you don't feel well, finding a way to just sustain and hang in there and find a way to win.

“So I mean, it's all a learning process. I've said this probably a million times already but it's just the fact that with these changes, I'm actually excited to play and compete for a few more years and do something different regardless of whether that's going to make a difference or be the big break for me. But you know, the fact that I trust my team and trust the work that we're doing and trust that the process that we're kind of going through is what's going to take me over the top so it's it's taken like a nice weight off of my shoulders and I've been a little bit under the radar just because everyone is like “oh the Egyptians Egyptians” so it's kind of taking pressure off of me where I can just go in and play and have fun with it.

“I haven't really spent that much time training with Wael down in Florida. We put a really good two-week block in before TOC and Worlds and like those two weeks where it really paid off and like I noticed the improvements right away so I'm just excited to actually have like a summer training block to put a lot of like good work in to see kind of how I do next season.”

After starting the season in the perfect way, by winning the Oracle NetSuite Open, USA’s Amanda Sobhy had a slightly topsy-turvy season.

The World No.4 lost out to some lower ranked players throughout the season in big events but battled back to end the season with three semi-final appearances, coming at the Allam British Open, PSA World Championships and CIB World Tour finals.

Here’s what she had to say about her season and what she is looking forward to for next season.