Road to Egypt: ElShorbagy First Player to Qualify for World Tour Finals

England’s Mohamed ElShorbagy is the first player to qualify for the 2022 CIB World Tour Finals following his impressive campaign in Doha, where he won the first Platinum-level tournament of the season, the QTerminals Qatar Classic, for the fourth time.

In the women’s Road to Egypt standings, Nour El Tayeb remains top after beginning her season with a win at the Bronze-level CIB Zed Squash Open and a runner-up finish at the South Western Women’s Open.

The CIB PSA World Tour Finals are scheduled to take place in Cairo in June 2023 and the event includes both a men’s and women’s tournament featuring eight players each, bringing together all Platinum title winners as well as the reigning PSA World Champions. Any remaining places are allocated to the highest ranked players on the CIB Road to Egypt Standings, with points on offer at all PSA World Tour events during the season.

Thanks to his win over France’s Victor Crouin at the opening Platinum event of the season, England’s ElShorbagy climbed one place in the World Rankings, leapfrogging Peru’s Diego Elias to fourth.

Crouin, who reached the finals of both the CIB Zed Squash Open and the Qatar Classic, remains in second place after a blistering start to the season. Following their early exits in Qatar, neither of the World’s top two male players – Ali Farag and Paul Coll – are in the top eight, though they will hope to change that at the Platinum-level CIB Egyptian Open, which begins on September 19th.

The Egyptian Open, which features a men’s and women’s draw, will see the first woman guaranteed a spot at the World Tour Finals. While El Tayeb holds a slender lead at the top of the leaderboard, the likes of World No.1 Nouran Gohar and World No.2 Nour El Sherbini will be targeting a win at the Pyramids to pick up the first women’s Platinum-level title of the season.

Although the upcoming Egyptian Open is the next Platinum-level event of the season, points are also up for grabs at the Bronze-level Open de France de Squash in Nantes, which is currently underway.