Challenger Tour Round-Up: Altamimi Claims Second Tour Title, Action Underway in Egypt

QSF 6 

Ammar Altamimi produced a dominant display in the QSF 6 final to claim his second PSA Tour title. 

The No.2 seed – who has a career-high ranking of No.78 in the world – had not dropped a game en route to this final, but was going up against Qatar’s own Waleed Zaman, who had already knocked out top seed Salem Al Malki in the quarter-finals. 

Altamimi, though, controlled proceedings from start to finish, dropping just nine points in the entire match, winning 11-2, 11-3, 11-4 in just 26 minutes. 

Victory secured the Kuwaiti a second Tour title, seven years after his first, and caps a successful end to the year, having also been crowned an Italian League champion a few weeks ago. 

JSW 9th Sunil Verma Memorial Open 2023 

There will be a maiden PSA Tour title handed out on day four of the JSW 9th Sunil Verma Memorial Open, with Sunita Patel and Pooja Arthi set to contest the women’s final. 

Neither player has ever reached a Tour final before, with fourth seed Patel playing in just her sixth event on the Challenger Tour. 

She had to do things the hard way to reach this final too, overturning a two-game deficit to win 3-2 in 41 minutes. 

Arthi, meanwhile, is even less experienced at this level. The 18-year-old has only played one PSA Tour event before, back in 2019, but is now just one win away from glory after knocking out fellow unseeded player Unnati Tripathi 3-1 in the semi-finals. 

In the men’s draw, the top three seeds are all through to the semi-finals, joined by unseeded veteran Sandeep Jangra. 

Jangra will take on Sri Lanka’s top seed Ravindu Laksiri in the second semi-final, after Suraj Chand and Rahul Baitha have gone head-to-head in an all-Indian first semi-final. 

SODIC Squash Open 

Sarah Soudan and local player Ritaj Ragaa produced the most entertaining match of day one at the SODIC Squash Open, playing out a five-game, 81-minute thriller. 

Ragaa took the opener on a tie break before losing the next two, only to send the match into a decider by winning game four. Soudan ultimately came out on top, though, winning the fifth 11-8 to set up a second-round clash with No.3 seed Malak Fathy. 

Rising star Nadien Elhammamy was given a walkover in her first-round match, so will play eighth seed Sohaila Ismail in the last 16, while top seed Menna Walid also discovered her opponent, with Shahd Shahen beating another local player, Fatima Talaat, in that section of the draw. 

In the men’s competition, Omar Bahgat and Marwan Tamer both knocked out [9/16] seeds, beating Yehia Essam and Yusuf Elsherif respectively. 

You can stay up to date with all the results on the PSA Tour here.