Nele Gilis beats sister Tinne in brutal clash to claim the 2023 VITAGEN Singapore Squash Open title

Nele Gilis is the 2023 VITAGEN Singapore Squash Open champion after defeating sister Tinne Gilis in a dramatic five-game battle that lasted 82 minutes.

Both sisters were competing in their first Gold event finals, and a second World Tour final after Nele won the encounter at the Open de France back in September 2022.

Nele started the better of the two as she got to work on pinning Tinne in the back two corners early in the match and making sure her sister was as far back in the court as possible before sending the ball short. Nele was relying on Tinne attacking first and then counter attacking her younger sister to make her question her tactics. This worked well as Tinne looked to be getting increasingly frustrated with proceedings as she lost the opening two games 11-6, 12-10.

Despite looking physically tired at the end of the second game, Tinne returned to the court with a fighting spirit, determined to give a better account of herself and get stuck into the match. She threw caution to the wind as she started to fire the ball into the front corners with great accuracy and rattled off winner after winner. Nele had no response for the change in tactics from her younger sister and lost the game 11-8.

More followed from Tinne as she could see that Nele was struggling to cope with the patterns of play that she was producing. Tinne couldn’t miss as she relentlessly attacked the corners of the court, as a panicking Nele looked back at fiancé and World No.4 Paul Coll for answers. Tinne impressively levelled 11-5 to force a fifth and final game to decide the champion.

The words of wisdom from Coll in between the fourth and fifth game looked to have been crucial for Nele as she got off to the perfect start in the fifth game, leading 4-1. Despite Tinne clawing her way back to 4-5, Nele put together a string of positive rallies to test the movement of a fading Tinne, who couldn’t register another point as Nele romped to the title, the biggest of her career.

Here’s what the two sisters had to say after the match:

Nele: “That was so tough physically but it was even tougher mentally to play against your sister. You try to forget about it but it’s almost impossible. To be honest, the way she won the third and the fourth, I thought I had zero chance in the fifth.

“I tried to just reset and forget about the past two games and just start a completely new game and focus point-for-point and I’m glad I managed to sneak the win. To be honest, it could have gone either way and I would’ve been so happy for Tinne if she won as well.”

Tinne: “I didn’t want to leave that court without giving my all. Even though I was 2-0 down I still wanted to fight. I changed my tactics a little bit. In the first two games I feel like I was a little bit playing a length game with her which I was never going to win physically. So I just tried to use my attacking shots and every opportunity I had I went for it, and my shots seemed to work a little bit better today. After winning that third game I thought that it was working, so I kept doing it.

“In the fourth and then in the fifth, I don’t think she gave me a lot of opportunities for me to use the front of the court. I gave it my all on court today and she ended up winning, so I’m sad for me, but I’m happy for her.”

Result:
[3] Nele Gilis (BEL) bt [4] Tinne Gilis (BEL) 3-2: 11-6, 12-10, 8-11, 5-11, 11-4 (82m)