Optasia Championships 2024 Finals: The Stats & How To Watch Live

It’s finals day of the Optasia Championships 2024, with the men’s Gold-level final and the women’s Bronze-level title decider to come from the all-glass court at The Wimbledon Squash Club in London.

Play begins at 16:00 (GMT), with top seed Nele Gilis taking on No.4 seed Satomi Watanabe, before World No.1 Ali Farag and World No.2 Paul Coll square off yet again on the PSA World Tour.

Watch every moment of the action live on SQUASHTV, or keep up with the latest scores on the PSA Live Scores page.

For more information on the Optasia Championships, visit the tournament website here. You can find out more about the PSA World Tour by visiting the PSA website or following the PSA on X, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube.

Order of Play

Nele Gilis v Satomi Watanabe

World No.4 Nele Gilis and World No.19 Satomi Watanabe will contest the opening final of the evening in a repeat of their Windy City Open third-round meeting last month.

On that occasion, it was Gilis who came out on top, winning the match in four hard-fought games and 60 minutes of action. This victory took the Belgian’s record against Watanabe to 4-0 on the PSA Tour.

For Watanabe, though, the Optasia Championships final will be the biggest of her career to date. After an impressive week that has included wins over Torrie Malik, Melissa Alves, and home favourite Jasmine Hutton, the 25-year-old, who is Japan’s highest-ranked player of all time, is likely to be fired up for the opportunity to claim her maiden World Tour title.

Gilis, on the other hand, will be searching for title No.3 of the season after her respective wins at the Singapore Open and the New Zealand Open before the New Year. The 28-year-old fought off a determined Nada Abbas to reach the title decider in four games yesterday, after Round 2 and quarter-final wins over Katie Malliff and Hana Moataz.

Both players have played some brilliant squash to reach this stage of the tournament, but Gilis’ past experience of playing in pressure finals could well prove to be a pivotal factor.

Paul Coll v Ali Farag

For the fifth time already this season, World No.1 Ali Farag and World No.2 Paul Coll are set to meet on the PSA World Tour as they battle it out for the Optasia Championships 2024 title.

If the four prior encounters this campaign are anything to go by, fans will be treated to a thrilling spectacle, with three matches having gone to a deciding game and over the 80-minute mark. Farag has won 20 of the pair’s 28 meetings on tour, but the form books have seen both players claim with two wins apiece this season.

The pair have looked in imperious form on their way to the title decider in London, with Farag yet to drop a game during his wins over Dimitri Steinmann, Marwan ElShorbagy and defending champion Karim Abdel Gawad, and Coll having impressively seen off the threat of Mostafa Asal in four games in the semi-finals yesterday.

There is also little to split between the two players in terms of the number of minutes spent on court this week, with Coll taking 129 minutes en route to the final and Farag 146, so expect a hard-fought battle right down to the very last point.

This one could go either way, so make sure to settle in and get ready for what could be another Farag v Coll classic.