Joelle King Feeling “like a junior again” As She Returns To Action For First Time In 11 Months

New Zealand’s Joelle King returns to competitive action today at the CIB Egyptian Open for the first time since October 2023. The former World No.3 suffered back and knee injuries at the start of last season and hasn’t featured in a PSA event since the U.S Open.

King has seen her ranking drop 56 places from when she last competed, now sitting at World No.60. She has a pegged ranking of No.9 and will be hoping to capitalise on this position to earn her way back into the top 20 as soon as she can.

King is up against current World No.10 Sivasangari Subramaniam in her opening match, scheduled for 16:00 on Court 6. You can watch the match live on SQUASHTV here.

“It will be 11 months since I played my last tournament,” King explained to SquashSite’s Framboise Gommendy.

“It started with a back injury and I decided to go back to New Zealand to rehab it but as that came right, I tore my meniscus. So I had knee surgery and obviously because of such a long period out it meant I had to build my strength again.

“My recovery was pretty good but I obviously had a lot of swelling and pain but mentally I was really good. I don’t know how but I stayed really positive mentally, I think it was just the love of the sport that kept driving me. I made a promise to myself to come back, even if it was only for one more time, just to show that I could do that. Even at 35 I still love being on court and I think similarly to what I experienced when I did my Achilles 10 years ago, when something is taken away from you like that, you just want it back.

“One of the biggest things is just to just show up. The majority of players in so many sports will never show up at 100%, they will always have things going on in the background but they show up and give their best for the love of the game.”

With such a long time away from the competitive game, King expressed how she feels like a junior again and feels that same excitement heading into her first match at the CIB Egyptian Open.

“I feel like a junior again. I feel excited to be back playing, pain free. That’s a weird experience to have now, being pain free, sometimes I wake up and expect pain but there isn’t any now and that’s such an amazing feeling. 

“My first match is against Siva [Subramaniam], who’s in the top 10 now and what a challenge. It’s going to give me an honest representation of where I’m at now but I think that just stepping on court again is a win.”

Gommendy asked King what was the thing that she missed most when she was away from the PSA Squash Tour. King explained that there are two main things that she loves about being a professional squash player.

“I missed competing the most. You spend more time with the people that you’re competing against than your family when you’re on the tour and I have so many friends on tour. It’s both the competing and social side of squash that I missed. I think you forget sometimes when you’re in the competitive mode why you’re actually doing it. I love competing, I love the social element and I love the feeling I get when I play squash.”