Genius at Work

By Brett Erasmus

So last night, in the second round of quarterfinal matches, the world numbers 1 and 2 showed why they deserve their rankings. Nick Matthew of England and Ramy Ashour of Egypt both progressed and will play each other in the semifinals tonight. Before that, at 6.30pm, the other semifinal will also feature an Englishman and an Egyptian - James Willstrop versus Karim Darwish.

Last night’s match between Ashour and the Frenchman Gaultier was the highlight of the tournament for me thus far, as we got to see Ashour’s full arsenal. Man this guy can hit some winners. It started in the warm up. Ashour’s 1st (yes first) 2 touches of the ball were dead nicks off the forehand. Gaultier picks up the ball and throws it away and asks the refs for another – because there must have been something wrong with the first one right? He was already in trouble. The game begins and Ashour’s first 2 winners are backhand drops, which he plays with a fully extended wrist. He follows this up shortly with a backhand cross-court volley into the nick at the front right. This was to be the first of many. Mid game you can tell Ashour has settled in as he starts using holds to move his opponent around the court, often catching him stepping in the wrong direction. Nevertheless, Gaultier is quick and wins a close fought game, but it was not entirely a victory as he was working way harder than necessary from very early in the match.



As the game progresses Ashour starts hitting more and more backhand cross-court volleys into the nick. He feels good now and starts hitting the ball with topspin (and sometimes even inside out backhands). You can see literally see the ball pick up on the front wall and then it jumps to the back corner off the floor. Another shot he hits which we have seen a lot of this week is the hard low cut from the front court, which dies before the side wall. This shot forces your opponent down and to the side and is often a winner when someone is slightly off center. A lot of rallies this week have ended with this shot. More of them than you normally see at an amateur level, probably owing to the lower tin. Another thing Ashour does which I like is played off a tight backhand drop – he gets there late and instead of trying to put the ball in the nick or tight to the tin, he just pops it up high and soft on the front wall. This shot may seem a little silly from a professional but he does it for 2 reasons. Firstly, it buys him just enough time to recover his court position (he is buried in the front corner); Secondly, he hits it so that it gravitates to the side wall and often stays there. If Gaultier tries to hit a winner off this shot it often comes off at an angle and Ashour is right behind him to either 1) put the ball into the cross-court nick or 2) claim an easy stroke. Ashour repeats this too often for it to be mistake, it is deliberate and is a smart way of getting out of trouble in the front. Of course, he is relying on his ability to hit a volley nick, on demand.

Despite Ashour’s shots, Gaultier works incredibly hard and goes 2-1 up in games, primarily owing to tins by Ashour. In the 4th Gaultier does everything he can to beat the world number one and finish off the match, but Ashour reduces the errors and covers the court well in this game. So much so that sometimes it seems that Gaultier does not know what to do to win a point. At 3-2 Ashour hits a forehand drop off a hard low cross at full stretch, which is one of the best drop shots you will ever see. It could not have been any tighter. But this was the exception (and was lucky, he tries it again in the next point and tins it). The real winning position for Ashour was high on the backhand. During this game the 2 players exchange a few high soft backhand rails, at which point I noticed something. The way Ashour holds his racquet out front and the fact that he often hits the cross-court nick from this extended position means Gaultier has to stay on his toes and cannot step back off the T to cover the straight shot. Ashour tracks the ball like a tennis player would, letting the racquet hang just below the ball. And he does not require racquet preparation to hit the cross-court nick. Gaultier knows this, so if Ashour so much as twitches while the ball is in flight, Gaultier would step right in anticipation of getting to the cross-court nick. The threat of hitting the winner alone was enough to keep Gaultier unbalanced and kept him honest on the T. Ashour seems to do the same thing with the backhand boast, he tracks the ball with his racquet and you don’t know if he is going to hit it or not. Sometimes he does, sometimes he does not and just lets it go then takes it off the back wall. His racquet is not giving anything away. Gaultier is likely watching Ashour’s shoulders and his feet for some indication that a shot is coming. In the middle of the 4th game there are 2 long rallies which end in lets. Gaultier’s position in the match weakens considerably and he loses that game, but not until after getting unsympathetically run around the court by his opponent.

Ashour’s shots get better in the 5th game, whilst Gaultier is tiring finally and begins allowing mistakes to creep in. Ashour is firing on all cylinders and he just keeps hitting winner after winner. His backhand volley nicks are relentless. He must have hit well over 20 of them during the match, many during the final game. Even the ones he misses are too tight to do anything with. The ones he gets die completely. My friend David counted 11 clean nicks off the backhand cross-court volley. That’s 11 out of 33 points he needed to win the whole match. And that’s off of one shot in his arsenal. To make things even worse for his opponent (and everyone else he will ever play), the only errors Ashour made in the final game are when he actually had time to think; or when he had time to take his racquet back. Every time Ashour made an error in the 5th he would talk to himself with gestures that look like he was giving himself coaching advice. I think we may be watching the world number 1 literally improve himself during a squash match! The timing’s not great(!), but who better to coach him than himself?

Tonight Ashour faces Nick Matthew, whom he has beaten twice in the last 2 months. If Ramy’s backhand is on (and he listens to his inner genius), I don’t see the outcome being any different.