Breakthrough Performers Highlighted in Pro Season Recap
by Nathan Clarke 15TH JUN 2015
- With last week's Alexandria Open, won by Raneem El Welily, bringing
the curtain down on the 2014-2015 season, we're looking back at the
players who set the PSA World Tour alight during the course of the past
18 months.
Today, we focus on those players who broke through to show their potential during the season:
For 'Colombian Cannonball' Miguel Angel Rodriguez, the 2014-15 season will always be one to remember.
After starting the season ranked World No.14, the energetic
crowd-favourite strung together a series of impressive performances
which led to a rapid rise through the World Rankings as he became the
first South American ever to reach the top ten before scaling the dizzy
heights of World No.5 in June 2015.
A semi-final finish at the 2014 Canary Wharf Classic offered a glimpse
of what was to come as, after a busy summer training with David Palmer,
Rodriguez quickly added two PSA titles to his name – The Rancho Squash
Open and XVII Abierto Colombiano de Squash Club El Nogal – in July and
August, respectively.
Successive runner-up finishes at the Open de squash Financiere Banque
Nationale and Fiera Properties Bluenose Squash Classic followed as the
diminutive star ended 2014 with new-found consistency and he used that
form to start 2015 with a bang.
January's J.P. Morgan Tournament of Champions saw him reach the
semi-finals of a World Series event for the first time ever as, despite
being unseeded for the event, he notably defeated first Peter Barker
and then Gregory Gaultier in two breath-taking encounters before
collecting the biggest title of his career just days later, beating
Stephen Coppinger in the final of the Motor City Open PSA International
70 tournament.
With back-to-back semi-final finishes at the Grasshopper Cup and Allam
British Open bringing the 29-year-old's season to a close Rodriguez
will be buoyed with the form he displayed throughout the year and he'll
be aiming for even more improvement when he stapes onto a court for the
first time in 2015-16.
After finding himself agonisingly
close to the world's top ten for over a year, German Simon Rösner
finally broke through in 2015 courtesy of a number of eye-catching
displays which saw him consolidate his status as one of the most
consistent players on the PSA World Tour.
With quarter-finals finishes or better coming at nine of the thirteen
events he competed in throughout 2014, Rösner was rewarded when he
reached World No.10 for the first time in November and he quickly built
on that status by winning the Reidbuilt Homes Edmonton Open, PSA
International 35 tournament, to lift his eighth PSA World Tour title to
date.
A quarter-final finish at the 2015 J.P. Morgan Tournament of Champions
and a semi-final finish at the 2015 CASE Swedish Open saw the powerful
man from Paderborn begin 2015 with form on his side and in March he
competed in twhat was he biggest match of his career to date.
In front of the SQUASHTV cameras Rösner celebrated his first career win
over first James Willstrop and then Peter Barker to reach the final of
the 2015 Canary Wharf Classic where he couldn't do enough to beat a
wily Nick Matthew.
Just one month later and Rösner reached another final, the biggest of
his career, at the 2015 Grasshopper Cup as he downed Tarek Momen,
Saurav Ghosal and Omar Mosaad to line-up against Gregory Gaultier in
the decider when once again he came up just short.
But with the experience of two major finals to his name Rösner
celebrated a career-high ranking of World No.6 in June and he'll be
hoping to go one step better next season when a major title will surely
await.
Despite still being a full-time
student at the prestigious Harvard University, where she recently
graduated with a degree in social anthropology, New York born Amanda
Sobhy continued to rise through the women's tour in 2014-15 to send a
warning out to the world's top players.
She began the season with a creditable semi-final finish at the
Greenwich Open, despite being unseeded for the event, and improved
further the following month by picking up the Granite Club Open with a
number of assured performances that belied her lower seeding – scalping
former World Champion Rachael Grinham and number one seed Omneya Abdel
Kawy to lift the title.
A second title followed at the HKFC International in May, where Grinham
yet again fell in the final, before consecutive semi-finals finishes at
the Malaysian Open and Hong Kong Open World Series events saw her rise
into the top ten in the World Rankings for the first time in September.
A return to studies meant that Sobhy missed out on competing at the
following US Open and World Championships before returning to
competition at the J.P. Morgan Tournament of Champions where she
secured a solid quarter-finals finish.
March 2015 saw her win a second US National title before she rounded
off the season in style, battling through to the final of the Texas
Open and beating Nour El Tayeb 3-1 to lift her biggest career title to
date.
With a full-time career now beckoning, Sobhy will be relishing the
prospect of focusing fully on taking on the world's best players in
2015-16.
