The largest squash tournament returns to Chicago this week, as the Walter Family hosts the 2022/2023 PSA World Squash Championship in the American city from May 3 to May 11.
The championship offers a $1 million prize for men and women winners.
The last few years have been dominated by Egyptians, with six different winners taking the crown of the world champion.
That includes defending women’s champion Nour el-Sherbini who won six of the last eight women’s world championship titles.
El-Sherbini is something of a world championship specialist, with only the legendary duo Nicol David and Jahangir Khan winning the sport’s premier event more times than the ‘Warrior Princess’.
She is only 27 and two of the aforementioned six triumphs came in Chicago.
The biggest tournament on the PSA World Tour calendar is up next in this exciting 2022-23 season, with 64 women bidding to become the World Champion in Chicago.
Only one player in the draw has managed to lift the trophy before, el-Sherbini. The Egyptian will be aiming to claim an incredible seventh title between May 3 and 11.
Meanwhile, Egypt’s Nouran Gohar, who is the world no. 1, has been a beaten finalist in the World Championships for the past two years, losing out to nemesis el-Sherbini on both occasions.
Gohar has been at the summit of the PSA World Rankings for 56 weeks now, but is still chasing an elusive World Championship title.
She is in the same half of the draw as compatriot Hania el-Hammamy who has beaten Gohar in three Platinum events this season.
‘The Terminator’ will potentially have to overcome Nour el-Tayeb in the quarter-finals.
El-Tayeb will be featuring for the first time since recovering from a leg injury and will be short of match practice.
But if Gohar’s US Open form can be resurrected, a new women’s World Champion can be crowned on May 11.
In the men’s event, Egyptians Karim Abdel Gawad; Mohamed el-Shorbagy; Ali Farag, and Tarek Momen, the top four in the World Rankings for a period of time, claimed their maiden World Championships.
Farag went on to win two more, securing victory in Chicago in 2020/2021, before retaining his crown in Egypt in 2021/2022.
The inaugural men’s World Championship began in London in 1976, from January 31 to February 7 of that year – with the whole tournament being played at the old Wembley Stadium, home of the English football team.
That same year, the women’s World Championship also began, when the iconic Heather McKay lifted the first of her two titles, beating Marion Jackman on home soil in Brisbane, Australia.
Fellow Australians Rhonda Thorne and Vicki Cardwell followed in McKay’s footsteps, before the legendary New Zealander Susan Devoy became the first non-Australian player to get her hands on the coveted trophy in 1985,
at which point the tournament was a biennial event.
Since then, the tournament has been staged all around the world, with the competition being held in countries, such as the United States, Saudi Arabia, Australia, Hong Kong and Germany to name a few.
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