Qatar’s Abdullah Al Tamimi celebrated after defeating World No.28 Mathieu Castagnet during the PSA World Championship at the Khalifa International Tennis and Squash Complex, yesterday.
Doha: To be the best, you have to play the best in business and when you take on the finest players you have to raise your game by a few notches.
That is precisely what Qatar’s Abdullah Al Tamimi has done for the last two days at the ongoing PSA World Championship.
The home hero has notched two resounding back-to-back wins over two Frenchmen ranked among the top 30 on the PSA World ranking calendar.
Yesterday, the World No. 47 player registered a 3-0 straight games win over Mathieu Castagnet at the Khalifa International Tennis and Squash Complex to make it to the round of 16.
Having defeated another Frenchman and World No.14 Gregoire Marche in the opening round match on Friday, the 24-year-old Qatari player gave yet another clinical finish to end the challenge of the World No.28 in 43 minutes.
“It was important to continue from what I left off from the first round,” Al Tamimi said after yesterday’s win.
“It was really hard today to back it up after yesterday. I played really well yesterday to beat French No.1 Gregoire Marche, and to back it up, to beat Castagnet who is a former World No.6, I was really happy to win.”
Yesterday’s match was a repeat of the 2017 World Championship clash between the two players.
In the championship held in Manchester, Tamimi had started off by defeating German Simon Rosner in the first round and then overcame Castagnet in the second round but lost to Englishman Nick Matthew in the third round.
Yesterday, Tamimi finished off the contest in three games, the one held two years back between the two players lasted five games.
Tamimi did not want that to happen and for that he had a game plan, which worked perfectly for the home favourite.
“He is one of the fittest guys on the circuit, so the game plan was to not to play an aggressive game but slow down proceedings and conserve energy and allow your opponent to make the mistakes,” said Tamimi while talking to journalists after the match.
The Qatari player admitted that he had a few butterflies in his stomach very early into the match but recovered as the match progressed.
“I was a little nervous in the initial stages of the matches, that was because my body was not warmed up, but as the game went on I came to my own self,” said the Aspire Academy product.
Both the players fought for every point and both of them went for the video review a number of times when they were not in agreement with the referee’s decision.
After an intense tussle Tamimi took the first game at 12-10 in 15 minutes and in the second set after a bad start bounce back to clinch the second at 11-8 in 11 minutes, he finally wrapped up the proceedings to win the third game in 12 minutes at 11-8 and book a place in the third round where he will take on No.2 seed Tarek Momen in the next round on Monday.
Momen overcame fellow Egyptian Mazen Hesham in straight games 11-9, 12-10, 11-5 victory in 35 minutes to seal his last 16 berth.
The only match of the day to go all the way to five games featured Peru’s Diego Elias and Scotland’s Greg Lobban, with the former squeezing through courtesy of a 6-11, 11-3, 11-4, 9-11, 11-4 victory to become the first Peruvian to reach the last 16.
The longest match of the day saw Welshman Joel Makin hold off Egyptian challenger Mohamed ElSherbini 11-3, 6-11, 11-9, 14-12 to book his spot in the last 16 after 74 minutes of action, where he will play Germany’s World No.6 Simon Rösner.
Rösner’s match with England’s Declan James totalled 70 minutes, with the tall German winning 11-9, 9-11, 11-8, 11-9.
Today Qatar’s Syed Azlan Amjad will be seen in action in the second round match.
