In the first few years of his stellar break-through Ramy Ashour managed to beat pretty much everybody in the top10 at the first or second attempt. But he was suffering against Amr Shabana. It was only at the 4th attempt that he managed to beat him. What was it? Probably too much respect? Maybe. Shabana just so clever? Sure. In any case, these two are the two main heroes of what we might call the Egyptian Revolution of squash; these two have shown first that as a professional - with 15 years of training behind you - you are supposed to be capable to go short from any point of the court; and at the same time, you should be capable of covering the space in case your short attempt went loose. Of course, the game of squash is inconceivable without a steady basic long game; and these two without question are also great masters of the basic shots; it's just as they they have made a pact: "we are similarly good in the basic game, so why hitting first 25 deep shots before going short, let's make it within 5 shots..." And as they are used to this mentality since their early junior times, they have learned to read the game also when the ball is hidden and the opponent is in front of you. It's shoot-out squash, with hazardous nick-attempts off the serve (0:11), cross-court drops (0:13) and "invisible man" running across the court (0:15) - probably not as invisible as James Willstrop was at another exquisite occasion - but still, pretty invisible to generate a friendly & funny body-check from Amr Shabana. By the way, it was an important point; Shabana led by two games to one and 8:6. With 9:6 in the fourth it would have been tough to beat him, whereas by winning the point Ramy managed to come back in the game and then also won the fifth (...and then the final against Karim Darwish to become World Champion, at the age of 21!) Shabana then avenged the loss next year in the final, whereas in the last two years Ramy was injured at the World Open. Unlucky for him and the spectators, lucky for the rest of the field...
