06 March 2013

RETRIEVING MEANS COUNTER-ATTACKING: RAMY ASHOUR vs. TAREK MOMEN

Probably the two most exciting players to watch on the tour, Ramy Ashour and Tarek Momen give us a pretty good example of how the Egyptians conceive the idea of "retrieving". In their eyes, retrieving is not always just getting out of trouble, it is also opportunity to counter-attack in unattended fashion. 
In general Egyptian squash is labelled as attacking, and it is exactly the attacking mentality that teaches them also, as a logical consequence, the retrieving skills. At the end of the day, Ramy wins as many points with inch-perfect width and length as he does with his more fancy solutions, the volley-nicks and cross-drops. 
Concerning Tarek Momen, this rally demonstrates that he is very near or equal to Ramy when it comes to attacking; but he doesn't really master yet the notion of "squeezing a point out of the opponent", he mostly wins (and loses) his points either with a straight winner or a tin. As soon as he learns just a bit from Ramy how to vary more the factors of pace and heights, he will knock straight away on the door of the top5, in my opinion.