Popular squash champ aiming for fourth World Open title
Kuwait: Amr Shabana, the most successful squash player of this millennium, will stand behind only the two greatest legends in the history of the World Open if he wins his fourth title here on Saturday. The wonderfully gifted and highly popular Egyptian will be trying to capture his fourth World Open title by overcoming the titleholder, Ramy Ashour, his younger, equally brilliant, but rather more variable compatriot. If Shabana were to achieve this, he would be level on World Open wins with Geoff Hunt, the great Australian, and behind only Jahangir Khan and Jansher Khan, the Pakistanis who swept all before them for a decade and a half.
The 30-year-old has been helped by this year's innovation -- having a rest day between the semifinals and the finals, which should ensure against the showdown becoming a disappointment. Two of the last four finals have been straight games anti-climaxes.
"It's good to have a rest day now - it's as it should be," Shabana said. "Often in the past you don't get a good final because someone is tired by the time they get to the final. But I should be rested, and should be fresh for the final."
If he is, he will be the favourite, even though he is the fourth seed and the 22-year-old Ashour is the third. Shabana has far greater experience of the big occasion, and has a greater capacity to battle through difficult phases of a long match, as shown by his four-game win over England's James Willstrop in a long drawn out semifinal. What has characterised this Shabana performance, and most of his performances since winning the Hong Kong Open, has not been so much their quality -- though his squash is almost always laced with brilliance -- but their feeling of desire. There have been moments since he lost the world number one ranking in January when there have been doubts about Shabana's motivation levels. But not this time.
"I try to play my matches with this (desire)," he said. "You need good preparation though, and you need a bit of luck. When you get this you have a fighting chance to get through."

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