A Marathon Not a Sprint
In this piece, we continue our review of the 2020 Canary Wharf Classic, the final men’s PSA World Tour competition to be played before lockdown closed squash courts around the globe. Based in one of the UK’s major financial districts, this Gold level tournament is always a season highlight. The Wednesday night action was no exception, as eight of the best players in the world played out four quarter-finals back to back. After Tarek Momen high-pressed his way past Diego Elias, an all-egyptian encounter saw Ali Farag drawn against Fares Dessouky.
With his extraordinary fitness levels, Farag would have been clear favourite over 5 games, but this best-of-three format better suited Dessouky’s power game. Could Dessouky sprint his way to victory before fitness came into play? We examine how Farag’s use of soft shots made this a stamina-match, putting the game beyond the reach of the younger Egyptian even in the shorter format.
A blistering start
For a player looking to bring stamina to the fore, slowing the tempo of the rallies is a common approach. By taking pace off your shots, hitting a high percentage of lobs from the front and slower drives from the back, you extend the game and allow fitness to come into play. You make the match a marathon, not a sprint. This kind of game would suit the sinewy Farag, and make life tough for the explosively powerful Dessouky.
The initial exchanges gave no indication of Farag’s later tactics. Over the first ten points, Farag hit just 7.4% of shots with pace taken off, a total of 6 slow drives and lobs from 81 shots played. This was less than half the times Dessouky had slowed the game (13), and seemed at odds with Farag’s strengths. He may have been marginally in front – the score stood at 6-4 Farag – but Mr. Fantastic clearly sensed that something needed to change. From point 11 onwards, Farag flicked a tactical switch. In the remainder of the encounter, he took the pace off on 24.9% of occasions – on 86 of 346 shots.
Interestingly, both Farag (92) and Dessouky (90) hit a very similar number of slow shots across the encounter. These figures worked out as 21.6% and 20.4% of shots respectively, an insignificant difference. However, the situations in which each player played their slow shots varied enormously.
As illustrated in the graphics below, Farag tended to play his tempo-slowing shots from the front – lob shots intended to move the play away from the front corners. Across the encounter, Mr. Fantastic hit an enormous 35.9% of his slow shots from advanced positions on the court, three times the number for Dessouky (12.2%). Considered differently, 43.4% of the shots Farag hit from the front of the court were hit slowly; Dessouky, on the other hand, slowed the tempo on just 15.7% of his front court shots. Farag admitted after the match that he had wanted to avoid a battle in the front corners, fearing Dessouky’s repertoire from such positions. By choosing his battles wisely – and getting the hell out of there – Farag was playing much more to his strengths of stamina and retrieval.
Farag hit many lobs from the front; Dessouky mostly took pace off from the back
Dessouky, by contrast, hit comparatively few lobs – once the play was in the front corners, he wanted to keep Farag there and pounce on any retrieval that sat up. Dessouky’s slow shots came overwhelmingly from the back of the court, slow drives designed to give him time to recapture the T. Over three-quarters of Dessouky’s slow shots came from deep-lying positions, while Farag hit just half of his slow shots from the graveyard. Of all the shots that Dessouky hit from deep, he took the pace off on 30.5%; Farag, on the other hand, hit just 22.8% of shots from deep with pace taken off, eight percentage points fewer.
Golden retriever
Farag may have opted for exchanges from the back over shoot-outs from the front, but stamina alone won’t win you squash matches. Farag is able to extend the rallies and test his opponents’ fitness because his retrieval skills defy belief. He covers the court effortlessly efficiently, and has the stride of a player much taller than his six foot stature (183cm) would suggest. He always makes his opponents play “one more shot”, and forces them to stretch the margins above the tin, bringing unforced errors into play. Despite hitting 14 winners (Farag 8), Dessouky hit 15 unforced errors, five times more than Farag’s impressively miserly 3.
FARAG TURNED THIS ENCOUNTER INTO A GAME OF “CAN YOU HIT A WINNER AGAINST ME?”
No better example of this came at 11-10 in the first game. Farag made three consecutive retrievals, refusing to let the rally end. He made Dessouky hit another shot, and, knowing Farag was breathing down his neck, the younger Egytpian clipped the tin with his volley.
Farag’s is a defensive strategy, one that invites constant pressure. It’s a simple game plan – underpinned by the Egyptian’s immense fitness levels and retrieval ability – but it’s a game plan not available to many others. Sadly, Dessouky was forced off court injured mid-way through the final game. Unfortunate, certainly, but also not unrelated to Farag’s ability to turn this into a contest of stamina. Farag was already leading 5-2 in the third, and would very likely have gone on to win regardless. In effect, Farag turned this encounter into a game of “Can you hit a winner against me?”. For Dessouky, the answer was too often “No”.