El Gouna 2015: The greatest match of all time?

Photo from SquashSite

In this blog we are going to look at a match widely considered, and inspired by Stuart Crawfords comments in the podcast discussing my first blog featuring Ramy Ashour which described it as such, one of the greatest matches of all time. That is the 2015 El Gouna final between Ramy Ashour and Mohamed ElShorbagy, another match I can’t recommend highly enough and you can watch it here. Getting a full match on Youtube is usually a good indicator that it’s a classic!

Before we look at the data I’ll quickly discuss the context and why it might be considered the best match of all time. It featured two of the greatest players of all time at some of their strongest points. Mohamed is ranked 1 in the world at just 24 years old, a superb achievement. Ramy is 27 and ranked 6, however this is lower due to injuries that have limited his recent appearances, this being his first competitive tournament in 4.5 months.

Despite this Joey Barrington says that ‘Ramy is probably the favourite’; looking at the head to head you can see why. In the preceding year 2014 they played 4 times with Ramy wining the previous years El Gouna, World series finals, and epic Word Championships over Shorbagy in Best of 5 game matches; Shorbagy’s only success was in the best of 3 world series finals pools. Before that Ramy also triumphed in the 2012 World Championship final, showing he has the edge over Shorbagy on the biggest stage.

Shorbagy is possibly fresher after Nick Matthew withdrew in the semi-final, but he was struggling at one game down and 3-5 down to the Englishman, meanwhile Ramy has got through after 3-1 wins over James Willstrop and Gregory Gaultier.

Knowing the match and the styles of these two, we might expect a rapid paced match with Ramy in particular attacking the front a lot, as well as lots of volleying and intercepts across the midcourt. Despite this I would not expect particularly short rallies in terms of shots due to the retrieval skills of both players but a high number of shots per second with both aiming to take the ball exceptionally early.

The first game goes (as Joey predicted) to Ramy, with the key distinction between the two here being the unforced error count. Mohamed hits 4 errors to only one by Ramy; in addition Ramy hits more winners, 6 to 5. Despite this the score is close on the way to 9-9 as Mohamed forces two errors out of Ramy with great squeezes. Eventually Ramy takes the last two points separated by a staggering 6 successive lets, making this crucial first game a crucial 27 rally marathon.

Figures 1&2 above show the winners and unforced errors hit by each player per game, while Figure 3 shows the totals for both, along with forced errors.

Both seem determined to compensate for this at the start of game 2 with the rally length shortening dramatically – the 12th rally is the first to exceed the match average of 14 shots, with 9 winners hit between them in the first 11 rallies before an unforced error in the 35-shot twelfth rally. In total Ramy produces 8 winners as he romps home from 7-6 up to win 11-6; despite Mohamed stepping up and producing an error-free game he just cannot compete with this barrage. Mohamed making no errors and still losing the game is not something we see often, and is why we often look at the offset between winners and errors – for Ramy this is 8 winners, 1 error, a +7 difference (and superb ratio), while Mohamed is only +3 as he cannot find the same number of winners. In this game in particular Ramy is able to step up and take the ball in the mid court more, 31% of the time compared to 26% in the first game. Mohamed also increases his mid court intercepts from 19% to 26%,  a sign that both players are settled into the relentless pace that this match is played at. As a result, his total shots NOT hit from deep increases from 33% to 41%, rather high.

Figure 4 shows the percentage of shots each player hit from the mid-court area in each game.

When we look at where Ramy hits his winners from we can see how he manages 8 this game. He hits 52% of his winners from across the middle of the court, 30% on the backhand side and 22% on the forehand side, so as he is hitting more shots from this area he is able to find more winners. Perhaps this can be attributed to his unique short-swing volley that allows him to generate more power and accuracy than most even when faced with the hard hitting pace from Mohamed. This allows Ramy to hit winners from mid-court 10% more than most other players do against Mohamed recently, a small difference but a clear advantage he has. I’d bet that mid-court winner percentage was even lower for most players back in 2014 when Mohamed played this pace more often.

Figure 5 shows what percentage of winners both players hit from each segment of the court.

Ramy also favours the backhand at the front, again hitting 22% of his winners from the front left, making two strong areas for him – the mid-court, and anything not to length on the backhand side. That winning shot from the front left is more often than not a counter drop as he gets on the ball so early, hitting 46.3% of shots from advanced left back into that area, showing how often he gets onto that ball with time instead of having to lift – other players only play this counter drop 33% of the time vs Mohamed. Only 27% of his shots from this area go to deep, compared to ~50% for Mohamed’s hard hitting approach. As a result Mohamed has a much more varied winner chart, with no area lower than 8.8% (back right), and back left and mid-right tied for most at 23.5%. However this back-left area of winners for Mohamed is a double-edged sword as he makes 41.7% of his errors from this area too.

Figure 6 shows what percentage of unforced errors both players hit from each segment of the court.

Game 3 flips the script as Mohamed takes control of the middle of the court, 31% of shots from mid-court this time with Ramy down at 27%. The difference here is the percentage of shots hit from deep, in G1 & G2 both were within 1%, but in G3 Ramy is forced to hit from deep 62% of the time compared to just 51% for Mohamed.

In all games so far Ramy has taken the ball in short more giving Mohamed more advanced intercepts, but we can see that this is not as effective here when Mohamed is able to stay near the T more.  Ramy only manages two winners while Mohamed hits 10 in a stunning 11-4 reversal. The shots per rally drop to just 11 from 14 in G1 & G2, with only a single rally over 18 shots.

Figures 6 and 7 show what percentage of shots each player hit from the front of the court and back of the court respectively.

Ashour makes a change in game 4, lengthening the rallies in an attempt to play himself back into the game after the shock of game 3. He makes Mohamed hit from advanced positions only 9% of the time compared to 17.5% before, nearly half as much, keeps the ball off the volley (10% of Mohamed’s shots compared to 18% in G3), and hardly ever slows the pace (2% of shots compared to 10% in G3). This lengthens the rallies back up to 15 shots, and with 9 lets in 31 points that is a lot of squash.

Figure 8 shows the percentage of each players shots that were hit slow per game.

The change doesn’t work however as Mohamed still takes this 12-10 and into an enticing 5th game that the match really deserved. The approach limits Mo to just 5 winners but doesn’t help Ramy find any more himself, just 3 while hitting 5 unforced errors (Mohamed 3). One significant point here is when Ramy has tournament ball at 10-9 and clips Mohamed on his downswing, hitting the ball into the  tin. It is inexplicably given a let instead of a stroke, but with hindsight maybe we can be grateful that it gave us the epic 5th game instead of seeing it as a potentially controversial moment.

Game 5 is also tight. Unusually, Mohamed hits more from mid-court but Ramy volleys more. Ramy hits less short (10%) but Mohamed even less at 5%, his lowest figure so far, instead forcing Ramy to hit from deep 70% of the time with the aim of reducing his opportunities to attack. Ramy aims to neutralise this with slow shots 8.5% of the time; Mohamed only hits slow 3% of the time, instead trying to get the ball behind Ramy as he hits more crosscourts in a game for the first time.

From these deep positions Ramy still finds a way to attack, firing in attacking boasts (7.5% of shots). While these don’t convert into winners, 4 for Ramy to Elshorbagy’s 6, they lead to errors, both forced (3) and unforced (4) from Elshorbagy, who gives away 3 strokes and a no let as well. They are so closely matched but those errors and decisions prove the difference as Ramy only concedes one forced error and two unforced errors with 2 strokes but no no-lets.

From 10-6 match ball Shorbagy, the game goes wild. Two short rallies including a tinned return of serve, but then a monster 55 shot rally. The scars from previous matches show as Mohamed can’t figure out how to get over the line at these make or break moments. Ramy hits two winners to get to 10-10 and then Shorbagy makes two errors in the deciding tiebreak. Joey got it right, but only just.

Figure 9 shows how the thrilling final game unfolded.

As with the previous Ramy vs White match I want to make a note on the quality of the squash, indicated by a few metrics. Both players have a winner to error ratio of over 2.25, indicating the quality of attacking play. The rallies are quite short at 14 shots but the number of them, with so many lets, and the pace they are played at is remarkable. Both players also build from length, something us budding amateurs can take away as they maintain such a good winner/error ratio with a good length hitting base and good shot selection. Both return 2/3 of shots from deep left to deep again, with both hitting over half straight back deep.

Figure 10 shows the percentage of shots hit into each region from out of the deep left, by player.

Similar is true of the deep right, hitting 2/3 deep but with Ramy splitting his deep shots between straight and crosscourt fairly evenly while Mohamed still keeps 50% straight deep. While both are lethal from mid-court that is saved for when they have time, sending the ball cross court to deep most often on both sides of the mid-court.

As always this was a match that I found a pleasure to watch back, but I have since seen some PSA material suggesting their World Championship final in 2012 was the best match of all time instead. Let us know what you think the best match of all time was and if we like your suggestion we might take a look at it next.

Jesse Mills