R2 : [1] Ali Farag (Egy) 3-0 [13] Omar Mosaad (Egy) 11-6, 11-6, 11-7 (33m)
Those two have played quite a lot, between the Egyptian Nationals and the PSA, and it’s quite a good record for Ali. And last time they played at the Egyptian Open a few weeks ago, Ali really whizzed through the match in 29m, Omar scoring only 11 point.
An improvement then I feel, last time Omar was a bit like a rabbit in the lights, but today, none of that, he was stepping forward, really taking the game to Ali, and although he made a few errors too many – which prevented Ali to feel really threatened, Ali had a work up to the middle of each game.
Omar is still working extremely hard, both on his fitness and on his mental strength. He wants to come back to his best level. And we really hope he does.
Omar
I have tried to make a few changes in my fitness with Hossam – same fitness coach than Ali – and I feel better than in Al-Ahram. Still, he played very fast and I was struggling a bit to find my rhythm and to impose my game. But there a lot of positive to take away today.
Ali
In the second and the third, I think I found my length a lot better than the first. In the first I got away with my movement a little and cover a lot of ground because he was dominating the ‘T’ a lot more than I was. I was trying to play at a high pace but then it comes at the cost of accuracy, I thought I would rather have accuracy than pace with loose shots in the middle of the court because he’s very good at this.
I’m very happy with the way I played, I think I played a lot better than the first round and I’m happy with the way I’m improving.
Nour was making fun of me the other day that I wasn’t really hitting the ball in the middle of the racket. She joked ‘you don’t have any ball control’ and today at one of the serves, I just hit the frame rather than the strings, so I was telling her this to make even more fun of me. My cousin is here as well and I haven’t seen her for a while, so it was fun.”
