July PSA Rankings

World Junior Champion Mostafa Asal has broken into the top 10 of the PSA Men’s World Rankings for the first time after the 20-year-old rose three places to No.9 off the back of his title win at the CIB PSA World Tour Finals last week.

CIB Ali Farag stays ahead of Mohamed ElShorbagy, but the gap between them has been cut significantly, meaning that Mohamed can take the World No.1 spot from Ali at the World Champs in July.

If Ali fails to make it to the final, or Mohamed makes it to the final, then the World No.1 spot will certainly change hands on August 1.

For now though, Farag has made it 20 months at World No.1, which means his total reign is now longer than English legend Nick Matthew, and he joins French veteran Gregory Gaultier in ninth place on the all-time longest reigning men’s World No.1 list.

CIB Tarek Momen stays at No.3, CIB Marwan ElShorbagy at No.5, CIB Karim Abdel Gawad stays at No.6 ahead of CIB Fares Dessouky (No.7). A bit further down, CIB Mohamed Abouelghar falls to No.12.

The rest of the top 20 is unchanged.

THE WOMEN

Nour El Sherbini is celebrating her 40th month at the summit of the PSA Women’s World Rankings, meaning the 25-year-old has matched the total of Australian legend Sarah Fitz-Gerald as she moves up to joint-fourth on the list of all-time longest reigning female World No.1s.

Since first capturing the World No.1 spot at the age of 20 back in May 2016, El Sherbini has spent 40 of the past 63 months atop the PSA Women’s World Rankings and has held the position unchallenged for the past nine months in succession.

However, World No.2 CIB Nouran Gohar’s title win at the CIB PSA World Tour Finals last week has seen the 23-year-old emerge as the biggest challenger the El Sherbini’s throne and could overthrow her fellow Egyptian at the upcoming World Champs presented in July.

Nouran, who spent four months at World No.1 between July-October, 2020, just has to match El Sherbini’s results at the event to guarantee she holds the World No.1 spot on August 1, while a failure to reach the semi-finals for El Sherbini will see her ranking go to Gohar regardless of how Gohar gets on.

The rest of the top five features CIB Nour El Tayeb (No.3) who is expecting to give birth in July in Chicago, and World Tour Finals runner-up CIB Hania El Hammamy (No.5)