Asal has about 7 years left of his career, if he plays clean squash for that time would it save his legacy? Or is he irredeemable for his first 7 years on the PSA Squash Tour?
Many players had controversial starts to their careers but won people over as they got older, Omar Mosaad, Mo El Shorbagy, Greg Gaultier, etc. Can Asal do that?
Assume both players are healthy (no fatigue between matches).
Assume that the refereeing is perfect and strikes a balance between both eras.
Assume both players are healthy (no fatigue between matches).
Assume that the refereeing is perfect and strikes a balance between both eras.
Everyone uses the lowest grip when retrieving and the high grip in the back corners sometimes, but what's your default grip?
Lowest grip: Little finger at the bottom of the grip & base of palm hangs off the edge
E.g. Greg Gaultier, Gregoire Marche, Young Mostafa Asal
Low grip: Little finger ~1 inch from bottom of the grip & base of palm at base of butt cap
E.g. Yousef Ibrahim, Nouran Gohar, Hania El Hammamy, Amina Orfi, Karim Gawad
Mid grip: Little finger ~1.5 inches from bottom the grip & base of palm contacts the middle of the butt cap piece
E.g. Diego Elias, Olivia Weaver, Marwan El Shorbagy, Mohamad Zakaria, Fayrouz Aboelkheir
High grip: Little finger >2 inches from bottom the grip & base of palm sits above the butt cap piece.
E.g. Paul Coll, Gina Kennedy, Nicole David, Jahangir Khan, Victor Crouin
Assume both players are healthy and that the refereeing is perfect and strikes a balance between both eras.
Accepted a match with someone and I agreed to split the court booking with him, only to find out at Reception that they want to charge me a £5.00 guest fee! Clubs that do this should be excluded because paying £11 for 40 minutes of squash where I have to travel to get there is not going to make me use this feature again!
Watched a PSA video about "drama" and you can see that small racket taps on the side wall are conduct strokes for racket abuse, a loud shout at a ref is a conduct stroke for dissent, but deliberately swinging at someone's face and tripping them repeatedly is only penalised when it's happening too often. Why? Is it just me, but watching someone hurting their opponent is 10x worse than any racket abuse or dissent!
These are diabolical. Hard to believe this can go on for another year without something changing
Q: Mostafa, what's one thing people assume about you that is completely wrong?
A: Not sure to be honest cause I am good in everything
Where are the fans? Are people tuning out of squash? This is the biggest event of the year and the views are down from even Optasia
Just wanted to share my thoughts, which is that I think the Asal situation is impossible to manage.
The decisions were nearly all correct. No-one can argue that a single hand brush in isolation is a conduct stroke, or a trip in isolation, or an isolated swing to the head that Elias ducks underneath. In isolation, these are impossible to penalise.
But when Asal combines these contacts together all the time, every rally, it is unwatchable. It meant Elias was ducking, tripping and being knocked all of the time which made it impossible to maintain the accuracy needed in the third. How do you deal with this?
Andrea Santa Maria tried the Conduct Stroke in El Gouna for EXACTLY this reason - "an accumulation of poor movement". Her reward? She got lambasted and criticized for ruining the match. She got abused out of the arena. EVERYONE, including people who HATE Asal said it was wrong or harsh. No-one stuck up for her, including me. The result? The referees went back to a year ago, repeated warnings and no punishment. Ultimately leading to an unwatchable third game and Elias giving up afterwards.
So essentially we either get a match like yesterday, or we get a finale like El Gouna. That's the reality no-one wants to accept. Either the refs do nothing and Asal cheats his way to dominance, or the referees are forced to appear overbearing and get criticised to death.
Asal has completely ruined elite squash and if this is the future of PSA squash, I'm out.