SHARM EL SHEIKH: Camille Serme, the finest woman squash player yet to emerge from France, will face off against Omneya Abdel Kawy, the fourth seeded Egyptian with the brilliant front court skills, in a semi-final after she scored the best win of her career and the biggest upset of the World Open so far when she beat world number two Jenny Duncalf to reach the semi-finals here Monday.
Abdel Kawy saved three game points against in the second game and survived the pressure of home expectations by 11-8, 14-12, 6-11, 11-5 against the much-improved tenth-seeded Australian, Kasey Brown.
On the other hand, Serme, the ninth seed from Creteil produced a superlative finish to win 7-11, 11-7, 7-11, 11-2, 11-5 against an English opponent from whom, in their two previous contests, she had not even taken a game.
There was not much to choose between the creative Serme and the mobile Duncalf for three games, but in the final game the 21-year-old winner of the WISPA Tour’s most improved player award for 2009 showed that she has improved some more since then.
Serme had two slices of luck early of the fifth, getting an early chance to make a comfortable cut-off volley and then projecting a back wall nick which rolled dead. But she capitalized superbly, maintaining the pressure with some nicely disguised angles, solid drives and some very tight drops.
She maintained this pressure, despite many long rallies, almost without error, and during a surge from 3-4 to 10-4 it was clear that – barring mental collapse – she was going to win.
"It was a strange feeling at 3-0," said Serme. "Straight away you start thinking about winning and I was, like, don’t think about that!
"She came back and it was close and then I played well again. I was trying to think about playing point by point and trying not to think about the score."
Serme’s improvement, mentally and physically, and in her ability to make things happen with fewer errors, made the result less of a surprise than it may have seemed. The day before she had beaten another leading English player, Laura Massaro, the eighth seed, in four games.
But Serme did not feel that way at all.
"I can’t really believe I’ve beaten the number two in the world and that I’m in the semi-final of the World Open," she said, her face growing wider by the minute as she smiled. "In fact it’s crazy."
There was no sign in the first game that such an upset was on the way.
Duncalf was consistent enough, and covered the court brilliantly, while Serme put an important half volley drop shot into the tin to go 7-10 down and lost the game when she lobbed out.
But the second game started to see the winners flow from Serme’s racket. Neat volley drops and well-masked kills began to discomfort the second seed, and although Duncalf cut a four point deficit to two, Serme finished the game with a trio of beautiful winners.
Duncalf made a good start to the third, gaining an immediate four-point lead as scored well with drops and disguises on the backhand side, and maintained the advantage right through.
But in the fourth Duncalf dropped a level. Her game seemed to lack a bit of devil, and she allowed Serme to dictate the pattern and to race to a 7-0 lead which did wonders for her confidence for the rest of the match.
That streak carried into the fifth game, and at 3-0 Serme had won an amazing 14 points out of 16. Although Duncalf made a brief fight back from 0-3 to 4-3 the dye had been cast to strongly to be erased.
It meant that one of the record-seeking Nicol David’s main rivals had gone out – Duncalf beat the world champion from Malaysia twice late last year – and that new horizons had opened for Serme.
Was anything possible now?
"We will see," she said hastily. "We will see."
