MANCHESTER: Thierry Lincou s hopes of winning back the World Open title were sensationally dashed in the second round by a 17-year-old wrecker from Egypt.
Mohamed El Shorbagy, who had to come through the qualifying competition and was thought to be too inexperienced to win yet at this level, overcame the sixth-seeded from Marseille in five thrillingly fluctuating games.
His 12-10, 11-6, 7-11, 10-12, 13-11 win was all the more remarkable for having to recover from the disappointment of missing a match point in the fourth game and from being denied three more in the fifth against the tour s most renowned comeback specialist.
I just decided to play this match without thinking about the score, said El Shorbagy after the finest win of his career. And that helped me – but I was aware of it at the end.
He played just the kind of game I didn t like, said Lincou, the first Frenchman ever to become world champion when he won in 2004 in Doha, but who now failed to make the third round for the first time since 1999.
He was very aggressive and I wasn t used to that. He went for his shots and really surprised me and that put me under pressure.
It was all the more surprising in that El Shorbagy had had another very hard five-game match the previous day against another Frenchman, Renan Lavigne, and yet he showed no ill-effects in his movement.
Indeed the teenager maintained his superb speed right to the end. This made it hard for Lincou to get the ball away and shorten the rallies which this year he has made more of a priority.
It increased the pressure on the 32-year-old and was almost certainly responsible for the important errors he made with his short game at crucial moments in the decider.
All this might have been avoided had Lincou capitalized on a 10-6 lead in the first game, at which stage El Shorbagy got a refereeing decision which annoyed him and raised his level significantly.
Losing that first game really affected me, Lincou admitted. And as a result I was a little bit tense.
Nevertheless, it seemed that he had fought his way out of trouble by playing out the long rallies and varying the pace, and advancing to 4-3 and 5-4 in the decider.
But conspicuously El Shorbagy did not lose heart.
We had some long rallies and I knew he was very tired, the Egyptian said, who attributes his greater mental strength to working with Jonah Barrington, the six times former British Open champion who coaches him at Millfield school in Somerset, England.
El Shorbagy, who recently won the world junior title was asked whether he could go on to the top of the senior tree.
I need to be hungry more now, he said. Then maybe I have a chance. That is what I am trying to do.
He next plays his compatriot, Hisham Ashour, with a decent chance of reaching the quarter-finals, where El Shorbagy could play another Egyptian, Amr Shabana, the top-seeded titleholder.
Shabana reached the third round with a straight games win over Borja Golan, the Spaniard who was runner-up in the French International championships in Paris a fortnight ago.
Shabana looked a little below his best while reaching the third round with a 12-10, 11-7, 11-4 win over Golan
However Shabana is renowned for timing his best form for the later stages, just as he did in last year s final against Gregory Gaultier. -AFP
