Photograph by Cait Oppermann for The New York TimesPhotograph by Cait Oppermann for The New York Times The New York Times MagazineThe New York Times Magazine 3131
retired stars often found that they were able to earn more money teaching
squash to wealthy Americans than they had made as players.
Several former No. 1s coach in the United States. So does Rodney Martin,
an Australian player who reached No. 2 in the early 1990s and is based in Con-
necticut. Martin says the United States faced a sharp learning curve when it
came to softball in part because there wasn’t ‘‘the expertise in coaching.’’ These
days, some of the best minds in the game are working with young Americans.
They are being trained to take on the world, and one country in particular:
Egypt. When the United States switched to softball, the dominant powers
were England, Australia and Pakistan. Now, Egypt rules. Since 2006, six dif-
ferent Egyptian men have held the No. 1 ranking. In the last six years, an
Egyptian woman has been No. 1 for all but four months. At the moment, seven
of the Top 10 men are from Egypt; Egyptian women hold fi ve spots in the Top
- The rise of Egyptian squash is, in its
own way, a story as unlikely as the United
States’ ditching its version of a game in
order to fall in line with everyone else.
Squash has a long history in Egypt,
dating back to the British occupation,
and the country turned out some excel-
lent players over the years, Khaled
Sobhy among them. But there was little
to suggest that Egypt would become the
juggernaut it is today. Its ascendance
began when a player named Ahmed
Barada reached the fi nal of a major
tournament in Cairo in 1996 and then
rose to No. 2 in the world. A charismat-
ic fi gure, Barada touched off a squash
boom. It helped that President Hosni
Mubarak was a player himself and eager
to promote squash. Amr Shabana’s vic-
tory at the 2003 men’s world champi-
onship increased the game’s cachet.
In a nation that had few international
sports stars, the fi nest squash players
became celebrities, which encouraged
more participation. Karim Darwish, an
Egyptian who got to No. 1 in 2009, says
that he, Barada and Shabana became
‘‘idols who were looked up to’’ and that
their success brought waves of players
into the game. Darwish now runs a
squash academy in Cairo with about
2,500 children enrolled between the
ages of 4 and 12.
Another factor: For Egyptians, too,
squash has proved to be a way into lead-
ing American universities. Ali Farag,
who held the No. 1 ranking most of the
last two years (he is now No. 2), attend-
ed Harvard. Youssef Ibrahim, a Prince-
ton senior, is ranked 11th in the world. A barrel-chested lefty who calls to
mind Rafael Nadal, Ibrahim reached the men’s fi nal of the Windy City Open
and came within two points of winning. Thanks in part to Egyptian stu-
dents, high-level collegiate squash is almost an extension of the pro circuit.
Amanda Sobhy also helped make it that way. She was ranked 17th when
she arrived at Harvard in 2011 and had climbed to 10th by the time she
left (she had played some pro events as a junior and continued to do so
while in college). In contrast to most of her classmates, her career path was
established before she even set foot on campus: She was raised for squash
greatness, and turning pro would be the inevitable next step after Harvard.
THE ARLEN SPECTER US Squash Center, which
opened last year, occupies a converted armory
on the campus of Drexel University in Philadel-
phia. Named for the late United States senator
from Pennsylvania, who was a squash enthu-
siast, the $40 million facility has 20 courts. On
a Wednesday afternoon in March, Sobhy was
there playing a practice match against Olivia
Fiechter, who in addition to being Sobhy’s closest
American rival is her best friend on the pro tour.
A game within the game was going on when I arrived to watch. A loafer
had been placed along each of the side walls, just behind the service box,
and while Sobhy and Fiechter were playing, they were also trying to drive
their shots so tight to the wall and with
enough depth that the ball would hit a
shoe. As usual with Sobhy and Fiech-
ter, there were stakes: Every shot that
struck a shoe was worth $1, and who-
ever was trailing at the end had to pay
in cash or spring for coff ee or a snack.
Sobhy, who moved to Philadelphia
from Boston in 2020, ended up win-
ning both the regular game and the
shoe game. It was a small measure of
revenge: Fiechter, a 26-year-old Prince-
ton graduate, had unexpectedly beaten
her in their last two tournament meet-
ings, most recently in February in Cin-
cinnati. Sobhy told me she was ‘‘salty’’
after that match but agreed to stick
around to coach Fiechter for the rest of
the weekend. The women usually room
together on the road.
Following practice, they talked about
their upcoming trip to Egypt; both
were leaving in a few days for a tour-
nament in Cairo. While Sobhy enjoys
seeing her Egyptian relatives, the city’s
traffi c and heat grate on her, and she
fi nds it hard to be a woman there. ‘‘I’m a
very outspoken female, and I don’t like
to be diminished in Egyptian culture,’’
she says. But she acknowledges that
her feelings about Egypt are colored by
what was, for many years, a sometimes
diffi cult father-daughter dynamic.
Sobhy grew up in Sea Cliff , N.Y.,
on the North Shore of Long Island.
In addition to her sister, who is three
years younger (and the more natural-
ly gifted player, at least according to
Sobhy), she has an older brother, Omar,
who played squash in college and works in real estate in Philadelphia. Her
mother, Jodie Larson, is a school music teacher. Her parents divorced
when Sobhy was in second grade. Her father, who came to the United
States in the mid-1980s to teach squash, worked for several years as an
accountant before taking a job as the pro at a local country club, which
gave him more time to coach his own children.
When it came to squash, Khaled Sobhy had a lot of ambition for his
children, and Amanda says he was very demanding. If his expectations
weren’t met, Khaled made his unhappiness clear. ‘‘His deliverance was
harsh,’’ as she puts it. They clashed a lot — ‘‘I would (Continued on Page )Amanda Sobhy at the Racquet Club of Philadelphia in April.