49cry on court because I would be so upset’’ — but
she stayed with it because she wanted to excel.
‘‘I love the sport enough that he didn’t push me
over the edge,’’ she told me.
She says she knows that her father’s strict
approach was ‘‘coming from a place of love’’ and
that ‘‘if he didn’t push us as hard and wasn’t as
involved, we wouldn’t be as successful.’’ When
I spoke to Khaled Sobhy, who now splits his
time between Egypt and the United States, he
agreed that it wasn’t always easy to separate his
roles as coach and father. Referring to Amanda,
he said, ‘‘She would always say to me that once
we were off the court, I had to stop being her
coach and just be Dad.’’ He added, ‘‘I learned it
the hard way.’’
The Sobhy children didn’t train exclusively
with their father. Like Richard Williams, Khaled
Sobhy sometimes sought input from other coach-
es. Rodney Martin worked occasionally with the
Sobhy sisters. He says Amanda was ‘‘phenome-
nal’’ at a young age, not only because of her skills
but also because of her dedication. It was clear
to Martin that she had the talent and the will to
get to the top. She was ‘‘going to make a good
fi st of it,’’ he says.
Amanda captured numerous junior titles.
She also won four pro tournaments when she
was just 16. Some people told her that her game
would stagnate if she went to college instead of
turning pro, but she was eager to show that she
could continue to improve while pursuing her
education. ‘‘I’m very stubborn,’’ she says, ‘‘and I
like proving people wrong.’’
The expectations were enormous when Sobhy
got to Harvard. ‘‘There was a target on my back,’’
she says. But she not only went 62-0 in college;
she dropped just two games (a squash match is
best-of-fi ve games).
Outside squash, Sobhy found Harvard chal-
lenging. She knew she was admitted mainly
because she was an accomplished athlete.
‘‘I got in for my squash,’’ she says flatly. She
majored in social anthropology, with a minor
in global health, but always felt inferior to her
peers and dreaded being called on in class. Her
bulimia started in college. The problem persist-
ed after she turned pro. She was often lonely
while traveling, and losses left her crestfallen,
which led to more bingeing and purging. ‘‘I
internalized a lot of pressure,’’ she says, ‘‘and I
coped with food.’’
Despite their close friendship, Fiechter was
shocked to learn that Sobhy had been strug-
gling with an eating disorder. ‘‘I had no idea,’’
Fiechter says. Part of it was that Sobhy was so
seemingly in control. ‘‘The fi rst time we roomed
together, I noticed how professional she was
— with how she dealt with sponsorships, and
how she had her nutritional supplements here
and her snacks there and all her match outfi ts
laid out,’’ Fiechter recalls. ‘‘You could just see
how regimented and disciplined she was, and
to me, that was hugely inspiring.’’
Sobhy eventually told her sister about her buli-
mia, and the moment turned out to be a mutual
confession: Sabrina Sobhy had also struggled
with an eating disorder. ‘‘I had a similar experi-
ence,’’ Sabrina says, ‘‘and we kind of shared both
of our stories with each other.’’ A sports psychol-
ogist was able to help Amanda address the prob-
lem. Looking back, she is astonished that she was
able to play at such a high level all those years. ‘‘I
think I almost don’t give myself credit for how
strong I was mentally,’’ she says.US Squash, the national governing body, subsi-
dizes around a dozen American players, each of
whom receives $7,500 to $40,000 annually. The
aim is to make squash a more viable career option
for them. Between that support, her tournament
winnings and her exhibition fees, Sobhy makes
a reasonably good living by squash standards.
She recently purchased a house in Philadelphia,
and she no longer needs a second job. In Boston,
she worked as the assistant coach of the M.I.T.
men’s team. ‘‘This is the fi rst time where I can be
a full-time professional,’’ she told me.
With newfound fi nancial stability, Sobhy is free
to concentrate on toppling the Egyptians. In a
sense, though, she has been chasing them most
of her life. On annual summer visits to Cairo,
Sobhy and her siblings would spend their days
sparring with local kids at the Heliopolis Sporting
Club, among Egypt’s most famous squash ven-
ues. Sobhy says that for her father, the Egyptians
were always the benchmark for her progress.
He expressed impatience if ‘‘they did well, and I
wasn’t up to par with them.’’
The Egyptians are renowned for their explo-
sive play. Instead of the attritional British style,
in which matches are won by running the oppo-
nent to exhaustion, the Egyptians look to end
points quickly and with as much panache as
circumstances allow. They were helped by an
adjustment to the lower boundary on the front
wall — it was reduced by two inches in 1990
for the men and in 2015 for the women — that
spurred more risk-taking. The game still fea-
tures plenty of lung-burning rallies, but there
is much more action now in the front of the
court — more drop shots and guileful fl icks.
John Nimick, a hardball pro in the 1980s, mar-
vels at how the Egyptians have changed squash.
‘‘They have made it so kinetic, so angular, so fast,
so creative,’’ he says.
Given Sobhy’s heritage and all the time that
she spent in Cairo as a child, it is not surpris-
ing that she plays a similar style to the Egyp-
tians, and as a pro, she has notched victories
over all three women who are above her in the
rankings: Nouran Gohar, Nour El Sherbini and
Hania El Hammamy. But they are very diffi cultopponents. ‘‘I’ve played them and maybe the
entire match they’ve given me one error,’’ Sobhy
says. Consistency and judicious shot selection
are paramount, and that’s where Sobhy some-
times runs into trouble. During her second
match in Chicago, against the Welsh player
Tesni Evans, ranked 14th, Sobhy won the fi rst
two games easily and held match points in the
third. But she squandered them and ended up
losing the third and fourth games before prevail-
ing. (She was beaten in the next round, by world
No. 5, Joelle King, of New Zealand.)
Sobhy is coached by Wael El Hindi, a former
Top 10 player from Egypt who owns a racket
club in Boynton Beach, Fla. She hired him in part
because he ‘‘knows the mind of Egyptians.’’ El
Hindi told me that he was working with Sobhy
on developing a better sense of when to attack
and when to pull back. The key for Sobhy, he says,
is to be able to impose her game on opponents
without taking excessive risks. What impresses
him about Sobhy is her willingness to experi-
ment. ‘‘She’s such a great student,’’ El Hindi says.
‘‘Even at her level, she’s open to learning things,
to changing things.’’
At the British Open in April, Sobhy showed
signs of progress. In the quarterfi nals, she defeat-
ed Fiechter 3-0 in 35 minutes. She was in total
command from start to fi nish — no lapses, relent-
lessly aggressive without being reckless. The next
day, she faced Gohar, the world No. 1. Sobhy had
a winning record against the Egyptian but had
lost their four most recent meetings. The victo-
ry over Fiechter left her feeling very confi dent,
though. She might have drawn encouragement,
too, from the fact that Paul Coll, a New Zealander,
had just supplanted Ali Farag as the men’s top-
ranked player — a crack in the Egyptian wall. ‘‘I
thought I was ready,’’ she says.
Unfortunately for her, Gohar was in ruth-
less form. As hard as Sobhy hits the ball, Gohar
seems to generate even more power, and the
American quickly felt overwhelmed by her pace.
‘‘Instead of relaxing, I got very panicked, anx-
ious,’’ she says. Gohar pounced on every loose
shot, appeared to hit winners almost at will and
took the match 3-0. Sobhy admitted to being
‘‘caught off guard’’ by how well her opponent
played. ‘‘It had been a while since I had had such
a poor loss on a grand stage,’’ she says.
But if the match showed that the gap between
her and the best Egyptians is wider than she
might wish, it also demonstrated the distance
that Sobhy has traveled in other ways. She was
crushed after the defeat and felt that old sense
of shame and inadequacy — ‘‘my eating disorder
voice,’’ as she puts it. She knew that spending the
night alone in her hotel room was not a good
idea. Instead, she went to visit some friends.
By the following morning, Sobhy says, she was
already strategizing about what she would do dif-
ferently against Gohar the next time. In its own
way, that felt like a victory.ªSobhy
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