Egypt’s World No 3 Tarek Momen was crowned the 2019-20 Professional Squash Association (PSA) Men’s World Champion for the first time after beating New Zealand’s Paul Coll by 3-0 on Friday in Doha, Qatar.
It is the 11th PSA Men’s World title for Egypt, while Momen became the 18th champion to clinch the iconic trophy.
"If I tell you how many times I imagined making this speech my whole life, it’s countless, and now I just don’t know what to say, it’s so hard to digest,” Momen was quoted as saying by psaworldtour.com after winning his seventh PSA Tour title.
"I just worked so hard for this. For years, I’ve been trying and trying, I came up this close but then it didn’t happen for me. I haven’t won a Platinum event and the first major I ever win gets to be the World Championship, it’s unbelievable," he added.
Momen also became the sixth Egyptian to win the men’s World Championship and the fourth Egyptian in a row to win the title.
“It has been a childhood dream of mine to become the World Champion at some point. I am 31 now, and I was wondering whether I would have the opportunity to do it, so to be able to do it at this age and to still feel that I can give it my all for a few more years is just unbelievable," he explained.
"I want to congratulate Paul on such an event and an amazing achievement. He’s done so well making it this far. He had the better of our last finals appearances, I’m just glad I managed to get this one," he added.
Couple achievement
After Friday's achievement Momen and his wife World No 1 Raneem El-Welily have become the first married couple in squash history to become World Champions. El-Welily won the title in 2017.
"It was such a strong match, I know he pushed himself hard during the event. Towards the end, I could see he was struggling a bit, but he kept pushing. I only realised this morning we were the only married couple to become World Champions. We are privileged to have achieved something, and I’m so happy we did it," said Momen.
On the other side, Coll said: “It was tough from the word go, Tarek was firing and made me do a lot of work at all stages of the game. It was taking its toll because of his accuracy.
"I’m very proud of my week, a bit disappointed by tonight but all credit to Tarek who delivered on the big stage tonight. I’m so grateful for all the support I got from back home, people waking up at early hours in the morning, it means a lot to me, and I want to thank them," he concluded.
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